Trialling Quickbooks Pro 2012, Solar Accounts, and VT Transaction plus. Ltd company, using normal Accrual accounting.
Had a play around with the online trial of Sage 50, but after over an hour and still not being able to set up a new expense account or a sub account thereof, I decided it was too complicated.
I find it surprising how they each use different terminology for the same things, eg. In quickbooks a Ledger is called a Register and Purchase Invoices are called Bills. In Solar Accounts the the Suspense Account is called the balancing account, not sure what it's called in quickbooks (can't even find it).
For opening balances/oustanding items from previous tax year Solar Accounts uses Retained Earnings, whereas VTT+ uses Opening Balance Contra, but I can't find either of these in Quickbooks! I have no idea what to use so I just went for "share capital account", hope that's the right one to use for a Ltd company?
Solar Accounts seems easier to use than the others but it has nowhere near as many features as quickbooks which seems to do the most of the bunch. Solar doesn't even allow cheque numbers to be entered, there's just no place for them unless put them in a small memo field. This oversight virtually eliminates Solar from the running, cheque numbers are important in a business.
Something I find annoying about Quickbooks is it puts the word SPLIT in various reports and ledgers.. Why? It also shows no credit card activity, when I know for a fact there has been credit card activity. Don't know if this is a bug or what?
Another annoying thing about Quickbooks is reports say "BillPmnt-Cheque Debit" or "BillPmnt-Cheque Transfer" Why?! How the heck can these payments be Cheques when they're not! They're BACS payments or d/debits. Why does it not understand this? Why does it insist on writing them as cheque payments?
A Quickbooks problem.. Quickbooks Help says The Cost of Goods Sold account is added to your chart of accounts the first time you add a stock item. QuickBooks uses this account to track how much you paid for goods and materials that were held in stock and then sold. While an item is held in stock, its value is tracked in the Stock Asset account, which is also added to your chart of accounts when you create your first stock item. As soon as that item is sold using an invoice or sales receipt, its value is taken out of the Stock Asset account and put into the Cost of Goods Sold account.
This is not the case! I have items that were in the stock account which have been sold and appear in the Sales account, but their cost value is definitely not in the COGS account.. In fact the COGS account is empty!
It seems even though Quickbooks is feature rich, some of the features don't actually work! This leaves VTT+ which seems to be a compromise with less features and reports etc, so not as useful for day to day running of the business. It must be capable of getting the job done, but I'm still trying to get to grips with it and make opening balances with problems due to various items left open from the previous year, etc.
My personal recommendation from a bookkeepers point of view is VTT+
The Opening Balance Contra Account, should if everything balances from the previous year end up at nil (Similar to Sage and the Suspense Account it uses automatically to post O/B). However from experience , unless you start with a T/B it very rarely does, and adjustments need to be made (That is the same with all software). With VT you do have an option to not carry forward opening balances, which is useful when you don't have all the information from the previous year.
For some reason VTT+ does not have a Suspense Accounts set up but it is no problem creating a new account.
The basic reports in VTT+ are adequate but if I want to do more, I will export either all the data, or report data in to Excel.
I also bought QB this year, and although I have used QB in the past, so far I have not used the software I just bought. I did try to import in to it from Excel but it does not seem to do it. It may never get used
I too recommend VT Transaction+. So simple to use. If you make a mistake it can be easily corrected. Keeps the records looking tidy. I've just took on a job that uses SAGE and its wrecking my head! So difficult to correct a mistake.
I use the full VT accounts package rather than VTT+ alone and absolutely love it.
I keep thinking that someone is going to need me to use Sage but so far so good.
Shaun.
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Shaun
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If I could I'd use VT all the time but it doesn't suit some clients. Still have to use Sage, SageOne and Quickbooks Online for other clients and I don't think any of them are as good as VT for data entry.
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Tony
Responses are intended as outline only. Formal advice should be sort from your Institutes Technical Department or a suitably qualified Accountant.
