Accounting software for personal and charity's accounts

soupdragon10

I am self-employed and have been considering software to do my accounts (have used Excel spreadsheet so far but this is time consuming and cumbersome).


I have been looking at Sage Instant Accounts but have just been asked to act as treasurer for a charity.


If I buy Sage Instant, would I be able to use the software for both my books and to do the charity's accounts? It seems to suggest that you can only use the software for one business, have I understood this correctly?


If I can't use the same software for both activities, what would be my best option for software. It needs to be reasonably straightforward to learn, as although I am reasonable at keeping records I am not an accountant.

SeduLOUs

Technically you can use it for more than one business. There's no facility within the software to switch between them, but you can use the 'backup' and 'restore' data options to switch between two different sets of data, i.e. Backup Company A, restore Company B and so on.

soupdragon10

Thanks for this, is Sage my best option do you know, or are there other packages that would let me keep the two accounts running simultaneously, without having to remember to backup before switching?

SeduLOUs

Like anything it depends what you need it for really. I'd probably opt for Sage because it's what I'm familiar with personally, but if you're not looking at large amounts of money/transactions it might have more features than you need, and if you aren't familiar with double entry book-keeping and journal entries it could be quite a steep learning curve.

For 'small' accounts, I've heard a lot of good things about Quickbooks, but don't have any personal experience to offer unfortunately...

soupdragon10

Thanks for this, I think I am in for a steep learning curve, as although I have successfully submitted my accounts to HMRC for four years without a hitch, the charity has a more complex setup, with donations, income from various sources etc. plus payments to a variety of individuals and organisations (plus paying in both pounds and euros).


I think I will need to do a basic course as well as using the software, is there another version of Sage that would allow me to keep both accounts in use at the same time?

SeduLOUs

You'd have to buy a license for multiple companies which starts getting expensive pretty fast. I am employed by a Ltd company, but also do the accounts for a Partnership that my boss is involved in and it was significantly cheaper to buy two different versions of Sage than to buy multi-license. We run the more complex accounts on Sage Line 50, and bought Sage Instant for the other company.

I don't deal in multiple currency (fortunately) so just check that Instant covers everything you want to do (for my needs I can barely tell the difference between the versions).

Re training, you need a solid underlying knowledge of double entry to help you figure out what the software is doing (or has done) when something unexpected happens, rather than learning to use the software itself (it's pretty intuitive when you understand what you actually want it to do).

I liken it to learning to write a good CV - it's more useful to learn how to write a good CV by hand, and then figure out how to use Word, than it is to go on a Word course that tells you very little about good CV writing... Financial Accounting for Dummies or a CIMA/AAT module book on financial accounting might be a good starting point without needing to fork out for an official course.

soupdragon10

Thanks so much - using the CV analogy was spot on, as a careers adviser I do this for a living, and definitely learned how to write one on paper before transferring to word.


Will get to grips with double entry first and then worry about software after that. Might look for a class as well, as just reading a book won't necessarily answer all my questions.

buglawton

To get to grips with double entry
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Accounts-Demystified-Astonishingly-Simple-Accounting/dp/0273744704
The classic and best and merited a review in today's Telegraph

agrinnall

Before you commit to doing the charity's accounts I would ask for some advice on the Small Biz & Charities board what your responsibilities for taking on such work would be - it may all be fine, but it wouldn't be fun to make a mistake and find that your are personally responsible for any losses incurred as a result.

John_Gray

soupdragon10 wrote: »

If I buy Sage Instant, would I be able to use the software for both my books and to do the charity's accounts? It seems to suggest that you can only use the software for one business, have I understood this correctly?

Sage's licensing indicates that you really need one copy for home, and one copy for the charity - at £85 the charity ought to be able to afford this.
The demystifying book suggested costs nearly £30 secondhand! *

Of course "other accounting software is available", as buglawton indicates.

* but a new copy of the latest (Sep 2015) version costs less than £15!

SeduLOUs

After a sleep and a bit of afterthought I wonder are you wanting to achieve cash based or accrual based acccounts*?

If it's the former and you just need an audit trail of cash and paying bills, then perhaps you'd be better with something simpler like YNAB at only £30 a license.

*Apologies if you don't need a definition, but thought it better to post one than to potentially just baffle you.

Cash basis is a method of recording income as it is received and expenses as they are paid. Many service businesses use this method for income tax purposes. Using this approach, it is not possible to generate accrual basis statements from the transactional data that has been entered.

Accrual basis is a method of recording revenue as it is earned (regardless of when it is actually received) and expenses are recorded as incurred (regardless of when it is actually paid). Many businesses that carry inventory are required to use the accrual basis of accounting for income tax purposes.