I am starting a new business in a few weeks time and am having difficulty deciding which software package to use for my business.
The business is service related. I will not be registered for VAT initially as I do not anticipate getting to the threshold for 2 years or so.
I expect about 4 or 5 Sales Invoices per week and purchases will only be for postage,fuel,paper,other stationary items, and a monthly amount for software.
There is no stock to account for and again initially I will be trading as a Sole Trader with no employees.
As you can see in the early stages accounting should be fairly easy so I am looking for a package that will allow me to set up easily and quickly. I have looked at Sage but it does seem overkill for my needs.
VT Transaction + is worth a try Steve. You get a 60 day free trial, so plenty of time to try it thoroughly before you have to buy, and then it's a one off payment of £150. You can pay for annual support, but I don't see any reason why you'd need it. It should do everything you need (and more). There are lots of experts here to help, and if you get things wrong it's easy to correct your entries.
on a different note, you do not have to breach the vat threshold to actually register. If your clients/customers are businesses and vat registered you may be better of registering for vat, in fact under the Flat Rate Scheme you may effectively be able to get 'free money' from hmrc. Also if you expect to be reasonably profitable you may be better setting up as a limited company. Speak to your accountant or one of us on here if you need more advice on this.
Yes, It's quite difficult to decide a complete, cheap and reliable, easy to use accounting software when you start a business. There are lots of accounting software in the market available that fits to your need such as QuickBooks, Sage, FreshBook, Intacct, Netsuite. A quick comparison is here -http://accounting-software-review.toptenreviews.com/small-business/ QuickBooks seems to be the good choice for your requirements. Here you can opt for the Online(Cloud based) or Desktop vesion.
The problem with those comparison sites Kundan is that they only ever take a small selecton of the availble software for a given market. (and often for some unknown reason the leave out the bes options!).
The link that you gave was aimed more towards the US rather than UK market so I cannot comment on anything after Sage.
Accountigweb do some good software comparisons for the UK market in the annual industry awards.
For looking after service based industries I'm with John in that I personally would advise VT (provided that the user is an accountant or bookkeeper).
That one is great evidence that the best does not necessarily have to be the most expensive.
Note however that I would not choose VT if stock control was required from the software. That would be more Sage and Quickbooks territory.
All horses for courses when it comes to software.
Personally I would not ever contemplate using purely cloud based sollutions (although happy enough to have copies of data stored in the cloud). Twice in the last week I have lost my internet connection for above an hour each time.
kind regards,
Shaun.
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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.
For looking after service based industries I'm with John in that I personally would advise VT (provided that the user is an accountant or bookkeeper).
That one is great evidence that the best does not necessarily have to be the most expensive.
Note however that I would not choose VT if stock control was required from the software. That would be more Sage and Quickbooks territory.
All horses for courses when it comes to software.
Personally I would not ever contemplate using purely cloud based sollutions (although happy enough to have copies of data stored in the cloud). Twice in the last week I have lost my internet connection for above an hour each time.
kind regards,
Shaun.
Has anyone here used Adminsoft Accounts? It's free, and has everything including RTI payroll, although you can pay to remove the not very annoying advertising. I've tried it a bit and it seemed OK, and thought I'd try it properly one day. http://www.adminsoftware.biz/
Any software that I don't have control over concerns me. I don't want it to change until a time that suits me, and wouldn't appreciate it if something changed right in the middle of a job where I'm under pressure. I want to choose when I install an update/upgrade, or even if I do it at all. Being somewhere out in cyberspace makes that even worse, as I could try to log in one day and find they've withdrawn the service, or changed it so much that it doesn't work for me any more, or the internet is down or just having a bad day.
I wish there was decent software available that I could install on my own hosting, so I have control of it. I could share it with clients, and run it on a web server on my own computer if there are problems with the internet.
I got cut off twice yesterday, but fortunately only by a visiting dog unplugging the router!
Thank you for all your replies. They are most informative.
I do like the look of VT Transaction as it looks the easiest to use and of course can try their free trial for 60 days.
I do not like the idea of storing my accounts in the Cloud as I suspect like most people being self employed you get very busy. The last thing I want to do is hang about waiting for the internet to come back on line. Or even worse, have to wait for BT to find out what the fault is. I just could not afford to be doing that. So the solution for me definately has to be desktop based and VT seems to be the best software package for me as I am service based.
The only thing is... Shamus says "For looking after service based industries I'm with John in that I personally would advise VT (provided that the user is an accountant or bookkeeper)"
I am not an accountant or bookkeeper. I do have experience of running paper based accounts and using software so are you saying VT would not be suitable for me ?
what I meant was that you need to understand double entry bookkeeping.
VT is very easy to use and will not prevent the alteration or deletion of transactions. Thats both a strength in that if you know what you are doing (which I'm sure you do) it really feels like a tool that is helping you rather than getting in your way and slowing you down.
Other software out there actively tries to prevent users from making mistakes and can effectively get in the way rather than helping you to be more productive.
Take the sixty day trial and at the end decide for yourself whether the software is the one that is right for you.
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.
Thanks Shaun, I realise what you meant now. Yes, I have used double entry bookkeeping in previous occupations a few years ago, so should fine this easy enough to pick up as I go along.
Just remember that having spent 60 days trying it out by posting all of last years accounts, and this year to date, you have a lot of work to redo if you don't buy it! By that time you'll have realised that posting things is much faster than in other systems, so it will take ages to re-enter it in something else!
