Tag: Software

Putting your accounts on Debitoor

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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:

  1. Create your contacts – Clients and Suppliers
  2. Create your Products
  3. 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.
  4. I then created multiple bank accounts – Lloyds, Directors, PayPal
  5. For expenses that I had an invoice for I uploaded the PDF of the expense
  6. 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.

steve@bicknells.net

 

How can £4m disappear in a black hole in the Accounts?

That’s exactly what happened at London Black Cab maker Manganese Bronze

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-19255918

The company blamed the accounting mistake on its new IT system, which meant losses, dating back several years, had been understated by £3.9m.

Coventry-based Manganese Bronze saw its shares fall 34% after saying it expected “substantially higher” losses for the first half of the year.

Manganese said a combination of “system and procedural errors” meant a number of transactions and balances were not transferred to the new IT system when it was introduced in August 2010.

Basically Invoices went missing during the transfer between systems.

If you are changing accounting system:

1. Choose your new software carefully and ask for references

2. Have a migration plan

3. Makesure your data is safe, secure and correct before you switch

4. Test the new system before your go live

5. If necessary parallel run the systems

steve@bicknells.net