Hi Jude
Sorry Sam - but dont get Sage One. Its being criticised badly (in the reviews and on here - see some earlier posts!). Althoug I was reading this question differently - in that you use software and are just looking for something to produce the actual year end documents. The existing Accountant will not use sage to produce the final bit of paper, albeit they will use most or all of the sage output. Sage reports dont look that good. If its you only client how about just a word doc with excel embedded - thats what I used for my own.

Im sure some of the others might suggest others.

Hi,

you don't say whether the client is incorporated?... You do say stats though and statutory accounts are only for limited companies so you absolutely must produce and file accounts per the reguirements of the companies act and financial reporting standards.

I use VT Accounts (around £200 a year) which also comes with VT Transaction+ bundled (excellent bookkeeping package).

When you see accounts produced from VT they are very much a similar sort of quality to those produced by Iris.

HTH,

Shaun,

You have no option but to produce statutory accounts, being VAT registered has no relevance upon their financial reporting obligations.

If its just the VT Cashbook that you've used thats not what I'm talking about. VT accounts used with or without VT Transaction+ creates a full set of accounts including all of the necessary notes to the accounts.

If you are going to be dealing with incorporated entities you will need some proper accounts production software such as VT or Iris (and this may be the last year that you can get away without having specialist taxation software for CT600's).

You'll need to file abreviated accounts with Co. House, Full accounts with HMRC, the client will need a printed copy of the full accounts to be held at their registered office. And you will need to keep a signed printed copy for you own records.

You can't really do incororated entities on the cheap which is why we always need to charge much more for them.

Could be wrong but for properly formatted professional accounts (rather than just a P&L and B/S) I think that VT may be about the most reasonably priced quality software that you will find.

Hi Steve,

so, you are saying that for £10 per month an accountant can have 50 clients with no additional charges to either party? (bank feeds excepted).

And Sage guarantee that they will not change that back to a pay per client model for anyone who does not exceed 50 clients on that software?

And you have all the same reports as the desktop version?

And you have proper statutory accounts similar to those produced by Iris and VT? (i.e. all of the required notes to the accounts of the dace of the primary financial statements).

And it will produce both full and abreviated accounts?

And the software has inbuilt iXBRL tagging?

Do you have an example of a set of statutory accounts produced by Sage One accountant edition that you can post a link to?

I suppose that it may be a question too far to also ask whether the data that people enter belongs to them or Sage? i.e. are they able to back it up locally or drop it to CSV for analysis / saving / reformatting in Excel?

I'm not a sage shop myself (lose internet access too often to ever trust a cloud based solution unless it works offline... Which would pretty much make it a desktop solution) but if I'm thinking of the above questions then others who may be interested in a cloud solution will also be pondering the same things.

Cheers,

Shaun.

Shamus wrote:

---

Hi Steve,

so, you are saying that for £10 per month an accountant can have 50 clients with no additional charges to either party? (bank feeds excepted).

And Sage guarantee that they will not change that back to a pay per client model for anyone who does not exceed 50 clients on that software?

And you have all the same reports as the desktop version?

And you have proper statutory accounts similar to those produced by Iris and VT? (i.e. all of the required notes to the accounts of the dace of the primary financial statements).

And it will produce both full and abreviated accounts?

And the software has inbuilt iXBRL tagging?

Do you have an example of a set of statutory accounts produced by Sage One accountant edition that you can post a link to?

I suppose that it may be a question too far to also ask whether the data that people enter belongs to them or Sage? i.e. are they able to back it up locally or drop it to CSV for analysis / saving / reformatting in Excel?

I'm not a sage shop myself (lose internet access too often to ever trust a cloud based solution unless it works offline... Which would pretty much make it a desktop solution) but if I'm thinking of the above questions then others who may be interested in a cloud solution will also be pondering the same things.

Cheers,

Shaun.

---

 

Hi Shaun ill take one line at a time

First here is the links to the files on Final Accounts Online http://help.sageone.com/en_uk/accounts_production/index.html 

Not sure where the £10 came in if you are a Sage Accountant or Bookkeeper memeber you get the Accountant Edition with the 50 Cashbooks as part of your membership

Think of it as core pricing, we have our core pricing like a mobile or sky package, if you want optional add ons then you or your clients can choose what they want, like bank feeds on Cashbook for £1 on the first 50. But once the first 50 are used the price to you is still only £2 pm with bank feeds not the £5 rrp to clients. Optional add ons could be Receipt Bank or Inventory management through 3rd party add ons

No the reporting in Sage One Accounting is not as rich as Sage 50, Sage One is aimed at small to micro business levels. The reporting is a lot better then it was in the old version. Cashbook a client can just run an ins and outs report. Logging in via accountant edition you can run P+L, Balance sheet, Nominal Activity and TB

Final accounts online produces compliant sole trader, partnership and LTD FRSEE15

IXBRL tagging is in there Corp Tax Online and Personal Tax online will be out by the end of the year or very early 2016 ready for year end.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us7d__dT-gs 

Data Ownership section 14 on the T&Cs http://uk.sageone.com/terms-conditions/ 

You can export transactional history from Sage One but its not in a back up format just a data dump. All reports are exportable to PDF and Excel

Hope this helps

Those still thinking of cloud adoption read our latest chat on Twitter #acctchat

-- Edited by Stevejonesone on Thursday 20th of August 2015 08:12:39 PM

-- Edited by Stevejonesone on Thursday 20th of August 2015 08:13:56 PM

Hi Steve,

many thanks for the comprehensive answer and cheers for that link to the examples. They're not a bad looking set of accounts. Made me smile at the political contributions to the Monster Raving Looney party in the FRSEE15 version.

The £10 came from this page : sageone-uk-wordpress.s3.amazonaws.com/images/Partner_Program_Summary.pdf (bottom of the accountant / bookkeeper column)

Probably just me looking at the wrong page or managing to find the one page on a site thats not been updated (I'm gifted like that, lol).

I did find the T&C rights of use over customers data in sections 14.7 through 14.11.4 somewhat at odds with the principles of data protection legislation. The agreement emphasises that data protection is the accountants responsibility but goes on to remove all control over such security of data whilst stating only "reasonable" steps (define reasonable) will be taken to ensure reliability of Sage employee's and that such data may be transfered outside the EEA.

With my bankers hat on I would not sign that agreement, that said, wearing that hat I wouldn't be the target market for this product. I do however think that you may want to get independant council to give sections 14.7 thru 14.11 another once over especially with referernce to principle 8 (ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-8-international/).

T&C issues aside I wish you the very best with this product,

kindest regards,

Shaun.

Quick update.

Xero is out of the equation as does not have the ability to prepare accounts, a pity as the rest of it looks quite good.

Sage - have emailed the person who called me. Will wait and see what prices they come back with I have some interest in the cloud proposal, however, Shaun comments some of the terms concern me.

VT - Have to say looks like a fav at the moment, although it's not Mac compatible. Will have to dig out old non Mac laptop. I like the thought of one off purchase. They also do a 60 day free trial...

I understand the data concerns, is typical scenario over Sage, Xero, Quickbooks. Except the others can store data outside the EU, Sage don't. Only mark around that is Bank Feeds, that is a company called Yodlee that host these and are based in the USA so there are separate T&Cs with them

Just put a few things back into perspective first. Users of Online banking, Facebook, doc storage, smart phones are already trusting all their data in the cloud without even thinking about it. Also most of which ive just mentioned are not UK based servers either. WE have so much in the cloud these days. 

Here are a few Q&S on data protection

Who is the data owner?  The data that a customer enters into Sage One belongs to them and they are the owner of this (we call it Customer Data in our terms and conditions see section 14).  In order to provide the Sage One service to a customer, however, we need to capture registration data etc.  We own this data. 

   Is the data defiantly UK based?  We use Amazon Web Services to host Sage One and the EC2 Cloud which is based in Ireland.  Amazon do not guarantee that data will not be transferred outside of the EEA as a result of using this service, although that would be in exceptional circumstances and the relevant contractual provisions are in place to ensure that if this were to happen customers are still compliant with the Data Protection Act 1998. 

-- Edited by Stevejonesone on Friday 21st of August 2015 08:44:30 AM

Just another quick question @shaun

am I correct in thinking that VT does not cover tax subs. I read on accounting web that people use VT for accounts and taxfiler for tax? Approx £379 pa for both

JRA wrote:

---

Just another quick question @shaun

am I correct in thinking that VT does not cover tax subs. I read on accounting web that people use VT for accounts and taxfiler for tax? Approx £379 pa for both

---

Hi Chris,

There is some minor tax functionality within VT Accounts to prepare the information to go into the CT600 calculation but overall, no, its not a tax package.

Also, one of the things that you said last night needs clarifying. VT accounts isn't a one off cost, its an annual licence as you constantly need your accounts formats updated in line with updated financial reporting standards.

HTH,

Shaun.