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There are lots of brilliant accounting solutions on the market, so how can you decide which one will work best for your business?
Features
The first thing you need to decide is what features you need:
Projects
Stock
Construction Industry
Payroll
Invoicing
Automated payments – PayPal etc
Bank Feeds
Quotes
VAT Schemes
Document Storage
Accountant Access
Access – Apps, Devices, Mac’s
Contact Management
Reports
Don’t pay for things you don’t need!
Future Proof
As your business grows, will the software grow with you
Can you add users
Can you set access levels
Are there upgrade products
Can you add in other products (Apps) such as scanned receipts
Cost
How much does it cost? Normally working with an accountant will reduce the overall cost and provide a package deal
Monthly Software Subscription
Accountancy Fees
Book Keeping Costs
Ask for Help
Just because you have cloud based software it doesn’t mean you won’t need an accountant! you might think you don’t need help but an accountant will help you choose the right VAT Scheme, claim tax reliefs and comply with reporting requirements.
When you start a business its because you have a skill or product that clients want and most small businesses put off the accounting because they find it boring, time consuming and unproductive. This often causes huge problems with tax, cash and business management.
What if it wasn’t boring, what if it was easy and quick to do?
Apps for invoicing
Available every where all the time on all your devices
Automatic bank feeds to reduce data entry
Dashboards of key data
Easy access for you and your accountant
That’s why cloud accounting systems are the future. Take a look at this infographic produced by Sage.
Obi Wan Kanobi might not be you’re only hope, cloud accounting could save your business.
I have just signed up to the Premium Pro Debitoor Account, I wanted to have online access and did a comparison to Xero, Sage, Kashflow and Free Agent. I thought Debitoor was excellent value for money (£9/mth for Premium Pro) and I have long been a fan of their online invoicing.
Debitoor is an easy-to-use invoicing and accounting software which helps freelancers and small businesses produce nice-looking, professional invoices in a matter of seconds and assists them in their accounting.
Debitoor is designed for straight forward businesses so if your business is complicated then its probably not the best option for you.
So this is how you get started:
Create your contacts – Clients and Suppliers
Create your Products
Enter the opening balances on the balance sheet (reports) – Debitoor currently only works in calendar years (Jan to Dec) so if like me your year end falls on a different date you will need to enter the balances in the previous year, in my case my year end is March so I entered the balances in 2014 I will then do a year end and they will become the 2015 opening balances and I started entering invoices and expenses in April. I know that’s not ideal and Debitoor are constantly working on improvements, so its compromise for now.
I then created multiple bank accounts – Lloyds, Directors, PayPal
For expenses that I had an invoice for I uploaded the PDF of the expense
I then uploaded the bank statements for Lloyds and PayPal and reconciled and posted them
I think the priority for all businesses should be issuing and tracking sales invoices and that’s what Debitoor does best.