Recommendation for accounting software (more than standard contractor)

[Lewis]

As well as being a contractor I have a subscription based service that I sell (i.e. customers pay £x p/month for use of the service). At present everything is being done on my old contracting spreadsheet but it is getting a harder to do as we get more clients (100+ at present) and I think I need a professional accounting package, I need the following:

Standard stuff like bank account reconciliation, create invoices, expenses etc... all the usual contracting stuff, but also
Manage client details and crucially client subscriptions (see who is expiring when, generate monthly invoices etc..)

Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced package?

Thanks.

[northernladuk]

You can get a free Trial of FreeAgent to see if it does what you want. You can create recurring invoices, track finances by project/customer and so on that is beyond contracting needs but I don't know how far.

If not you need to be looking at something like Xero which is often touted as a bit too much for a bog standard contractor so should cover it.

That said aren't they classed as bookkeeping tools so not really for managing subscriptions, just accounting for them? Might need something completely different.

[ContrataxLtd]

As well as being a contractor I have a subscription based service that I sell (i.e. customers pay £x p/month for use of the service). At present everything is being done on my old contracting spreadsheet but it is getting a harder to do as we get more clients (100+ at present) and I think I need a professional accounting package, I need the following:

Standard stuff like bank account reconciliation, create invoices, expenses etc... all the usual contracting stuff, but also
Manage client details and crucially client subscriptions (see who is expiring when, generate monthly invoices etc..)

Can anyone recommend a reasonably priced package?

Thanks.

Hi Lewis

If I were you I would have a look at Freeagent to start with, from what you say I think it would be able to cope with your needs to a large extent. I'd be investigating the project functionality within the invoicing suite and also the ability to set up recurring invoices which may help with your subscription side of things.

You can set up a free trial to see if it would give you the functionality that you need, the main area it may not be the best with is the tracking of expiry of subscriptions (although I've not looked into it myself).

Martin
Contratax Ltd

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

While freeagent is great for contractors, you might want to look at xero for this business. Handles monthly recurring and subscriptions well. Get a gocardless integration and the monthly payments are a cinch too.

[Lewis]

Thanks all. We have just started using GoCardless, so I will check out Xero.

[scooterscot]

I've been using https://www.manager.io for a couple of years now. It's free and super simple. Lovely clean interface with no screen real estate wasted. Have found the user community to be a nice bunch always quick to answer questions.

https://www.manager.io/desktop/screenshots

On my mac it loads up in 2-3 seconds ready to use the database file is only a few KB's in size so I keep it on a shared cloud where I can access regardless of machine.

[l35kee]

Thanks all. We have just started using GoCardless, so I will check out Xero.

FreeAgent says it has support for GoCardless. You can sign up for a free trial to have a look yourself.

[radish2008]

Oh my god I never thought I'd say this but .......

Free Agent.

Didn't read the full post. I don't know of any accounting software that would manage your subscriptions expiry etc. Seems a bit niche.

[Maslins]

Manage client details and crucially client subscriptions (see who is expiring when, generate monthly invoices etc..)

FreeAgent has recurring invoice profiles, and you can put an end date on them. However, whilst it may be possible, I'm not aware of any clever way of linking that up with something else. Ie so it expires on date X, unless client pays Y before date Z. I think you'd need to do that manually. Not impossible, but if you get to the 1,000s of clients certainly that may be a real pain.

Otherwise I imagine you'd want to look at it from the subscription end, and work back to the bookkeeping package. Ie get some kind of online tool that does all you want for the subscriptions, and hopefully there's a way via APIs/similar to get it to transmit data to whatever bookkeeping package you go for.

[radish2008]

If only FreeAgent had an API ...

Free Agent API

Don't know what it does but it's a start.