Now tax return season over going to get my knowledge up to date.
What cloud accounting package would you recommend using and why to offer to clients?
Personally I am thinking of xero and kashflow as the main runners with my preference probably leaning towards xero with its add ons. Have one client who uses xero, used to use SAGE, and he raves about it.
Though happy to hear others views.
As everyone who contributes on here knows I am a SAGE fan so use that for desktop but wanting to learn at least one cloud package inside out.
The three most mentioned seem to be Xero, Kashflow and Sage One in that order.
Its got the the point when even an old stick in the mud like me is thinking of taking a serious look at Xero as like yourself I've had client mention it plus to be honest I cannot actually remember anything bad being said about it on here.
First things first though. I've still got to get on top of Quickbooks plus I've got my annual Sage revision to wade through (looking forwards to that like a teaspoon full of cod liver oil. Fingers crossed it will be the only time that I play with it all year) and then there's the annual read of the Melville taxation book still to finish off so whether I actually get around to looking at Xero has a major question mark over it at the moment but if I do get chance that is the one.
Actually, on the tax front, remember the chat that we were having the other day about AIA and I wrote in a reply £25k rather than the £250k that its moved up to (thanks for pointing my error out). Apparently the HMRC IT system cannot actually handle the £250k AIA until the changes due for implementation in April.
Also, apparently the Santander card processing systems couldn't take the strain today so just got a message from HMRC saying that if thats the reason that a payment cannot be made this evening clients will not get a fine for that so long as their return is filed and the money is transfered as soon as things are working again.
Personally when a banking system is messed up the last thing that I want to be is the first person to make a payment.
Oops, I'm waffling again, talk later,
kind regards,
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.
I offer clients Sage for desktop and online. When I considered online I considered the following after reading a good guide on the subject:
- How likely is the vendor to be around in 5-10 years time?
- Is the solution a one size fits all approach or is it specifically designed for your geographic region? Quite important for stuff like tax etc
- How much does it cost?
- VERY IMPORTANT - Where is the data stored?
- How easily can I get my data out?
- How good is the support for me and my clients?
I looked at Clearbooks, Kashflow, Freeagent, QB Online, Sage and of course Xero.
QB & (sadly) I wrote off early on because of terrible customer service, the obvious US/Oz way of working but most importantly because the data doesnt seem to be in the EU which is a big concern for me re data protection. I also had big concerns about Xero being around for long due to the press about their huge debts and what seems to be a plan to get bought out and cash in.
Clearbooks I liked the look of but I just couldnt get my head around the functionality and support wasnt as good as some of the others.
Freeagent was good but it simply wasnt as good as Kashflow and it cost more.
Kashflow nearly got my vote as it ticked most boxes but then I realised that for £17.99 a month my clients would prob prefer Sage 50 which has more to offer. The support was hit and miss and I had some doubts over whether or not they'll be around in the years to come albeit I suspect they'll last longer than Xero.
I decided to initially go with Sage One (with Kashflow in mind if I changed mind) because it ticked every box. Its very limited feature wise but as I've come to find that is exactly what my clients love about it and if they want anything else above that they just go with Instant or 50. The payroll was a nice touch and it was the cheapest of the lot and free for me.
Hopefully this is of some help.
"QB & (sadly) I wrote off early on because of terrible customer service, the obvious US/Oz way of working but most importantly because the data doesnt seem to be in the EU which is a big concern for me re data protection. I also had big concerns about Xero being around for long due to the press about their huge debts and what seems to be a plan to get bought out and cash in."
- I presume "QB " should have read "QB & Xero".
- I'm sorry you had such a bad customer service experience Yvonne, that's not usual and I'd like to understand where we didn't match up?
- In respect of the "obvious US/Oz way of working" - Xero actually started life in New Zealand, not Australia - although we now have growing businesses in the UK, Australia and the US - and as far as I recall we were the first online accounting package in the UK to receive accreditation from the ICAEW (and subsequently also from the ICB) - as far as I know Sage One has not been checked against the ICAEW standard in this way.
- Xero's global hosting centre is in the US and is certifed under the Europe / US Safe Harbor Treaty (2000) which was designed to give comfort to businesses in either the US or Europe that their respective rights under their Data Protection Acts are preserved. As far as I know Sage One is hosted on Amazon's platform and assume that this is subject to the same safeguards.
- We're flattered by the fact that we now have over 110,000 customers woldwide on our platform and we've got $85 million cash in the bank which I think makes the best capitalised online accounting software in the world. Accordingly, we're not likely to go away any time soon nor do we require to be purchased by a legacy software business like Sage in order to fund our future growth ambitions, so no takeovers any time soon either.
We tend to get more positive feedback from customers than negative, and I'm sad to hear that your individual experience didn't match up to that.
Regards,
Gary Turner Managing Director, Xero
-- Edited by garyturner on Friday 1st of February 2013 02:21:12 PM
Especially like the line about QB which at the moment has me torn.
I've got the accountant edition except it's really not as there is no iXBRL filing and no intention to include iXBRL filing. The advice at the intuit Roadshow was that if you also purchased VT you could use that to do your filing... But of course, VT is a competitor product leaving one thinking why am I also running QB.
The product seems good but to me like yourself it does seem as though the UK has been bolted on and we are working around the product. With time of course I don't think that one would notice such things and I can see it giving Sage a real run for their money in years to come and maybe even challenging the Sage dominant position which would be a good thing for the market place if not Sage shareholders.
On the Xero front there are quite a few users out there so I wouldn't expect it to disappear if it was taken over but, as always, if it was whoever purchased it would be looking to make their money back (think Sage / TAS).
Microsoft, Oracle and IBM excepted I don't think that you can ever depend on any software company being around in the future, no matter how large they are. Also, as was the case with Microsofts accountancy offering, don't expect companies to continue with products even if the company itself remains sound. The key is that you must be able to download and save you data in CSV format from the software. If you have that then you can get it into another software package.
If software does not have that facility then I would not contemplate it but if it does then that's as safe as you are ever likely to get.
Mmm, the whole area of where data is stored is a con.
Ok, your data is stored within the EU... Where is the backup site? Where are the physical backups kept? On that note, did you know that with several UK banks the storage facilities for cheques is in India?
To me I agree that Sage one does seem a good option especially if you are already using Sage. My problem is that I just do not trust them to not turn something useful into something ridiculously expensive once they have enough people hooked in (think of their existing client tax for the desktop products). After all, they have shareholders expecting a good return on their investment and the desktop market is now being squeezed by serious competition.
All in all, my message is that we should all ensure that we are in control of our data and that we are able to port that data from one package to another as you cannot trust any manufacturers products to be around five years from now no matter how large the manufacturer.
kind regards,
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.
can we now look forwards to your contribution in many of the cloud debates that we have on the site?
I was a little surprised at the huge debts comment as I had not heard that myself but had nothing at hand to debate against the statement. Glad that you have corrected the site on that one.
look forwards to talking soon,
kind regards,
Shaun.
p.s. if you want to donate any of that $85 million to a good cause I've got my eye on the really nice BMW M3... You would of course be guaranteed to have all anti Xero posts deleted in return, lol.
__________________
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.
................ Also, apparently the Santander card processing systems couldn't take the strain today so just got a message from HMRC saying that if thats the reason that a payment cannot be made this evening clients will not get a fine for that so long as their return is filed and the money is transfered as soon as things are working again.
Personally when a banking system is messed up the last thing that I want to be is the first person to make a payment.
Oops, I'm waffling again, talk later,
kind regards,
Shaun.
Oops
Got the same message this morning, saw Santander, your account, not paid etc, thought it was phishing, so deleted it
On topic (for a change) what about Arithmo? haven't heard much on that from recently
get so many of the damn things... Or it could be that the banks have heard that I've come into lots of money in Nigeria and want to be the bank that I put it through. lol.
Got one from Hong Kong the other day professing to be solicitors who had tracked me down and wanted my bank details in order to deposit an inheritance.
Is anyone stupid enough to actually give such deails to these muppets?
On the Arithmo front Dalbir still cropsup occassionally. He's now got the I dream of Jeanie avatar (Since Larry Hagman died).
Anyway, hope that you are well matey,
talk in a bit,
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.
FWIW, for those that claim to come from banks, my email system is set up so that they are automatically forwarded to the email address the relevant bank has set up for the purpose. (I haven't done this for all banks - for any given bank, I set it up when I start getting a noticeable amount from that bank).
It does require a bit of fine tuning in some case - for those banks that send out an automated reply to the forwarded phish; you have to filter those replies out so that they aren't sent straight back to the bank as another phish. (Aside: I noticed for one of the banks, I forget which one, the automated reply includes a section on how to recognise a phishing email. Here's a clue, bank in question, if the phish has been forwarded to your phish-reporting address, then the person who sent it is clearly already able to recognise such things! D'oh!)
Fine tuning is also needed for those banks who are likely to send legitimate messages - ie the banks I use. This is a bit easier, because I have a separate domain name for which any online organisation likely to send me email gets a unique address. The filtering simply doesn't have to look at mail coming through that domain. Simples! :)
"Is anyone stupid enough to actually give such deails to these muppets?"
Sadly, yes. The advance fee type ones pray on a combination of greed and stupidity (grupidity?), and there are plenty of people who exhibit that trait. The ones claiming to come from banks are simply designed to trick gullible people into thinking they're genuine - and they are ably assisted in that by banks claiming they'll never send you emails (or if they do, that they'll never ask you to log in from the emails) and then doing exactly the opposite.
Sometimes banks and similar need to be slapped with a big wet kipper on the subject of security.
A VERY BIG wet kipper.
Filled with concrete.
With big metal spikes sticking out of it.
__________________
Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
My name is Bjorn and I work for a company called Fortnox software.
There are indeed many cloud accounting packages out there, and I appreciate for instance orarkle's concerns about the longevity of providers. Fortnox was established in Sweden in 2001 and recently established independent operations in the UK.
You will think that as I work for Fortnox I am bound to say that we are the best. I would not take that route, but I do honestly think we have something to offer that other providers have not - a variety of fully integrated products. Besides accounting software, we also offer invoicing, ordering, time reporting, CRM and document management software, which you can use to work together with your clients. All our software can be used independently from each other, but can also be combined to be used more effectively.
For instance your clients could use the invoicing application to send and create invoices for their sales. In the background of the software, this will trigger journals / entries to which you will have automatic access through the accounting application. So you can actually work with the same data at the same time.
This is managed through our Client Manager application, which allows you to log into all your client accounts via one central login. A great tool to simplify work with multiple clients.
We also run an Accountant Partner programme for accountants and bookkeepers that you can join. Please visit our website www.fortnox.co.uk if you are interested in finding out more. We also run online demonstrations of the Client Manager application on request. For more information, on demonstrations and the Accountant Partner scheme, please visit http://www.fortnox.co.uk/become-accountant-partner/
Just a gentle warning Bjorn, I picked up your two posts this morning and I have to warn that unapproved advertising is frowned upon on the site where the advertiser is not also an active contributor.
For example, if you were giving lots of unbiased bookkeeping / accounts advice and took part in matters such as tax debates then advertising of your product would be incidental to that rather than the whole reason for the post.
See posts from Dalbir who heads up Arithmo (a competitor cloud package to your own) or posts by Tom from 12pay who is always happy to offer payroll advice.
I think that Tom is a particularly good example in that in showing that he knows the subject matter inside out and upside down that has to be the best sales approach for his software.
For pure advertising without contribution you would need to speak with Steve Hillman who owns this site who would be able to give you details on the advertising rates, the payment of which helps to keep this site a free resource.
To contact Steve the initial contact address is info@bookcert.co.uk
I think best for now that I leave your posts pending you becoming an active contributor but place this message below each of them. Future posts of a non contributory nature will result either in post or contact details removal,
sorry to come across so strict but I hope that you appreciate the site cannot be allowed to descend from being a discussion and assistance forum to merely another advertising portal,
kind regards,
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.
