Alternatives to QuickBooks
Discussion
I've been happily running my business and doing my VAT returns for over 12 years now with the help of two Excel spreadsheets. One entitled 'invoices' and oddly enough one entitled 'expenses'.
My accountant suggested I should perhaps use QB as it calculates VAT and it can do payroll (I use the HMRC online thing and it's fine) and is a lot simpler.
So I signed up. Set it all up and discovered that it was incorrectly pulling sales through from my bank as expenses, putting all the wages paid out as one employee name and a whole lot of other stuff that really made no sense at all. All in all it took me a good two days worth of my time to try and sort it out, two phone calls to QB of two hours each, one for them to tell me they didn't know why it had messed up and the second for me to talk to an 'engineer' to sort it all out.
I gave up with it today, it's far too complicated and full of glitches.
So is there an alternative, or should I stick to my spreadsheets? Part of the reason I think my accountant wants me to use something like this is it will make his life a whole lot easier come year end.
A footnote for accountants, can I change my VAT quarters to coincide with my year end easily? Or will it involve a major drama with HMRC? Currently it's a month out. As in I'm two months into the VAT quarter at year end.
My accountant suggested I should perhaps use QB as it calculates VAT and it can do payroll (I use the HMRC online thing and it's fine) and is a lot simpler.
So I signed up. Set it all up and discovered that it was incorrectly pulling sales through from my bank as expenses, putting all the wages paid out as one employee name and a whole lot of other stuff that really made no sense at all. All in all it took me a good two days worth of my time to try and sort it out, two phone calls to QB of two hours each, one for them to tell me they didn't know why it had messed up and the second for me to talk to an 'engineer' to sort it all out.
I gave up with it today, it's far too complicated and full of glitches.
So is there an alternative, or should I stick to my spreadsheets? Part of the reason I think my accountant wants me to use something like this is it will make his life a whole lot easier come year end.
A footnote for accountants, can I change my VAT quarters to coincide with my year end easily? Or will it involve a major drama with HMRC? Currently it's a month out. As in I'm two months into the VAT quarter at year end.
I have been using Xero for a couple of years now. My accountant recommended it, he uses it and it's worked brilliantly for me. He logs in and sorts out my VAT returns every quarter.
I have a few Clients using it too and they all seem very happy. If you get a subscription through your accountant you can save a few pounds a month too. A small perk but who said there's no such thing as a free lunch. ;-)
I have a few Clients using it too and they all seem very happy. If you get a subscription through your accountant you can save a few pounds a month too. A small perk but who said there's no such thing as a free lunch. ;-)
We've used Qb's for the past 18 years.
It's okay but we have simply outgrown it now and are swapping to our stock control software makers accounts package.
Depending what you are doing QB's is alright but their support is dire, truly dire. We didn't use their online version as we heard very bad things about that.
It's okay but we have simply outgrown it now and are swapping to our stock control software makers accounts package.
Depending what you are doing QB's is alright but their support is dire, truly dire. We didn't use their online version as we heard very bad things about that.
Thanks for the pointers.
All I am looking for is something that will log my expenses, log my invoices, interrogate my bank and marry invoices with payments and calculate my VAT. In other words, all that I do now, but simplified. I thought QB online would do that, but it's absolutely awful and the support haven't a clue what they are doing. I wasted so much time on it before eventually calling quits. Good job I decided to wait before incorporating my payroll into it too!
All I am looking for is something that will log my expenses, log my invoices, interrogate my bank and marry invoices with payments and calculate my VAT. In other words, all that I do now, but simplified. I thought QB online would do that, but it's absolutely awful and the support haven't a clue what they are doing. I wasted so much time on it before eventually calling quits. Good job I decided to wait before incorporating my payroll into it too!
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