I'm just setting up as a bookkeeper, after years of working in industry.
I need a software program that I can use for a few clients books, but all my research is showing ones that link to your clients software. My clients are self-employed sole traders that aren't using any software. They're already forking out for a bookkeeper, and I don't want them to have to fork out for software too.
Is there anything suitable out there for me? Thanks.
So long as you don't need stock control try VT Transaction+
You can get a two month free trial that you download from their site.
Many people both here and on Aweb swear by it (rather than at the software as is true of some others bits of kit out there!).
One of the great things about it is that you can have unlimited clients on there at no extra cost.
HTH,
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.
Im a Sage fan, but its pricing is very prohibitive to newbies and they try to flog you a pay as you go option rather than perpetual licences these days, so I would say VT too. Ive only used it a little but from the bit Ive seen its intuitive plus there are quite a few on here who use it so they can help if you get stuck.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thank you! It looks a bit old school, but if it does the job I'm happy.
LOL. I know Accountants who run the data from sage via VT to complete the year end accounts. Its either an unsexy looking, cheapo but excellent software or we can provide a list of cloudy expensive or desktop based perpetual licence stuff if you like.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Thank you! It looks a bit old school, but if it does the job I'm happy.
LOL. I know Accountants who run the data from sage via VT to complete the year end accounts. Its either an unsexy looking, cheapo but excellent software or we can provide a list of cloudy expensive or desktop based perpetual licence stuff if you like.
Hi Joanne,
thats actually really common. You just drop the trial balance from any software that you are using into VT Accounts to get a full professional set of accounts. I've personally done it from Sage, Xero, VT Transaction+, and a few others... even from books kept in Excel.
If your software can produce a trial balance then VT Accounts can create a set of accounts as professional looking as anything else in the market from it.
The advantage to using VT Transaction+ as a bookkeeping package with VT Accounts is the integration meaning that you can export directly from the bookkeeping to the accounts package (just click one button on the menu bar in VT accounts) where with other bookkeeping software packages you need to manually enter data into the trail balance screen which then auto populates the accounts.
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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.
Hi Shaun
Must admit to being surprised a little while ago to the number of Accountants who do use this with data dumps from so many other software versions. I really must get back to using it as i wont be doing another Sage upgrade with their pricing structure, despite hearing they have backed down on only offering monthly pay as you go options for newbies.....although have to say - Ive not tried it out to see if that little nugget is true. Might test the waters with getting a quote later this month, just out of interest.
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
Accountants tend to use VT Accounts but not so much VT Transaction+ even though VT Transaction+ also comes free with VT Accounts.
Most commonly I see people using Sage for bookkeeping and VT for accounts production.
I remember at the Intuit Roadshow actually being given the advice that we should buy VT for Accounts and iXBRL but use quickbooks for bookkeeping.
Unfortunately in this thread we're actually advising on bookkeeping rather than the accounts software so the answers may now be becoming a little confiusing.
Good luck with the Sage quote later this month.
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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.
I'm a quickbooks fan, you can get Pro 2016 from Amazon rather cheaply and you can have 99 companies on it, and you don't need to up grade it for a few years. I am still running 2013 version.
Just coming onto this as I am struggling, I always used VT+ but I wanted something more robust for invoicing and stock tracking, so I got Quickbooks Premier (pretty cheaply looking at prices now!) on Amazon, and I am really struggling with it! It seems so much working around to get simple things done! Especially if you have large numbers of data to input, I am considering moving back to VT... If someone could help with Quickbooks I would be much appreciated! All the help around is for QB Online!
Hi Lyndsey
Does the help option in the software take you to that particular versions help within the software itself or does it bounce you to the web, which then defaults to the online help? If I get the chance I might wind up my old PC and check it out and also see if I can help on the other VAT question as I have QB on there, albeit Ive not used it for yonks. Otherwise it might be worth starting a new thread headed up QuickBooks (not online) help needed urgently as there are at least three peeps Im aware of on here that use it quite a bit, although I dont see them round lots so you might also have to bump it a few times.
See what I can do later, you might need to remind me as Im working all day as piles to do and I get engrossed!!!!
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Joanne
Winner of Bookkeeper of the Year 2015, 2016 & 2017
Thoughts are my own/not to be regarded as official advice,which should be sought from a suitably qualified Accountant.
You should check out answers with reference to the legal position
