[EvilDrPorkChop]

Looking to go automated and have a bit more control over our book keeping, do everything manually by spreadsheets etc. at the minute. Small business with 4 employees, not particularly bothered about it doing Payroll however needs to do VAT. We don't use stock either, so needs to be something that we can just invoice what we want rather than have to allocate items.

Looking at the 3 main ones, Sage, Quickbooks and Xero. Can anyone recommend one?

Had Sage many years ago and wasn't impressed, however like I say it was many years ago.

[isleaiw1]

Presume that you use accountants to do stat accounts and tax returns? If so what do they use? many now use cloud based systems so that you can use as same of they use and key in your own stuff and then they pick up and turn in to stat accounts / tax comps at year end.

If so its likely to be Quickbooks or Xero.

If your accountants dont then maybe look to move to one that does?

[Craig-SM]

I use all three plus some others. What type of business are you in and I may be able to steer you to one that suits your needs better?

[EvilDrPorkChop]

Originally Posted by isleaiw1

Presume that you use accountants to do stat accounts and tax returns? If so what do they use? many now use cloud based systems so that you can use as same of they use and key in your own stuff and then they pick up and turn in to stat accounts / tax comps at year end.

If so its likely to be Quickbooks or Xero.

If your accountants dont then maybe look to move to one that does?

Yes accountants do Stat Accounts and Tax Returns. Asked them a few times and they said just keeping using Spreadsheets. I know they use Quickbooks and Sage.

They're very good accountants, I think the issue is we make it way to easy for them. Everything is right, and it's easy for them to just work off the spreadsheet. Also I don't want to just use what they want if it's not really right for us.

Originally Posted by Craig-SM

I use all three plus some others. What type of business are you in and I may be able to steer you to one that suits your needs better?

We're in the building trade. I have no experience with any of them however i'm tech savvy so it should be too much of an issue getting set up.

Our end of year is soon, so was looking to start a fresh at the start of a new year.

[Craig-SM]

QuickBooks would suit your needs. Creating sales invoices and entering expenses is easy on them all, the more you enter the quicker it becomes as they remember how you previously entered them. QuickBooks will allow you to enter the expenses and also allocate them to a customer invoice if your charging materials plus labour. It will also handle your payroll and CIS too.
Bank feeds with automatic matching to entries is pretty much standard but QuickBooks and Xero do it better.

[EvilDrPorkChop]

Originally Posted by Craig-SM

QuickBooks would suit your needs. Creating sales invoices and entering expenses is easy on them all, the more you enter the quicker it becomes as they remember how you previously entered them. QuickBooks will allow you to enter the expenses and also allocate them to a customer invoice if your charging materials plus labour. It will also handle your payroll and CIS too.
Bank feeds with automatic matching to entries is pretty much standard but QuickBooks and Xero do it better.

I thought Quickbooks looked quite good, along with what seems reasonable pricing too. Not bothered about booking materials to jobs, just want straight forward invoicing that I can bill out. We have that much stock/item used on a job it's not worth the hassle.

[Watsey]

From personal experience :

Avoid XERO like the plague. Limited functionality; required manual work-arounds to get the correct information in the correct place on invoices; 9 months of frustration and wasted time before I pulled the plug. IMO it's more suited to accountants than business owners.

I switched to QuickBooks Online and find it vastly more intuitive. I have no plans to change.

[Craig-SM]

Originally Posted by EvilDrPorkChop

I thought Quickbooks looked quite good, along with what seems reasonable pricing too. Not bothered about booking materials to jobs, just want straight forward invoicing that I can bill out. We have that much stock/item used on a job it's not worth the hassle.

A lot of my clients improved profits by matching expenses to jobs as they would often forget about some materials that hadn’t been charged to the client.

If your year end is soon I would suggest getting it setup sooner rather than later so you can get your main customer and supplier accounts setup in advance.
If your accountant is already using QuickBooks get them to set it up and provide some basic training on using it. You can link your accountant to your Quckbooks too so they can look in on what your doing and make corrections as you go along so you don’t get as many queries at the year end. They will also get better deals on the software so can save you a bit of money but it's already a lot cheaper than Xero.

[Bibbles]

I've used Xero for the last 4 years and have found it quite easy to use and learn. I'm not from an accounting background and had to learn it all as the businesses grew.

[EvilDrPorkChop]

Originally Posted by Craig-SM

A lot of my clients improved profits by matching expenses to jobs as they would often forget about some materials that hadn’t been charged to the client.

If your year end is soon I would suggest getting it setup sooner rather than later so you can get your main customer and supplier accounts setup in advance.
If your accountant is already using QuickBooks get them to set it up and provide some basic training on using it. You can link your accountant to your Quckbooks too so they can look in on what your doing and make corrections as you go along so you don’t get as many queries at the year end. They will also get better deals on the software so can save you a bit of money but it's already a lot cheaper than Xero.

We aren't too bad for that due to all our work being estimate based. All the costings are usually done when the estimate is done, hence why I don't want to be messing around with Stock features etc. I'd be doing the work twice!

I'll have a word with our accountant then and a closer look at Quickbooks. It was my preferred one anyway...so it's good to hear some recommendations.

[EvilDrPorkChop]

Originally Posted by Craig-SM

A lot of my clients improved profits by matching expenses to jobs as they would often forget about some materials that hadn’t been charged to the client.

If your year end is soon I would suggest getting it setup sooner rather than later so you can get your main customer and supplier accounts setup in advance.
If your accountant is already using QuickBooks get them to set it up and provide some basic training on using it. You can link your accountant to your Quckbooks too so they can look in on what your doing and make corrections as you go along so you don’t get as many queries at the year end. They will also get better deals on the software so can save you a bit of money but it's already a lot cheaper than Xero.

Also I forgot to ask, with Quickbooks can you have it automatically export Invoices to a PDF file? We keep a PDF backup of all our documents, and I can't seem to find if it'll do this Automatically or a batch export for every month etc. Thanks for the advice!

[Craig-SM]

You can print to a PDF file if you wish though there is no need as you can produce a copy very quickly. When you send an invoice to your client via email it also tracks when it was received and the invoice opened so the client can’t mess you about with saying they’ve not received it.
Also by email you can setup direct debit and card payments very a third parties so ch as PayPal

[Craig-SM]

You really don’t need to keep separate PDF backup of your documents. When you create an expense or bank payment entry in QuickBooks you can drag and drop a copy please of the invoice receipts as a picture or PDF.
Same with a sales invoice you can attach documents to the invoice such as drawings and specs.
With QuickBooks you find all the info you need from the software without having to rummage through a filing cabinet or backup folders. Obviously this means you can have the information you require where ever you have connection to the internet.
If your employees need to buy materials when out in a job they can have an account setup so they can take a picture of the receipts using their phone and put it straight into QuickBooks without access to any thing you don’t want them to see.

[Cilonen]

If you bank with Natwest you get free access to FreeAgent www.freeagent.com which my friend uses for her solo business.

Can automatically send invoices, link/convert estimates to invoices, can file tax returns and you can allow your accountant access to the system so avoiding sending piles of files at year end.

[Bryans69]

Originally Posted by Watsey

From personal experience :

Avoid XERO like the plague. Limited functionality; required manual work-arounds to get the correct information in the correct place on invoices; 9 months of frustration and wasted time before I pulled the plug. IMO it's more suited to accountants than business owners.

I switched to QuickBooks Online and find it vastly more intuitive. I have no plans to change.

When did you look at Xero? We are looking for something now, and that is on the list. Out of interest, what is missing / didn't work for you?

[Watsey]

Originally Posted by Bryans69

When did you look at Xero? We are looking for something now, and that is on the list. Out of interest, what is missing / didn't work for you?

I kept a Reminder list in my iPhone at one point but deleted if when I was happy with QBO. It was a long list.

At the time it was things like :

Registered Office address and postal address displayed in the wrong fields in invoices.
No ability to save frequent or schedule recurring expenses (business mileage between home and clients' offices; per-diems).
Clunky and unnecessarily complicated automated transactions coding.

Moving to QBO was a massive relief - so much more intuitive.

[RonEdge87]

Originally Posted by EvilDrPorkChop

Looking to go automated and have a bit more control over our book keeping, do everything manually by spreadsheets etc. at the minute. Small business with 4 employees, not particularly bothered about it doing Payroll however needs to do VAT. We don't use stock either, so needs to be something that we can just invoice what we want rather than have to allocate items.

Looking at the 3 main ones, Sage, Quickbooks and Xero. Can anyone recommend one?

Had Sage many years ago and wasn't impressed, however like I say it was many years ago.

Hi I was looking for the same thing last year with my wife's small business as we had EVERYTHING on excel which took up so much time as im sure you know i looked into Sage, Quickbooks, Xero & Free Agent, but then we found Ember who are perfect for us as they have all sorts like; easy invoicing, pay roll, tax help.

I would really recommend looking into Ember, it could be quite a good option? Especially if you're looking for invoicing options.

Thanks

Ron

[Craig-SM]

Call me cynic but I’m always surprised that someone joins a forum and there first post is promoting something on a topic from years ago.

[F30Andy]

PM me if you want a bespoke solution.

[EvilDrPorkChop]

For reference for everyone, we actually ended up on Quickbooks which so far has been fantastic. Only thing i'm not very happy about was they've removed syncing of Google Contacts.