Accounting Software

[~Yuckfou~]

I'm about to jack in my job and start working for myself. To start off I'll have less money but I'll probably live longer.
I'll be needing some acounting software, but I know nothing about either accounting or the products available.
The choice seems to be, Quickbooks basic, MYOB basic, Sageline 50.
Anyone got any suggestions, used any of these, things to watch out for?

Ta.

 

[xane]

I've done work for a couple of organizations and I've got a friend who runs a computer business school and is and expert in accounting systems, they all say Sage is the daddy, but that is third-hand advice I'm afraid.

 

[Vae]

I'd go for Quickbooks tbh. It's easy to use, good for small companies/businesses and a lot cheaper than Sage. The only danger with it is that it is possible to utterly delete transactions with their being no evidence (audit trail) that it ever existed. That however can also be a good thing in that it keeps things neat. The other thing I really like about Quickbooks is that you can get right down to the actual transaction detail i.e. take money from bank and pay it to a creditor, which is something Sage doesn't do well.


I generally advise Sage Line 50 where the company is looking to grow quite a bit or is already that bit bigger. It is a lot more expensive than Quickbooks and probably slightly more difficult to use but copes better with larger companies or ones where you need to do more complicated things. It also has the advantage of a full audit trail so that you can't erase a transaction totally, only delete it. This means that incompetent clients can't screw things up without leading a trail. Admittedly it'll be a trail of breadcrumbs but it's better than nothing

Myob - I don't know much about this package having only encountered one of it's older incarnations which I wasn't very impressed with.

One additional thing to bear in mind is whether you have an accountant to prepare your year end tax returns/accounts and if so what program they use. For example there's a professional package for accountants called IRIS which produces accounts and tax returns automatically from a trial balance sheet entered into it. This has to be entered manually but they also do a basic book-keeping package like Quickbooks (probably slightly more basic) which can then have its figures imported automatically into thr main IRIS program. Just something worth considering because it could possibly save you accountants time/fees.