What software do you use for your day to day accounts?

J

johnnyv

Guest
Hello,

I was wondering what software you use for your day to day accounts?

This would include -

Inputting Customers/Sales
Invoicing
Inputting Creditors/Purchases
Reporting (P&L, Balance Sheet etc.)

Any responses appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Quicken - Home and Business

For a simple and straight forward tool I use Quicken.

It prints my invoices, then can receive my payments and pay my salary and expenses.

Very straight forward - I dont do anything too complex and reasonably cheap compared to the big financial packages. If you have multiple staff - I would look elsewhere - but for a one or two person operation it is quiet efficient
 
Re: Quicken - Home and Business

Personally I used Sage's Instant Accounts. Fairly straightforward to setup and minimal cost (€159). The setup effort for creditor/debtor journals was one hour!
 
Re: Quicken - Home and Business

I use Tas Books and find it useful particularly for VAT. I type my invoices in Word as there is a lot changing text. I then enter invoice no etc. in Tas.
I've had to change accountant as the last guy didn't like computerised accounts and didn't want to give me opening balances to put into Tas.
I found an accountant who understood Tas ( it is on the course for Account Technicians), But it did not get me any reduction in accountants fees.

Accountants tend to recommend Big Red Book as it is sold through them and costs a lot more than the other packages.
There is a yearly support charge for all accounts packages tas is about €200 and is essential.

Roger
 
Accounts Packages

I use Quickbooks quickbooks.intuit.com/ to do my accounts, and Payback www.payback.ie for my payroll (I have 3 employees)

I got Quickbooks from my accountant, and got payback from their site (free for 4 or less employees).

It didn't take me very long to learn Quickbooks after a friend gave me some pointers. You should try out a few accounts packages to see if you like them first.
 
Re: Accounts Packages

Rogermure said

I've had to change accountant as the last guy didn't like computerised accounts

Wow! I haven't heard that comment for at least 10 years. I would say that a lot of accountants probably won't deal with manual accounts any more.

Brendan
 
Re: Accounts Packages

Penny,

What is your experience with Payback as a payroll package ?

I currently use Sage Quickpay and I find it quite dated in usability at this stage and not very forgiving if you make a complete mess of things. I have also used Thesaurus for payroll and I found it worse !!

The screenshots look good for Payback - have you found it easy to use ?

efm
 
Re: Quicken - Home and Business

Accountants tend to recommend Big Red Book as it is sold through them and costs a lot more than the other packages.
I don't and in fact I don't know any accountants that do. I recommend taz or sage instant accounts preferably the latter as it exports directly to Sage accountants suite. The latter is the package that the vast majority of accountants use as far as I can see.

In saying that I have an excel workbook that I give out to people with a cashbook, purchases book, sales invoice book, cheque payments book and vat comp. it is basic but for clients who know very little about computers it gets them going and used to the idea. I then move them onto one of the above packages when they are more confident.
 
Re: Accounts Packages

We moved from Thesauraus to CollSoft which we are very happy with. I don't understand why Thesaurus has thousands and thousands of customers. It was very unfriendly.

Brendan
 
Re: Accounts Packages

jem
Your Excel spreadsheet and progressing to Quicken or another popular package is an excellent system. I have had the misfortune to have the services of an accountant who over six years Has caused many sleepless nights and fees that were more approiate to a P.L.C than a sole trader.
So maybe I am a little cynical but reading the askaboutmoney board over the last few months my faith in the Accountancy Profession is being restored.
Roger
 
Re: Accounts Packages

As an accountant myself I find the TAS Books range of products very easy to use and very flexible for a small business. I agree with Brendan regarding the payroll software, collsoft is the best product on the market for processing your payroll.
 
Re: Accounts Packages

What is your experience with Payback as a payroll package ?

I currently use Sage Quickpay and I find it quite dated in usability at this stage and not very forgiving if you make a complete mess of things. I have also used Thesaurus for payroll and I found it worse !!

The screenshots look good for Payback - have you found it easy to use ?

I found Quickpay3 very difficult to use, a spreadsheet would probably have been better!

Payback has a much better user interface that reminds me a bit of Outlook, unpaid employees are displayed in bold. You can easily rewind things if you make a mess of it. Although, you can see the payslip (and calculations, history etc) before you process it, so this should reduce errors.

I tried Collsoft, and though I find it better than Thesaurus, I still prefer Payback (plus it's free for me :D ). You can download trial versions of all of these products so why not try them all out?
 
Re: Accounts Packages

Hi Penny,

Thanks for that - I downloaded and installed it last night and had the company and employees (1 just me !) set up in 15 minutes.

Very user friendly interface, I loved the preview of the pay slip - sage had an equivalent but it was really only for preprinted payslips - and overall I think Payback is a very good package.

Many thanks for the recommendation

efm
 
Re: Accounts Packages

For 2 monthly VAT returns, relative to small traders/tradespersons, I recommend;
[broken link removed]
It offers a handy, economical, user-friendly solution, especially for those for whom excel is tricky.


link fixed by ajapale
 
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