Start Up Business - Accounts Package recommendation

[mloc]

We are a recent start up and require and accounts package.
Requirements
Debtors - we have an insurance software for processing invoices so expect to journal in a debtors figure each month.
Creditors - approx 20-30 per month.

Bank Rec - ideally integrated.
Payroll - ideally integrated so we can suck it into the nominal ledger.

Ability to produce a month end complete with P&L and balance sheet.

VAT- As an insurance broker, we cannot claim/pay vat however we will still record it on creditor invoices

Ability to post correcting journals if need be.

Any guiders would be greatly appreciated

 

[AMalone]

I would highly recommend you looking at Xero. This is software built for non accountants and is fantastic. It's easy to use cloud based accounting software which can integrate automatically with your online bank account to post the bank transactions into Xero for you directly from your bank saving a lot of time and hassle on your end. It can produce P&L,balance sheet, aged creditors/debtors reports and vat returns. You can also email your invoices and using paypal for example your customer can click on the emailed invoice and pay you directly online.
Additionally as it is cloud based there is no software to install, no backups and updates are done automatically. It doesn't have payroll built in but for that you could look at another cloud based payroll software mypaye.
Xero will cost £20+vat per month for their medium package which is their most popular but we have a lot of clients using it and it is great value for money. It can also integrate with over 300 other online add ons such as CRM so as your business grows then you can look to use these too to help manage things better.

 

[Branz]

Cloud accounting, automatic integration with online bank accounts, no need for backups all create a risk profile which you had better be able to live with and explain to folk what went wrong when your bank account gets cleaned out and some natural disaster such as a hurricane or tsunami flood the server farm that stores the only copy of your accounts.
Good luck with the business.

 

[fearghalk]

Hi mloc

There are a huge number of options out there. Does your insurance package have an internal accounts module as most modern solutions do? This would save time and money. There are supporters for cloud (mentioned earlier) and on premise but I would ask you what your plans are for next 5 years. If your headcount is not going to increase significantly, then I wouldn't worry about integrating payroll as a small payroll package will generate your monthly journal, similar to how you intend to deal with debtors.

I won't recommend any specific solution as I have worked with most of them and each have their pros and cons. I can steer you in a direction if you wish to analyse your future requirements before you spend. I've seen a lot of poor decisions made in accounting software procurement and I will happily advise without charge.