We are based in Malta but about 30% of our customers and suppliers are in other EU countries and about 60% of our customers and suppliers are located in third countries. We work in EUR, GBP, and USD, as well as BTC with our largest customer. We're currently in Sage 50 Accounts for bookkeeping, a local Maltese application for payroll, and Excel for integration & reporting.
In my *dream* world, our accounting application manages bookkeeping, accounting, HR, payroll, and reporting. It produces live financial reporting dashboards for multiple users, including guests. It connects directly to our Malta bank for activity feeds as well as invoice and salary payments. It runs payroll through Maltese law, income tax, and social security. It has an exchange rate feed for real-time foreign currency calculations, including loss/gain.
It also works with multiple currencies within a transaction; if we invoice in EUR but the customer pays in USD, it can apply the payment to the invoice and calculate the loss/gain, so I don't have to wait until payment is complete to find out which currency to enter the invoice in.
Ultimately we want to automate as much as humanly (ha) possible, so the finance team can focus on regulatory, analysis, and strategy, instead of always catching up with bookkeeping.
On another note....haven't you already got another profile Kate? Sure I've spoken to you on here before.
Seriously you can get a lot of this with higher versions of sage and their payroll bolto on, plus a certain Banks top end online banking (paid for, purpose built bells and whistles) but I've no idea these days if they have a presence in Malta. Need to check that out.
Sure there will be others.
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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
Yes, I had another login, but couldn't make it work for some reason, even with a password reset.
Thank you for your advice. We've been using Sage for the last year, and I'm really disappointed in it. I'm going to take a tour of the cloud version, but Malta isn't even a country they support - to get the tour & ask questions, I have to contact Sage in Italy or France - and once we're in, it doesn't support Malta payroll or VAT.
Frankly, if I had the time and support, I would just build our own system in Excel. I like the reporting in Zoho, but they don't support multi-currency any better than Sage.
But if anyone has a cloud solution that is truly international, I'm still not giving up the dream!
Hi Kate
What version of sage are you running now? Is it sage professional?
I certainly wouldn't recommend the sage cloudy stuff, it's a lot worse than the desktop version, especially if you have quite a lot of data entry and it's not supported.
Might be that you need sage 200. Not one I've used, but maybe worth a call to sage to see what of your dream world then can provide without it costing you thehe Earth.
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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
What I really want is to automate the data entry altogether. Entry of daily activity seems really redundant.
I'll look at Sage 200 when I take the Sage cloud services tour and see how it compares - thank you for the suggestion - I'll see if it has the analysis & reporting tools we want, as well.
What I really want is to automate the data entry altogether. Entry of daily activity seems really redundant.
I'll look at Sage 200 when I take the Sage cloud services tour and see how it compares - thank you for the suggestion - I'll see if it has the analysis & reporting tools we want, as well.
You're always great to bounce ideas off of!
Kate
You should look at Xero. It will certainly help with regards to automating data entry.
There may be a data feed for your bank in Malta (Check with them), Xero handles foreign currency (and multiple) automatically using daily xe.com rates.
It's cloud based so access from abroad will also be ok.
The only issue I can see is payroll, this may need to be done outside Xero, as they may not have payroll for Malta.
With regards to VAT and Foreign tax, its all there.
Just don't dismiss "cloudy", because some here don't get it.
The issue is that the contributors here do get it... We've peaked behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain and see it for exactly what it is.
Real financial professionals tend to be very risk averse and look at all of the issues and benefits associated with any form of change before deciding whether such is really a step forwards or whether the reality is closer to some marketing teams idea for increasing the bottom line for their employer / client.
As for accessing Xero from abroad. I stand to be corrected but does not your IP adress define whether you have access and the price that you will pay for that access? They need to do that so that they can ensure that people in the UK don't sign up in (say) Australia and pay less for a product.
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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.
