The minimum you can purchase is VT Transactions, and you get Cash Book with it. The Cash book part is a very basic front end application which as a stand alone is free. it is OK for your clients to enter their payments and receipts, which you can download into VT Transactions and make adjustments.
If, like me, you do the entries for your clients, they can be entered directly into Transactions, which has more bells and whistles and has a better interface (Cash Book is still the underlying application). Transactions can produce a trial balance, P&L and balance sheet, and also VAT return, day book and ledger reports.
The Final Accounts version you get VT Transactions (and Cash book) but it also puts an Add On into MS Excel as a seperate application. You can then import the data held in Transactions into the spreadsheet, make adjustments and produce professional set of year end accounts in various formats, including abbreviated accounts for Co House and full sets for HMRC Corporation Tax filing . You can also import a trial balance produced in Sage ( requires a bit of manipulation) or enter a trial balance manually.
I personally rate it and use the Final Accounts version. It takes a bit of a mind set adjustment, when you first start using it, if you are used to Sage or QB, and to be honest I didn't like it to start with. Now I have used it for a while and found out it's strengths and weaknesses, it is my software of choice.
It has weaknesses but I think they are outwieghed by its strengths. It is multi company, easy to use (once you get used to it), converts most data into an Excel spread sheet, easy to correct errors, value for money.
You can trial Transactions for 60 days, you might want to try it first.
Thanks for this reply, I have tried the trial version and like everything else the time is up and its decission time.
I just got alittle confused with the 2 versions. So there would be no sense in purchasing VT+ when in fact you get more value for money in purchasing VT Final ACC.
Is there a subsciption every year or anything like that?