An interesting question over at Any Answers:
I have a client who is looking to start a new business with an overseas investor and who wishes to carry out their own bookkeeping function.
She is prepared to learn how to use the software but does not know which one to use.
As a firm we recommend TAS software but she has been told that both Sage and Quickbooks are good.
I need to be able to advise my client of the various options that she has.
I am aware that there are many more packages out there which could be used and need to find somewhere that compares the functionality of each package and the various pros and cons.
Can anyone please point me to web site or article that can do this.
For interest only the package has to be able to deal with multi currency and if possible letters of credit.
Please – no postings saying “look at ABC software – its’s great”! I just need a site that compares all of the major packages.
There aren’t any. The comments are really interesting. The problem just about all packages present is that they’re built for accountants and not end users. Interfaces are way out of date and investment is low in bringing the ‘usual suspects’ up to date.
There’s a reason professionals go through a long period of training. Double entry isn’t easy but it’s like riding a bike. Once you get it, it’s simple. But…making sense of the entries is an altogether different matter. That’s why I’d say that a company in this situation needs to ensure it has a trained bookkeeper BEFORE it embarks on finding the right solution.
For what it’s worth – in the hands of a well trained person, there’s little to choose between the three mentioned but only Line 50 Financial Controller supports multi-currency. Now…depending on what you’d like to do, both FreshBooks and Blinksale natively support multi-currency for their billing applications. Given that the correspondent mentioned ‘new business’ and in new businesses, cashflow is king, then either of these would represent a good starting point.
If they have an overseas investor who will almost certainly want regular updates and they really do want to have ‘proper’ books and records AND they have someone who has a reasonable understanding of bookkeeping then Twinfield would be the thing to go for. On-demand and multi-currency as standard. That way, the overseas investor can see what’s happening in real-time. As can the UK-based professional accountant. Kills all birds with one stone. In other words Twinfield will solve the business problems rather than saddle all parties with a solution that doesn’t meet the central needs of the client in question.
