For non finance people (who maybe don't understand double entry) Quickbooks is easier to understand, particularly it's reports of which there are many which are very easy to customise. It's also much cheaper to buy than Sage (although I believe the payroll adds considerably to the cost - never used QB payroll). For your one off purchase of the software you are allowed up to 99 companies.
Sage can be very expensive if you want more than one company licence, it's easy to use provided you know what you are doing because correcting errors is not as straightforward as it is in QB. Sage payroll is also expensive because if you don't pay for Sage Cover you don't get the year end software and updates and even with Sage cover the software becomes unsupported after, usually, 5 years.
A better option for payroll is either 12 Pay or Moneysoft both of which are cheaper.
I personally love QB, I'm using the 2010 pro at the moment, and there are a few issues with this version of the software not properly closing off the VAT figures after online filing (it's posting them as unassigned amount for the next quarter for some reason), but to be fair, this is the first real issue in nearly 10 years of using the software. I'm upgrading to 2012.
As semsley says, the QB reporting system is by far superior than Sage. Sage closes off year ends, for example, the payroll closes after the fiscal year, and for some reason, Sage will not give accurate reports if you need to run a report that dates into a previous year (which is a real pain as clients regularly have year ends that do not correspond with fiscal years). I have wasted hours of time just trying to get accurate reports from Sage. You can also amend QB journals, which is handy
QB is more user friendly, and I have several clients who do their own invoicing, and they make less mistakes using this system. Sage is harder for less experienced people to understand, and therefore you could have more of a mess to fix.
QB with payroll is a minimum of about £500+VAT/year, and Sage with payroll is similar (depending on no. of employees it can be a lot more) because you have to have ExtraCover unless you intend to repurchase the software every year for payroll updates.
But I believe both payrolls work well, they're just rather expensive.
I am a long time Sage user and began to use QB around 18 months ago for a client who was running QB 2008. In my opinion, Sage is for those with financial knowledge (by that I mean an understanding of debits and credits and where things go in the accounts, also how a chart of accounts is structured) but QB is for those who are less knowledgeable in this area. QB is very easy for small business owners to set up and use but makes no demands of them knowing about finance. The lack of a structured chart of accounts drives me mad, as does the fact that it never mentions debits or credits (or rarely!). I actually find the fact that errors are easy to correct in QB a bad thing. You can lose visibility of the audit trail, where in Sage it is a definite trail that does not allow incorrect transactions to just be "removed". I guess it depends what you are after but I would always tend towards Sage, particularly for VAT registered clients as I find the way QB deals with VAT to be a complete and utter nightmare. My 2p worth!
QuickBooks is cheaper if you buy the desktop version outright, then you just pay for the payroll each year (or you could use a cheaper payroll program and journal the figures in). The customer service team heavily push the monthly payment plan, which is a lot more expensive and really not worth it. I am still on QB 2010 that I purchased from a local dealer for about £170 plus VAT. Buying from QB direct is usually more expensive. I therefore only had the payroll to buy this year, costing around £250.
I'm not sure if 2010 will be supported next year for the payroll, usually I ride it out until I have to upgrade, but I've got a really good deal on the 2012 version, got it for £50 so I've jumped at it.
Yes, that is multi company, and no limits on employees. I recently set it up for a local restaurant that was paying Sage over £60 per month. They had 102 employees (a massive 2 over the Sage threshold), and Sage quoted a small fortune for the next level. For companies like that that tend to have a high turnover of students in the holiday times, it was a too much to pay out for the sake of 2 people.
If I remember right, there were problems that year with the Sage end of year payroll return as well. The return was filed online, but an email came back from HMRC saying it hadn't been accepted. We spent 1 1/2 days typing in all employee names into the HMRC software to file, only to find that when we tried to file the return, HMRC wouldn't accept that either. After an age on the phone to HMRC, we discovered that the Sage file was accepted after all, which was blocking the HMRC online return. Never found out whose fault that was, HMRC or Sage.
QB has massively increased their payroll in recent years, it used to be £99 including VAT, and all of a sudden it jumped up. Still cheaper than Sage, but I personally think it is too much. I'm seriously considering switching to Moneysoft or 12Pay next year.
Edit: If you check the QB site, it just seems to advertise the Payroll plus Pro option for the monthly plan, but you can buy the desktop QB pro and pay for the payroll seperate. They are just trying to squeeze people any way they can.
-- Edited by mushroom on Saturday 17th of December 2011 02:06:47 PM
QB with payroll is a minimum of about £500+VAT/year
My client pays for QB support/service plan plus payroll which is £1008 + VAT per year. Recently gone up from £744 + VAT which is a hell of a rise in my opinion. She's coming off the plan from March when the payroll subscription runs out as the support isn't terribly good anyway and I've persuaded her to use Moneysoft payroll instead.
I use both QB and Sage and I agree with Clare and Sheila that QB is easier for non-financial people to use, but having said that I like both QB and Sage although I don't use Sage payroll. If I was recommending one I would recommend Sage if I had to use it and QB if the client was doing the majority of the work on it. It's easier to delete things in QB than Sage which isn't always a good thing.
@Mushroom - if you use QB with payroll then come April I think you will have to upgrade to 2012 (although that might just be if you are on a plan as my client is). She was on 2008 from 2006 when I took on the accounts and had a bit of a mess to sort out with regards to the VAT as there was a problem with unassigned VAT amounts, but Intuit sorted this out with the upgrade from 2008 to 2010 which went without a hitch.
I think with all software there are pros and cons, but the biggest differences between Sage and QB are ease of use with QB and the reports which are far easier to customise....oh, and of course the cost.
Edit: If you check the QB site, it just seems to advertise the Payroll plus Pro option for the monthly plan, but you can buy the desktop QB pro and pay for the payroll seperate. They are just trying to squeeze people any way they can.
-- Edited by mushroom on Saturday 17th of December 2011 02:06:47 PM
I've spoken to (now) ex QB payroll clients recently, who've said that even when they ring QB up directly they can't get the payroll on any deal cheaper than the £40+VAT monthly payment advertised on the website. Maybe it depends which rep you speak to, how much latitude they have, and how anxious they are for the business...
That call centre is useless, I suspect the staff are being trained to push this option, but you can definitely buy the desktop version (this is advertised on the site for £269 plus VAT, but I would not advise buying from QB direct as they are too expensive). The £40 plus VAT option is to buy the QB pro version, plus payroll on a monthly basis.
Your clients would be better speaking to a reseller rather then QuickBooks sales, they would get a more truthful answer. The reseller would probably give them a better deal anyway, and then they would have to go to QB direct to purchase the payroll, but once they have the software purchased, the sales team would have no excuse to try and sell them it again with their monthly plan, and they will find the payroll alone a lot cheaper. They could find a local reseller at http://www.intuit.co.uk/quickbooks/accounting-software/accountants/find-a-local-quickbooks-expert.jsp
It is really unfair to their resellers they way QuickBooks are marketing their products now, the resellers pay an annual fee of £345 plus VAT to sell their products and rely on the commissions from the sale of the desktop versions to make money. I was thinking of becoming a reseller myself at one stage as you do get free software and payroll in the price, but am put off by QB marketing strategies, I don't see the point if QB are just trying to grab all business for themselves by tying people in to ongoing monthly payments.
Just thought I would say, I, and a lot of others, have found QB support teams absolute crap, you get free support for a month, they you pay for more but this would be a waste of money. A lot of the staff have no financial knowledge whatsoever, and just read stuff of a help menu that you could access yourself. A client of mine who once enquired about preparing a bacs payroll payment was told by a member of staff that they just have to prepare the file and "it just goes through". Unbelievable, needless to say his staff were not paid on time that week. It's been a long time since I dealt with Sage support, but they used to be rubbish as well, and I have received bad service from some other accounting software I have used, so maybe it's just a case of once these guys get their money you are on your own. There is a good QB UK forum though that can be helpful, there are very knowledgeable and helpful people on there.
That call centre is useless, I suspect the staff are being trained to push this option, but you can definitely buy the desktop version (this is advertised on the site for £269 plus VAT, but I would not advise buying from QB direct as they are too expensive). The £40 plus VAT option is to buy the QB pro version, plus payroll on a monthly basis.
It is probably just me being thick, but I can't see that anywhere. All the QB site seems to offer is the £41/month and £60/month options that go with QB accounting software (along with several statements on the site that this is the only way to buy QB payroll). Do you have a page link? I want to make sure that we say exactly the right thing if QB users ask us about comparative price. I'm wondering if the page you're looking at is one that you can only see if you have some kind of QB "membership".
All seems very expensive compared to what you can buy QB for on Amazon.
Going back to Sheila's post I think that to use either Moneysoft or 12pay for payroll and buy QB Pro retail. I paid £69.99 from Amazon bit it's gone back up to £129.99 (or £199.99 for the 2012 version) but that's still seems cheaper than buying QB inclusive of their payroll direct from Intuit.
I'm probably wrong as I've never looked at QB for Payroll but surely it would be better going for a product aimed at the UK rather than American market for the payroll side of things? As I say, I'm probably wrong on that one and the UK payroll is meant just for us. Guess I'll never find out for myself as 12pay seems fine for my purposes. (even though not used it since the trial expired but will be going back to it when I get a client that needs payroll services).
Shaun.
__________________
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.
The standalone payroll is not advertised on the site, just the desktop version, but it stands to reason that if you can buy the desktop version, they would have to sell the payroll separate in some way. They obviously haven't thought this one through.
I just spoke to QuickBooks helpline. I try not to speak to these guys too much as they are really annoying and just to give you an example of the rubbish these guys talk, I'll give you the general gist of the conversation. I explained that I had just purchased the 2012 Pro, and enquired how much the payroll was on its own. I don't think he even listened to my question as he gave me the spiel of the monthly payment for the 2012 pro and payroll. I reiterated that I wanted payroll on its own to go with my already purchased 2012 pro software, and again he repeated himself saying I had to buy both. Pointing out that I most certainly was not going to pay £41 per month plus VAT for another version of the same software just to get their payroll, he then caught on I already had the software, and said "it has to the latest software", I explained (for the third time) that it was 2012 pro, and he said "In that case you could have the payroll on its own for £20 per month, but after that year runs out you will have to pay the monthly plan". He tried to tell me that the monthly plan was cheaper, so I pointed out the fact that I am still using 2010 pro desktop version, therefore I have managed to get 2 years out of it, which is on par with previous versions of the software, which is by far cheaper than the monthly plan, and asked him if the 2012 version would not be payroll supported after one year, and when the 2013 version would be out, and, well, he couldn't answer that one. Probably because they don't actually know yet if there will be a 2013 version yet.
QB does not automatically bring out new versions every single year, more like every 2 years. Since starting using this program, the pro versions have been 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010. There has been a 2011 version and now 2012, but I am still using the payroll tables on the 2010 version with no problems. 2012 pro could well run until a 2014 version is out. I haven't bothered with the 2011 as it isn't that much different than mine and I have just found out it is backwards compatible - I have a client using 2011 and I was able to open a portable version of his file on my 2010. It appears 2011 was released just for the sake of releasing something.
I spoke to him about the reseller program, but got the glib response that "QB does not encourage resellers to make money from the resale of software" REALLY! That is a big change from what they were advertising a couple of years ago. Resellers get a 25% discount on software so they can do exactly that. Apparently you now become a reseller "to help your clients progress". I nearly ended up in an argument with the guy, he was contradicting himself continually.
I have used QB since about 2002, and normally you get about 2 years from the payroll before they stop supporting it and you have to upgrade. I managed to get 4 years of the 2006 Pro because they boobed with the 2008 version by removing multicurrency, there were so many complaints about it that people refused to use it, so QB had to support the older package until they resleased the 2010 with multicurrency.
So after all that, yes you can definitely get the payroll for £20 per month (plus VAT), and you will probably get about 2 years out of the package before you have to upgrade, but £240 per year plus VAT for payroll I think is still a bit on the expensive side.
-- Edited by mushroom on Monday 19th of December 2011 12:24:23 PM
Generally Sage is the more popular package as opposed to Quick Books. Although they are both user friendly programs, Sage is more versatile and can be used with a larger variety of packages. For example figures from Sales Force can be dragged across into Sage as well as being compatible with printing programs like Tharstern, which is invaluable for spreadsheets and forecasting. Although Quick Books is the cheaper of the two packages, in this case its worth spending that little more and purchasing Sage. Click here for more information.
Sage has been more widely marketed in the past due to their rubbish examinations (I'll not even start on the "pass our exam and earn £15 per hour" ad campaign), so agreed, it is more popular for that reason, but I cannot see anything on your site that relates to the other points in your post. The link you provide is for your home page, I had a quick look through and couldn't see anything of relevance to this thread so if you do have anything more of worth to contribute, could you please provide a more accurate link? Otherwise people will just think you are posting time-wasting messages in order to advertise your website.
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