There are a lot of different ones out there and people will have different opinions on which are best, hopefully a few others will be along in a minute to give you some pros and cons on ones they have used. Most of the companies will let you have a free trial so have a look and see which ones you like.
Another option along with the ones you have mentioned is KashFlow. A lot of our clients use this software and say it is very easy to use. The company listen to its users and are continually improving their software as to what the users want. They let you have a 60 day free trial to see what you think. If you do decide you like it, we can offer it at a discounted price of £90 + VAT rather than the monthly fee.
I have the accountants package of Clever accounts. I offer the bookkeepers in my network each account for £5pm. They like it and find it easy to use.
You need to really shop around and decide what you need. Over the years I have tried so many different packages, and found the more I paid the more disappointed I have been.
When looking at partnering a software house (either online or on-premise systems), you need to ask the following questions:
(1) Is the system easy to use and will it speed up my processing time?
(2) Will the system fit in with my marketing strategy (eg: at Arithmo, we brand the system in accountancy and bookkeeping practices livery) and my practices client demographics?
(3) Is the software house stable? How long company has been going on for and is it financially stable?
(4) For online systems: Are my clients data held in secure premises (data centres) and encrypted?
(5) For on-premise software- how much is it to update to latest version and how much is annual support?
(6) For on-premise software- is my back up procedures adequate enough?
In my opinion, accountants and bookkeepers need to know about wide variety of systems and advise their clients on best system to keep their books on.
I too would like some feedback about online accounting software. We currently use Sage 50 here which is coming to the end of it's support life at the end of the year (not that we pay for support on it anyway).
I've looked, briefly at several packages - Xero, Quickbooks online, some more obscure smaller and free ones (Rhino is one I think?) and Zoho most recently - but every time I ask my finance manager to check it out, since she will have to use it, I get all manner of questions and obsacles thrown at me - "No Trial Balance, Balance sheet", Direct quote here re. quickbooks: "I hate these things cos you do not know what you are really getting........................................can you do journals...................can you invoice without some Add ON?????? Can I do Nominal Reports.............................does the bank HAVE to be automated?????????????????? Not that keen and no quicker but", these ones for Xero "In it's infancy then...........................mmmmmmmmmmmmm...........worrying and the Year End process seems a little hap hazard" and "no pre-payments & no Accruals" and "In theory this looks fine but there appear to be a million add ons to get the basics??????".
Are any of these genuine concerns, do they all do these things and we just haven't delved in deep enough? I'm no accountant or finance person or anything of the like, I'm the boss and I want a better picture of my cashflow on a day to day basis with live information and somewhere I can see our overdue invoices and kick my sales people to chase their contacts for payment without having to hear mumbled comments from the corner when a client's name comes up in conversations because "they haven't paid their last invoice".
Sorry to rant but I've been looking at different packages for months and just want to find one that works. I really like Xero but it can't cope with 4 decimal places on the pricing of stock items or services which we would need, that or a unit pricing system where products could be priced per 1000 for example.
From your needs it sounds as though Sage (#1) or Quickbooks are the ones that you should be looking at.
If you are looking to 4 decimal places you must be talking about high volumes of throughput so I'm assuming a multi user desktop system.
Is your company attempting to process massive systems on a shoestring? If so thats never going to work.
What happens when you move from Sage to an alternative? What about all of your historic data that you will not be able to transfer over?
The person making the decision about the software to be adopted needs to be the one that will be using it to extract information from the data. What software suits their needs, what do they prefer to use?
I think that you will end up with either Sage 50 or Quickbooks Premier... Actually, scrap that... Looking at the picking holes list you will end up with Sage 50 as that seems to be what the finance manager wants everything else to be and they will not be satisfied until they either have the software that they want or a carbon copy of it.
That of course will not be a bad thing as any other option and you lose the detail of your stock data that you've been building up in Sage
kind regards,
Shaun.
#1 yes site, get over it, I did just advised someone to consider Sage!!!
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I agree with Shaun.. is the cost of Sage 50 so high, that its worth the aggravation of having to mess with the changeover, and have staff retrain on a new system? Sounds like the demotivation is already setting in, just at the thought of the new software, and unhappy staff just create further issues. They will moan and find every opportunity to rub the systems inadequacies in the decision maker's face..
What is going on.....? Did Shaun just recommend Sage? Haha agree totally with Shaun and Michelle. Sage 50 all the way. If online is essential then just use a hosted solution...
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I know Jeremy.... I'm thinking that I may need to seek counselling! lol.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
QB accountants edition is really good what about that one, the reports are brill, its not cloud it is desk top, but it should work well with stock etc. Not sure about to 4 figs after the decimal point though.
Thank you for the replies and let me apologise for replying to such an old post, I just saw June and didn't notice the year.
My reasons for it being online are that most desktop packages are tied to Windows and I'm gradually trying to move us away from being dependent on Microsoft products. I also like the availability of information in the online systems. I like the idea of bank feeds and dashboards that give me an overview of our financial situation. We're already using Google Apps for e-mail and document collaboration and currently using Dynamics CRM hosted online, another Microsoft product that I'm considering moving away from. I like the always on, always available anywhere nature of it and the resilience it gives us should our internet go down or premises be inaccessible (unlikely but...) that we can continue to access our systems from anywhere or on mobile devices. I like the idea that we're not tied to one PC for that function and that the accounts could be done remotely at some point in the future if need be.
In terms of processing we're not doing a lot. The 4 decimal places is because we buy 10s of thousands of Envelopes and Sheets of paper and the like and they're priced as each. For example we buy envelopes for £13.30 per 1000 or £0.0133 each. It's the same for our sales prices mainly because the CRM system we use can't cope with per thousand pricing. But we're not processing 100's of invoices with 100's of lines on the Sales or Purchase side of things.
Thanks for your input. I may have to re-evaluate what I want to achieve for this.
Was at a SAGE seminar a few weeks ago where they demonstrated the new features of SAGE 2014 (v20) and they said that they have a big annoucement coming up over the next couple of months with their online solution.
The SAGE people giving the presentation basically admitted SAGEone was basic and that xero was the leading online solution for small and medium sized businesses so expect their announcement will be something comparable or better to xero.
There are a lot of different ones out there and people will have different opinions on which are best, hopefully a few others will be along in a minute to give you some pros and cons on ones they have used. Most of the companies will let you have a free trial so have a look and see which ones you like.
Another option along with the ones you have mentioned is KashFlow. A lot of our clients use this software and say it is very easy to use. The company listen to its users and are continually improving their software as to what the users want. They let you have a 60 day free trial to see what you think. If you do decide you like it, we can offer it at a discounted price of £90 + VAT rather than the monthly fee.
Kind regards
Zöe
Hi Zoe, I like the sound of Kashflow, if i need it I will come to you!. Good price you offer - but believe it's now £100 plus vat, but still way loads less than straight from Kashflow.
