Complete service to calculate monthly profit

[husseycoding]

Hi there,

My development company has just launched Profit Calculator - an accounting related tool aimed at any small business in the UK. It's not designed to replace an accounting or bookkeeping service, but instead compliment it. The service allows you to compile income and expenditure data which can then be used in monthly calculations to tell the business owner, based on total income and expenditure, and in a simple and clear format what profit looks like for any given month. It's possible to enter:

Employers - where you can configure if VAT is applicable as well as at what rate, plus what percentage of income you put into your tax account to cover VAT and corporation tax bills.

Projects - to separate different business concerns per employer. You can also have VAT configuration per project, or use the 'parent' employer configuration.

Employees - full time, part time, temporary and subcontractors. Here you define how much the employee costs you, plus if VAT is charged on invoices in the case of temporary or subcontactor employees.

Expenses - intermittent and one off expenses.

Costs - regular monthly costs that are incurred.

Working time - log working time for temporary and subcontractor employees who are paid according to hours worked.

Invoices - record invoices you send with created on, due by and optionally cleared on dates. Invoices are only considered in profit calculations when they have cleared.

Income - intermittent and one off income. You can also define if income is subject to tax for instance if you have a tax rebate.

Sales - record any sales of product.

With the relevant data for your business entered, you can run profit calculations for any given month which takes into account all expenditure and all income, as well as VAT and the percentage of income to be put aside into the tax account. The calculation results show you a summary and then total expenditure, total income, and whether you are in profit for that month. If the calculations are for the current month and you are not in profit yet a projected 'in profit' date is given by averaging income so far over the month. You are also given figures to indicate how much you should be paying into the tax account in that month, and how much VAT you should be able to reclaim. Reclaimed VAT is entered as income that is not subject to tax but is not specifically considered in calculations due to the possibility of scenarios such as a business using a flat rate scheme.

The Profit Calculator site is profitcalculator.co.uk and it has brief introductory video.


I basically created this service because it's something I wish I had had years ago when I first started running my own business. So I've been mulling over the concept for a long time, and after seeing how inflexible and hard to manage a spreadsheet option is, I decided to built the service. I use it myself and find it absolutely invaluable in giving a realistic view of how profitable you are each month - with all the complexities around business income and expenditure this is not always easy or quick to get from your accountant/bookeeper, and certainly not reflecting the result of each days business.

I would really appreciate it if you would test the service (it's currently completely free) and give my any feedback on what you think.

Thanks in advance!

Jon

 

[japancool]

Won't any decent accounting package do this?

 

[husseycoding]

Yes there are accounting packages that can do this yes, but this is aimed at the business owner rather than being a service aimed at the bookkeeper/accountant.

 

[fisicx]

Can't test anything because there is no demo. Not even a screenshot

Signed up and was confused right from the start. I don't have an employer so not sure what to do.

A lot of my income is passive, People pay me for downloads. The rest is one off projects, many overseas. So VAT and tax is all over the shop. They aren't employers, they are just customers. If I've got to enter their details and then create a new project each time it going to cost me time and money. All I want to be able to do is enter a name and an amount and possibly a date.

This feels like a project that works for you and your business. Not sure it's much help for others unless I can customise data inputs and outputs.

 

[WaveJumper]

I am sorry but struggling to see any need for this. Any business owner can log into his accountancy software and call up this information at any time he wants

 

[husseycoding]

I'll consider putting some more descriptive text, and more content will be coming in terms of describing the service and how to use it, including a tutorial. There is already some text at the top of each section to describe what to put there, but very briefly, the employer is your business, whether that be an entity in itself like a limited company which actually employs you, or just what you trade as, as a sole trader, it's totally up to you. Under that you create a project which is some division you define in terms of how you operate your business, i.e. maybe a project might be a bricks and mortar shop, another one might be online sales. Again it's up to you. Employees are, well self explanatory, but also includes you as the business owner.

 

[fisicx]

That’s not how I read it. Why use the word employer at all? If this is just a calculator you only need the projects.

Really can’t see a need for this service.

 

[husseycoding]

It's employers to give the flexibility of calculating profit for multiple companies under the same account.

 

[bodgitt&scarperLTD]

It's employers to give the flexibility of calculating profit for multiple companies under the same account.

If I owned a dozen companies I'm sure I'd have a spreadsheet for this. And an employee to tell me it all.

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

Sage does everything that needs to be done they know every requirement for most businesses

 

[fisicx]

It's employers to give the flexibility of calculating profit for multiple companies under the same account.

If I had multiple companies I’d be using accounting software to do all my sums.

Your opening post suggests this tool is for small businesses - a singular entity.

 

[husseycoding]

Perhaps, but multiple companies doesn't automatically mean big, or even medium sized business, can certainly still be small business!

 

[DontAsk]

Yes there are accounting packages that can do this yes, but this is aimed at the business owner rather than being a service aimed at the bookkeeper/accountant.

I am a business owner and I do the bookkeeping and use the accounting package. My accountant just does year end processing.

I have no need for this service.

 

[DontAsk]

What did your market research say about the need for this tool before you spent time developing it?

I guess you didn't do any, that's why you need a poll here.

 

[CA85]

As others have commented, accounting software already does this, I'm not seeing the benefit. Also it sounds like this is a standalone tool, so as well as usual data entry into the accounting software, there needs to be additional/duplicate data entry into the tool.

If I am a small business owner currently using sage/xero/other, why would I need to use this tool?

Unless I am missing something. Is this actually a super-duper/easy to use/free forecasting tool that will forecast P&L, balance sheet, and cashflow? Even then integrated tools are already available, or more likely for smaller businesses, excel workbooks will be in place.

 

[NickGrogan]

Can I import or export data from my accounts package or excel at least?

What does this do that a really simple excel sheet doesn't do?