Which book keeping system is best?

[Eileen Joy]

Hi. I am just starting out with an online shop selling homewares and I haven't got a clue about book keeping but know I will have to get on top of it from the start. I assumed I would use Excel, at least at first, while I can manage things on my own. I have now seen references to Quick Books as a better alternative because it is 'cloud based'. Can anyone explain to me what this means exactly and is Quick Books a good system to use - is it worth the money? Thank you!

 

[john1989]

There is no 'best'. There is different.

The solution will depend what your needs are.

For an online business, I'd be steering towards Clearbooks or Xero. I wouldn't use excel for bookkeeping.

I don't particularly like QuickBooks - does it still encounter VAT issues?

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Hi. I am just starting out with an online shop selling homewares and I haven't got a clue about book keeping but know I will have to get on top of it from the start. I assumed I would use Excel, at least at first, while I can manage things on my own. I have now seen references to Quick Books as a better alternative because it is 'cloud based'. Can anyone explain to me what this means exactly and is Quick Books a good system to use - is it worth the money? Thank you!

Hi Eileen

I'm an accountant who works with a lot of new and small businesses, and have done for a very long time so have seen and used a lot of accounting and bookkeeping packages.

The first thing I'd say is never use Excel - its time consuming, messy, prone to errors, has limited reported requirements and their are free alternatives which do the job many times better than Excel such as VT cashbook.

In the past when you bought software you'd buy it and install it on your PC, generally paying an annual fee for updates.

Now many great packages are online so you pay a monthly fee to use the sofware - your data is held online and you can access your accounting records from a PC, tablet, phone etc whatever you use to go online, and you can do it where ever you have internet access.

Quickbooks is just one of many online (and desktop) packages, everyone has favourites mine is Accounts Portal ultimately they all do much the same basic job a few have more features.

I'd take a few trials and see which you prefer to use. Clients generally tell me they find Accounts Portal easy to use with little or no bookkeeping experience.

 

[Eileen Joy]

Thank you so much for your replies. As you can tell I don't know much at the moment. If I can do free trials with a couple of packages I will. I can see how important it will be to be able to access records from any device.

 

[kevin.doran]

I am just starting out with an online shop...

That could be quite pivotal when deciding which software to use. Are you eBay/PayPal based for example?

 

[Eileen Joy]

I have yet to meet with two web designers so I haven't decided on payment methods yet but I imagine I will use PayPal. I won't be using eBay.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

I have yet to meet with two web designers so I haven't decided on payment methods yet but I imagine I will use PayPal. I won't be using eBay.

You may find it helpful to choose a package which enables you to import PayPal data lots of the online ones do. My favourite Accounts Portal certainly does.

 

[GLAbusiness]

The main thing is to choose a package which works for the way you will run your business. It needs to interact with you in "business speak", not in "accounting speak"

Also I agree strongly - DO NOT USE SPREADSHEETS