Reply to: Online Accounts (again?!)

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I'm a very happy user of FreeAgent (disclaimer: referral link). It does my RTI PAYE submissions, my VAT returns and gives me realtime profit calculations. It does my invoicing, manages my bills and my banking. It even does automated bank feeds although I don't personally use them (they use Yodlee, which I have reservations with).

I have also used Xero in the past which I liked, but felt FreeAgent was better suited to one-man companies. Xero has probably come a long way since I first used it (4 years ago) - it didn't even handle flat-rate VAT at the time.

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

How is he supposed to know what you don't know? We have people on here that don't have a clue about the basics such as phones right through to guys that know the in's and out's of everything including directors loans, company van's/bikes.

Do some research starting with the expenses link to the right. Your accountant should do some good guides on this, SJD, InTouch and NW have good stuff on their pages. Have a look at all that and pro-actively find out what you don't know.

Any accountant worth their salts should be (a) giving you a manual with the basics in (b) giving you a end of year check-list on things and (c) runing a critical eye down the P&L at the end of year to see if anything obvious is being missed.

Basic stuff.

[northernladuk]

Please can you shed some light on the tax allowable expenses which contractors are unaware of ?

Many Thanks

How is he supposed to know what you don't know? We have people on here that don't have a clue about the basics such as phones right through to guys that know the in's and out's of everything including directors loans, company van's/bikes.

Do some research starting with the expenses link to the right. Your accountant should do some good guides on this, SJD, InTouch and NW have good stuff on their pages. Have a look at all that and pro-actively find out what you don't know.

[commando]

Hi Noni

As a part time practising accountant and banking contractor, I have seen many of my colleague contractors doing their own online book keeping. I wonder what value added service accountants provide them at year end? There are many tax allowable expenses which contractors are not aware of, and are incorporated in year end accounts. My experience is that online bookkeeping accountants doesn't add any value. Better to be with vanilla accountants.

Please can you shed some light on the tax allowable expenses which contractors are unaware of ?

Many Thanks

[Noni]

Online accounts Again!



As a part time practising accountant and banking contractor, I have seen many of my colleague contractors doing their own online book keeping. I wonder what value added service accountants provide them at year end? There are many tax allowable expenses which contractors are not aware of, and are incorporated in year end accounts. My experience is that online bookkeeping accountants doesn't add any value. Better to be with vanilla accountants.

[JonNorris@Crunch]

Constantly baffled by online accounting software that doesn't offer real-time profit / tax information. If you can do it in a spreadsheet, why go to the trouble of building an online system that doesn't?

[ContractorsSpouse]

Honourable mention to SJD and their spreadsheet which they give away for free. If you want a simple low tech book keeping system then you can probably do most of it on that though you would need an accountant to do the end of year stuff.

+1

[7specialgems]

Sign up to some free trials and have a go on them to ensure that they've got all the features you need.

The tool provided by the accountant I am with at the moment (a four character portmanteau of "BOOkkeeping" and "BolloX") is very primitive. I am finding the hard way that:

• 1. It has no mileage tool, so I end up doing the job myself with a spreadsheet
  2. It cannot cope with expenses directly from the Company account such as a Company mobile, , so I end up re-calculating the amounts for Corporation Tax and profit and all of the numbers in the tool are wrong
  3. There is no "live profit" report so you can see straight-off how much profit you could declare as a dividend on the spot, if you wanted to
  4. The tool assumes you don't build up a war chest and take full dividends, so the hardcoded Divi vouchers are all wrong , so I end up doing the job myself with a spreadsheet

[EstherA4C]

For example, if I pay for a years worth of Clearbooks, I get it for around £17pm. AccountsPortal is £10pm as is Sage One, and QuickBooks is £9pm. I don't do that many transactions but that could change.

Forgot to say that we provide the Xero software as part of our all-inclusive package so it doesn't cost clients anything. Now about that spreadsheet....

[EstherA4C]

I'm another fan of Xero. It's very user friendly.

As an accountant I find that our clients enjoy using the Xero app on their smartphone or tablet whilst on the go and we can easily support them with day to day book-keeping, as well as providing great management reports.

They have a free demo which you can register for (as I'm sure do most of the other online solutions).

[northernladuk]

<good stuff>

Yep agree that with all the above. It is one of those situations where the spreadsheet does most of it with a modicum of effort which is more than acceptable but once I have made the jump and gotten used to it I will wonder why I used the spreadsheet. Just the effort to make the change really.

[Andrew@Wisteria]

Accounting software

We offer both the spreadsheet and online option, I think it's important to offer client both, depending on what they are more comfortable with.

[Maslins]

+1 to that. Have been thinking about trying Freeagent out or something like that but I just can't see what extra it can offer me.

If you're happy with what you've got, I wouldn't bother changing. Having said that, possible benefits you might appreciate are:
- submitting VAT/PAYE returns from within the software,
- less data entry work due to live feeds or download/upload of bank transactions,
- your accountant can see the data live, no need to email docs back and forth,
- live forecasts of future tax liabilities building up,
- ability to get a P&L/balance sheet at any time,
- invoice from the software, no need with separate Word/Excel invoice templates,
- rebill expenses and/or invoice based on timesheets? Invoice calculation will be much easier.
- dividend minutes/vouchers auto drafted for you,
- you can't inadvertently delete formula.

SJD's spreadsheet may well assist with some of the above, I only quickly played with it once. There's probably also a ton of other minor benefits you'd get with FreeAgent/its equivalents that have slipped my mind.

[kevpuk]

When I changed to InTouch, I stopped tracking everything in the spreadsheet, as I do it online via their portal.

+1 for InTouch's online portal - very easy to use, concise and effective

[TheFaQQer]

That's what I used to use - despite never being an SJD customer.

When I changed to InTouch, I stopped tracking everything in the spreadsheet, as I do it online via their portal.