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sparky011

Free Member
Oct 21, 2010
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Hi all

As you can see from a previeous poste we are about to set up using sage,

Question is do we go for sage or for quickbooks, i am being offered quickbooks online from rbs for £30.00 per month just wanting views on weather its sage or quickbooks that we go for, what is the diffrence
 
Two different programs. Both do the job, both have their quirks. I think you said in another post that you were familiar with Sage, so unless you really didn't like it then that's at least one point in its favour

Personally I moved from Sage to Quickbooks for my own accounting about six years ago, mainly so that I could learn more about it. Having tried QB, there is no way that I would ever use Sage again. However, I changed over to Xero 18 months ago, and now I wouldn't go back to QB. Sage has no chance! It saves so much time on bank reconciliations. It's also £19 per month compared with QB £30
 
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hi david


i have used both sage and quickbooks, im waiting on a responce from the accountant, do you know if qb has the abity for CIS tax
 
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Whether you are looking at the QuickBooks desktop software or QuickBooks Online the key difference compared to other offerings is ease of use.


If it’s online software you are interested in, then QuickBooks Online is a good choice. It is quick and easy to set up, has simple navigation and rapid workflows for key tasks (e.g. quote – invoice – payment in three clicks) and provides easy access to key information (e.g. instant company snapshot and customer centric view to easily look up orders, history and preferences by customer).

However, it doesn’t support CIS and so that is something to talk about with your accountant.

Scott at Intuit.
 
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Also to clarify re pricing...

QuickBooks Online starts at £9 p/m for QuickBooks Online Simple Start, but if you are a VAT registered business you’ll need QuickBooks Online Essentials, which is £19 p/m. There are no contracts, it is free for the first 30 days and you can cancel at any time.
 
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I bought Sage accounts 2007 in 2007 and now pay nowt per month and love it.

That's my opinion.

It can take some getting used to but once you have it is a doddle. I used their workbooks to learn what I needed to.

However, it all depends on how complex your business finances will be. I know people that don't need or want any software as it is overkill.

:)
 
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ScottatIntuit said:
... There are no contracts, it is free for the first 30 days and you can cancel at any time.
Click to expand...

Anyone looking at any accounting package HAS to ask what happens to their data and access to it when the subscription stops.

We were slaves to Quickbooks for 10 years, then a few years back they restructured the VAT with the new version (2007?), messed up our accounts totally when we upgraded, calling it a 'product feature' with the only suggested solution from the helpline was to spend hours and hours doing journals. The prospect was so bad that we downgraded again to 2006.

When the product was finally 'sunsetted' we then had trouble accessing historical data, when even creating a report was deemed to be current activity and required an 'upgrade'. The only way to create a report was to wind back the date on the computer to before the sunset date.

We now use EZPZ for our accounts, which doesn't have bells and whistles, is easy to use and a developer who works hard to satisfy his customers.

Moneysoft Payroll Manager is also 100x better than the Quickbooks version. It has lovely touches like various holiday and sickness calendars - the 'year planner' type sickness one is very useful in seeing patterns like Mondayitus at a glance.
 
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sparky011 said:
...just wanting views on weather its sage or quickbooks that we go for, what is the diffrence
Click to expand...

As an accountant working with small businesses I am often told people with little or no accounting knowledge find Sage a little daunting as it uses a lot of accounting terminology, whereas QuickBooks tends to used descriptions which non-accountants relate to. I tend to find people find QB easier to use.

Personally I wouldn't restrict your choice to Sage or QuickBooks - they used to be the market leaders but you now have so much choice with many cheaper, and in my opinion, much better packages.
 
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Hi there,

We purchased Sage Instant Accounts last year and I have been trying to get to grips with Sage ever since. Things as basic as importing sales invoices or purchase invoices, or do a real bank reconciliation just can't be done as far as I can tell.

For instance, it took me a long time to figure out how, but I have finally imported a number of bank transactions into Sage. I have also got several invoices in Sage which some of the bank transactions relate to. Unfortunately, there is no way that I can match my BR (bank receipt) or BP (bank payment) transactions to sales invoices or purchase invoices.

[FONT=&quot]A Sage bank "reconciliation" seems to mean matching our bank transactions in Sage with a paper statement, which is pointless and ridiculous, since I imported the transactions in Sage from an electronic bank statement, so obviously they are identical.[/FONT]

Quickbooks users, can you import a bunch of sales invoices or purchase invoices into Quickbooks? Can you match bank transactions to invoices? It sounds really elementary, but it would seem that Sage Instant Accounts 16 cannot do that.

If you have real-life experience of other accounting software that you feel is better, I'm listening.

Thanks,

TBLZ
 
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Nothing personal to John - whose advice is always spot on

I much prefer TAS Books 2 (admittedly owned by Sage)
the reporting is better
the licences are MUCH cheaper
and ease of use is the same

still loathe quickbooks - even more now that I have to use it regularly
 
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TBLZ said:
Unfortunately, there is no way that I can match my BR (bank receipt) or BP (bank payment) transactions to sales invoices or purchase invoices.
Click to expand...

Even in the user interface, you cannot allocate a BR or BP to customer and supplier invoices - such transactions would be SR (Sales Receipt) and PP (Purchase Payment) transactions.

Unfortunately, you can't import those to be allocated automatically :rolleyes: although there are 3rd party import programs available for both Sage 50 and Instant that can do it.

John
 
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When I looked at TAS Books Basic (version 7), you couldn't do an import, so you'd have to input each item manually one by one, and you couldn't see a list of sales invoices or purchase invoices. Straight to the bin.

Talkinpeace, do you have specific examples of what you dislike about Quickbooks?

MyAccountantOnline, do you know whether you can import your sales ledger and purchase ledger into Quickbooks? Can you also import a bank statement (say as a csv or xlsx)? Can you then match bank transactions to invoices?

Thanks all,

TBLZ
 
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TBLZ
the high level reporting - the fact that report s with start and finish dates do not always actually have those dated transactions in
and the fact that there seems to be a lot of faffing to get defaults set up - like coding wages directly to nominal from the payroll
and the lack of nominal code numbers means journals are a pita
 
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I had a look at both a few years ago when I setup business and I have to say that as a non-accountant I preferred Quickbooks over Sage. However if I was starting today I might consider Kashflow but at this point moving from Quickbooks to Kashflow might be too much for me!
 
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Thanks for all the input and opinions.

Approached my accountant the other day to tell him that i was concidering moving to sage, responce was, dont think that you need an accounts package, we use excell and will do all of it for younon there and send u the p&l every quarter.

At the moment i have him doing vat and payroll for me, not that i cant do it just havent realy set up to do it as the accountant has always done it from day one


Is this him saying ill do a little more and charge you even more?
 
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TBLZ said:

Hi there,

We purchased Sage Instant Accounts last year and I have been trying to get to grips with Sage ever since. Things as basic as importing sales invoices or purchase invoices, or do a real bank reconciliation just can't be done as far as I can tell.

For instance, it took me a long time to figure out how, but I have finally imported a number of bank transactions into Sage. I have also got several invoices in Sage which some of the bank transactions relate to. Unfortunately, there is no way that I can match my BR (bank receipt) or BP (bank payment) transactions to sales invoices or purchase invoices.

[FONT=&quot]A Sage bank "reconciliation" seems to mean matching our bank transactions in Sage with a paper statement, which is pointless and ridiculous, since I imported the transactions in Sage from an electronic bank statement, so obviously they are identical.[/FONT]

Quickbooks users, can you import a bunch of sales invoices or purchase invoices into Quickbooks? Can you match bank transactions to invoices? It sounds really elementary, but it would seem that Sage Instant Accounts 16 cannot do that.

If you have real-life experience of other accounting software that you feel is better, I'm listening.

Thanks,

TBLZ
Click to expand...

You can actually import sales invoices into Sage. Don't ask me how it's done, but I have a client who downloads all of their sales information from a website and imports into Sage.

It's also possible to import bank transactions. However, you then have to do a manual reconciliation as you seem to have found out.

Have a look at some of the online packages and Xero in particular. Importing the bank transactions is a doddle, even if done manually. The automatic matching of transactiosn make the reconciliation simple. If you set up automatic bank feeds, it's an order of magnitude easier again.

Quickbooks import is, to me, easier than Sage but not in the same class as Xero.
 
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There is a lot of discussions here about accounting software. Have a look at these links below. There are plenty free options and you choose from online or desktop. Stay away from big companies, expensive and their support is expensive. Also spreadsheets are prone to errors.
Some accountants will give you the software for free as it will help them do the accounts quicker thus saving you money and keeping their prices down. We give away KashFlow for free.


http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/fo...d.php?t=199319
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/fo...d.php?t=207159
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/fo...d.php?t=178782
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/fo...d.php?t=204299
 
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sparky011 said:
Thanks for all the input and opinions.

Approached my accountant the other day to tell him that i was concidering moving to sage, responce was, dont think that you need an accounts package, we use excell and will do all of it for younon there and send u the p&l every quarter.

At the moment i have him doing vat and payroll for me, not that i cant do it just havent realy set up to do it as the accountant has always done it from day one


Is this him saying ill do a little more and charge you even more?
Click to expand...

More importantly it's him saying that you'll have to manage customer and supplier balances on your own, and not know where you stand until after the end of each quarter - how long after the end depending on how long they take to turn the figures around.

It's also likely to cost more because you are paying him to pay his staff to do work that you could do as you go along.

I have an aversion to using spreadsheets for accounting. Leave out the considerable scope for the introduction of errors, unless it is very complex a spreadsheet simply will not give you the reporting capabilities of even the simplest accounting program. A spreadsheet is usually set up to mimic the layout of paper books, and have advantages there in terms of neatness and the fact that it can add everything up. However to go from the basic books of account through to P&L and other reports requires more work.

Accounting packages aren't written as spreadsheets. That to me says all that I need to know about the use of spreadsheets as accounting tools. A purpose built package will help you reconcile the bank, produce reports of money owed in and money owed out and loads more. And that will be available to you daily (if you keep things up to date) not every three months.

Keeping your own records need not be a chore. It's best to do things daily, in small quantities, but if you have your basics done you can then reduce your costs and have the accountant deal with the year end and the tax. In other words you do the bookkeeping and they do the accountancy.

We are happy to do bookkeeping for clients who have better things to do with their time, but I would never tell somebody that they didn't need an accounting package. Well, I might say that Sage is a bit complex and possibly costly, but I wouldn't put them off accounting packages full stop :)

Edit: I wonder if he keeps his own stuff on spreadsheets and writes it up every three months! :eek:
 
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TBLZ said:
MyAccountantOnline, do you know whether you can import your sales ledger and purchase ledger into Quickbooks? Can you also import a bank statement (say as a csv or xlsx)? Can you then match bank transactions to invoices?

Thanks all,

TBLZ
Click to expand...

Sorry I missed your question but David has now kindly answered the query.
 
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sparky011 said:
Thanks for all the input and opinions.

Approached my accountant the other day to tell him that i was concidering moving to sage, responce was, dont think that you need an accounts package, we use excell and will do all of it for younon there and send u the p&l every quarter.

At the moment i have him doing vat and payroll for me, not that i cant do it just havent realy set up to do it as the accountant has always done it from day one


Is this him saying ill do a little more and charge you even more?
Click to expand...

He really should have clarified the charge when he discussed this with you but I doubt anyone in business can offer to undertake additional work free of charge:)

That said if he is already looking after your VAT he should be able to produce quarterly accounts within minutes (or would do if he wasn't using Excel) so the charge should be minimal.
 
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