Accounts software

barrymung

Can anyone recommend a SIMPLE and CHEAP accounts package for use in a small business?

FerociousDave

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=456729

nickj_2

clearly book keeping / quick books are easy to use , they are available from barclays bank

fighting_chaos

I can highly recommend www.diyaccounting.co.uk

I recently went on a SAGE accountancy course that was supposed to give out a free copy of SAGE but then failed to deliver, but then I found this web site and purchased a few of his programs. It is very good and I am yet to find a problem with it. You need to have excel in order to run it but I think it does everything that SAGE does but it just isn't a 'pretty looking' (if you get what I mean!) AND you don't have to go on a course to be able to use it!

It is written by an accountant, who if you email him with any questions is very helpful and gives a very fast response.

Hope you find this helpful

mkeeley

If you have Excel then have a look at http://www.xlac.co.uk

One thing you'd need to be careful of if you decide on using the diyaccounting solution is that, for some reason best known to them, none of the workbooks are protected, so it's easy to delete formula by accident. If you did that your accounts could be useless.

$"£!$&^*"$!&*(

barrymung wrote: »

Can anyone recommend a SIMPLE and CHEAP accounts package for use in a small business?

Just create a spreadsheet in Excel and supplement it by keeping ALL receipts.
The more you keep it updated the easy it will be to manage.

trf1960

Hi, our accountant told us to keep my husband's (sole trader) business accounts as simple as possible. He suggested using either an excel spreadsheet or a word / table doc with eight columns - the first headed INCOME with columns for Date, Customer Name/Address, Inv No. and amount. The second headed OUTGOINGS with columns for date, expenses, amount and balance. I thought we may have to split everything up with columns for travel, telephone etc. but he said not to bother and as long as the receipts/invoices match what we have down he was happy (and as my hubby's book-keeper, so am I).:)

Savvy_Sue

trf, your accountant's suggestion is certainly fine as long as you are happy to wait for the accountant to do the breakdown (and pay for them to do it).

Maybe it doesn't matter to you what proportion of income / expenditure is going on particular items, but if it does, then keeping an eye on it month by month is certainly worth doing (and doesn't need to be a lot more complicated than the system you've described, in Excel).

I used to keep the books for an out of school club, and for me it DID matter how much of our income was coming from each of annual registrations, term-time (after-school) bookings, holiday bookings, and grants, AND how much of our expenditure was on premises, staff (again split into holidays and term time), outings etc.

That way I could quickly see that holiday bookings HAD to be kept high, or we were going to be running at a huge loss because the staff costs were higher.

Maybe that doesn't matter for your husband's business, but I'd say it was something worth thinking about, eg to see if particular kinds of work are more profitable than others, if that's relevant.

windswept

Am I the only person who still does accounts by hand in an accounts book?
I use a cash accounting book from makro and just customise it for my needs.
I use spreadsheets for ebay/paypal fees etc. and I print off sales info from secpay for the website.
I've trialled accounts packages, but nothing is as quick and easy as a pen and calculator, plus if you've made an error or omission, it doesn't screw up the whole spreadsheet! I've just realised that I hadn't accounted for suppliers' carriage charges - it all adds up to about £100, so I've just slipped them in to this week's page.

Savvy_Sue

windswept wrote: »

Am I the only person who still does accounts by hand in an accounts book?
I use a cash accounting book from makro and just customise it for my needs.
I use spreadsheets for ebay/paypal fees etc. and I print off sales info from secpay for the website.
I've trialled accounts packages, but nothing is as quick and easy as a pen and calculator, plus if you've made an error or omission, it doesn't screw up the whole spreadsheet! I've just realised that I hadn't accounted for suppliers' carriage charges - it all adds up to about £100, so I've just slipped them in to this week's page.

I admit, I did start off that way, but for reconciling bank statements found Excel MUCH quicker! I agree that it's possible to screw up the formulae if you're not careful, but even as a complete novice I soon worked out where to start looking - I have check sums to make sure that columns and rows come to the same total when they should, if that makes sense.

Also you can colour a column to indicate you shouldn't interfere with what's in it. Or even 'lock' it to prevent editing in it.