Invoicing/accounting software

[Shakti]

I did try Kashflow in detail. Found it too basic for my needs. It seems to be just a replacement of a Spreadsheet. Did however like Free Agent Central a lot. It handles Directors Pay, Corp Tax, VAT payments, Dividends... and also has a feed telling us what important payments dates are coming up. Seems like a much overall rounded approach.

Am all in for hosted solutions as our accounts are as it is public domain, and it provides more data safety and I can access it anywhere, even on the train from my phone.

[speedo]

Never quite understood this - why do you consider your business accounts to be "personal information"? Surely it all becomes public information eventually...

I am new to this, but i understand accounting is an art and therefore rather than have my month to month accounts online i would prefer to keep them to my accountant and myself before releasing to the public domain. You never know when you may need to back date an item etc....

[DuaneJackson]

I did try Kashflow in detail. Found it too basic for my needs. It seems to be just a replacement of a Spreadsheet.

I'm really surprised that - how long ago was that? KashFlow has a *lot* of functionality. More than most of the web-based accounting apps. A lot of it is turned off by default though. I guess it's more aimed at the small business rather than the contractor.

The Tax timeline that FreeAgent has is pretty cool stuff though.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I am new to this, but i understand accounting is an art and therefore rather than have my month to month accounts online i would prefer to keep them to my accountant and myself before releasing to the public domain. You never know when you may need to back date an item etc....

True but using an online service doesn't put your accounts into the public domain.

[Torrango]

There's no way on the planet I would allow an online service to hold my accounts...

Honestly, for me it's the other way around. Given that I'm starting anew (so no legacy data to worry about), I would hate to be tied down to one physical system. I'm usually travelling quite a bit, so rarely have access to my computer 100% of the time, but I want to be able to manage my expenses, issue invoices etc from wherever I am.

On the security front, again I much prefer an online solution. It removes all the headache of backups and availability, since a hosted solution will generally have much better infrastructure and BCP than I can provide. Plus I think with all the online services you can take sage combatible data dumps out of the system for local backup too. Also, I've had my laptop stolen before, and then of course spent several months being paranoid about what sensitive personal data may have been on there (yes, I know, I should have encrypted it...experience is the best teacher I guess, at least I'd backed it up recently). Again, an online solution with a hosted datacentre provides much better security than I could easily provide.

Of course I could do all this myself by buying a hosted server, installing sage, encrypting the hard drive and accessing it remotely over a secure link, but it's not really my core competence, and I'd rather just pay somebody else to do it for me.

To each their own of course, but these days I'm definitely of the mindset to move everything to the cloud and be completely independent of physical location.

[oraclesmith]

I use Sage. It's easy to send a backup to the accountants, who then send me back some adjustments when they've done end of year. I've customized the invoices so they're branded with my logo etc.

The only problem I've had is with VAT and using the flat rate scheme. Apparently it's easier for accountants if you simply post everything gross and don't split any VAT if you're on the FRS.

[DuaneJackson]

The only problem I've had is with VAT and using the flat rate scheme. Apparently it's easier for accountants if you simply post everything gross and don't split any VAT if you're on the FRS.

Not many packages handle FRS VAT very well - needless to say KashFlow does.

its just my gut feeling.

That's the usual response from others that are "uncomfortable" with accounts being online. Makes it a real b!tch for me, as a programmer to try to convince them otherwise. You can't use logic to combat an emotional response. We tend not to try to be honest for exactly that reason

[DuaneJackson]

I've just stuck something on our blog about the security of being online as opposed to being on your PC/Mac.

See http://blog.kashflow.com/2009/06/08/pc-vs-saas/

I'm not expecting to change anyones mind though, as per the comments I made on the blog.