Retail business and bookkeeping software

jm2926

Hiya,

I'm starting a retail based business, it is a Ltd company and will be VAT registered. Supplies will be bought with cash (until suppliers agree to extend lines of credit after 3 months), and sales are to general public for immediate payment by cash/card.

Can anyone recommend some simple bookkeeping software for this? I have no bookkeeping knowledge but I am attending a workshop soon.

I'm still looking for an accountant, and struggling to understand HMRC retail VAT schemes!

Thanks

Pennywise

For simple recording of the monies in and out, I'd go for the free desktop cash book provided by www.vtsoftware.co.uk.

If you're wanting something better and would like to be able to import paypal and bank transactions, then www.kashflow.co.uk is one of the best and also has auto links with other cloud programs.

If you're wanting stock control as well, or other integrations with an e-commerce site, you'd probably have to look at Sage, which is expensive and not particularly user-friendly but is the market leader and seems to be the main/only supported software for a lot of the major e-commerce sites.

But whatever you choose, remember that it's garbage in-garbage out. You need robust record keeping outside the system, i.e. properly filed documents, good administrative house-keeping etc. If you are disorganised and your records are messy or incomplete, then mere computerisation isn't the answer - you can only computerise an organised system.

Colin2511

hi I use simplybooks.net

I started with this several years ago, and occasionally think I should upgrade (as it does have limitiations, compared to Sage etc) but the hassle factor in changing, and the fact that this is easy stops me. There is a free trial and then you buy it.

BUT....Just check that it handles the retail vat scheme (I am not on that so not sure). I know it does the standard vat scheme, as I do this, but for a while I was on flat rate and it did not like this at all, so I had to "jiggery poke" things to get the right rate.

patman99

GNUCash with the GNUPOS add-on is worth a try as it is free. You will need a Linux distro to get it working fully, but from playing with it, it does do stock control (across multiple locations as well).

Worth checking-out the GNUCash forums first just to gauge how easy it will be to set up a card reader and auto-bank account linking.

It is worth noting that since the introduction of 'Chip and PIN', 70% of EPOS hardware sales have been of Linux/GnuPos powered systems.