SJD Parties like it's 1999

[northernladuk]

The point I was trying to make is that the quality of service is far more important than some flashy portal.

Would you rather a) Superb service and not the greatest (in your eyes) tech
or b) bad service and flashy tech

I know which one I'd opt for

Ah ok, I see and it is a good point. I think we would all opt for the same one as well.

[The Spartan]

Ah ok, I see and it is a good point. I think we would all opt for the same one as well.

And of all things I learnt this the hard way, but fortunately I spotted it quite quickly

[Danielsjdaccountancy]

What is the cost increase?

I've been to the website but it still says 105+vat.

(I'm planning to join with SJD in the next couple weeks, be nice to know what the price is )

Our fees are £105+VAT. We increased this time last year from £95+VAT.

[GeorgeB]

Our fees are £105+VAT. We increased this time last year from £95+VAT.

Ok, thanks.

[d000hg]

InTouch does a CSV upload of bank account details.

And it works very well - sadly what doesn't work well is getting the CSV from the banks in the first place. In some cases I still copy-paste the web-page into Excel and save as CSV, in others the exported CSV is just a pain and very rarely do I literally download a CSV and re-upload without tweaks.

If InTouch are listening (they normally are), I'd appreciate the ability to manually enter single rows as well as uploading CSV... IIRC uploading a spreadsheet is their only option and sometimes doing it manually would end up quicker!

[Clare@InTouch]

If InTouch are listening (they normally are), I'd appreciate the ability to manually enter single rows as well as uploading CSV... IIRC uploading a spreadsheet is their only option and sometimes doing it manually would end up quicker!

We've purposely kept it as the only option because otherwise if effects the integrity of data, the idea being that if clients upload all their bank data then it SHOULD match the bank statements exactly (barring any csv file changes). A good point though, and one I'll raise with our IT director. It may be that we can incorporate such a change when we implement bank reconciliations

[pjclarke]

Personally I like the ability to put everything - expenses, banking and invoices - in a single spreadsheet, and mail it across four or five times a year and let SJD crunch the numbers, which in my experience they do very efficiently.

That said, the spreadheet design itself is a bit clunky - The summary page is a bit of a dog's breakfast and I don't like the one tab per month layout, I'd prefer one tab for each category and all the expenses (etc.) for a year in a single list, with the monthly summaries totalled on separate tabs. But maybe that's just me.

For my own company records, I've written some VBA that scans across all the tabs in an SJD sheet and lifts everything out into a single list in a separate spreadsheet for basic sense-checking, analysis using pivot charts etc. This gets especially useful once you have several years worth of transactions, as the data would be spread out across several SJD sheets and tabs. I would have thought that doing the reverse and importing some csv data wouldn't take anyone here very long to do. In fact it's been on my to-do list for a while, but my average 8-10 bank transactions a month haven't made it worthwhile to date.

I believe the spreadsheet has to be protected so that SJD can have confidence that their formulas haven't been inadvertently changed.

[Jase]

That said, the spreadheet design itself is a bit clunky - The summary page is a bit of a dog's breakfast and I don't like the one tab per month layout, I'd prefer one tab for each category and all the expenses (etc.) for a year in a single list, with the monthly summaries totalled on separate tabs. But maybe that's just me.

I've just joined SJD and that is my issue with the spreadsheet; it is not user friendly and could have validation and better summarised information. I'm not sure what changes have been made since 1997 but it could do with a refresh. I am also running FreeAgent in parallel and was advised by my accountant I still needed to complete the spreadsheet. As people have commented, £105 + VAT is at the higher end so I’m keeping a close watch on the value the service adds to my business.

Jase.

[northernladuk]

Personally I like the ability to put everything - expenses, banking and invoices - in a single spreadsheet, and mail it across four or five times a year and let SJD crunch the numbers, which in my experience they do very efficiently.

Agreed but I don't think it would have been hard to add some user friendly options like enter mileage and it automatically calculates and Pension / Mobile Phone entries that auto populates the columns to the right as well. Very tiny changes which can often cause more confusion than they fix I admit so can live with the genericness off it.

I did find the year end figures they gave me hard work to transpose to the spreadsheet when checking. These columns give this figure, these columns give that and so on. I thought this would be easy to show or colour code but again being so accomodating to numpties like me can cause more confusion. I got there in the end once I thought about it.

Not seen anyone elses spreadsheet so even as it is I still think it is pretty good.

[malvolio]

2. Can we offer an easy upload from bank statements to the spreadsheet via CSV? Be happy to take a look and see

Worth a look but not easy to achieve for the savings it would make, IMVHO. The download from HSBC, for example, is pretty rough ad ready. You 've always got the bank statement reconciliations to ensure the numbers you've entered are correct.

Speaking of 1999, that was a pretty cool year in contracting wasn't it

Dunno - I was too busy to take notice...

Actually one thing you could usefully (and very easily) add is a VAT calculator for billed amounts. Key in the gross, get the VAT element and the net cost separated out. I've got one of my own, obviously (that took me minutes to write), but it would be a lot easier to use if it were embedded in the main spreadsheet. Plenty of room in the bottom right-hand corner....