Which Accounting Software to use for Startup

Tea3

I am having to change my accounts software before April next year (grrr at Mamut and MYOB - dont use them as myob is no longer supported from next year and the package will cease to work shortly afterwards with mamut offering an alternative with compulsory £180 or so a year support package on top of software etc!!!)

If you are a small trader with no vat, no imports, nothing fancy etc then a spreadsheet or one of the free software packages should be fine, however if you are busier, likely to have vat/tax transactions or are likely to grow fairly quickly then starting off with an accounts package makes sense as its sometimes hard to transfer all info from one thing into another (not impossible in most cases but tricky, tims-consuming and fiddly with some parts not compatable etc). I looked at quicken and sage as the main contenders as they are both fairly well known, easy enough to learn with good help sections and both readily have books available to learn more. Also if you may in the future need a member of staff think of what they are more likely to know (same with accountants etc). Lots of people not heard of myob, mamut, simplybooks etc whereas quicken and sage are fairly popular.

The best thing would be to try a test run on both (think sage and possibly quicken have an online test/trial set up on their websites). This way you can see which works best for your needs.