In my job I look at client's figures, sometimes complex, sometimes simple and most of the time the data is presented and I trawl through it looking for exceptions and things that don't make sense.
Occasionally client's are not sophisticated enough to provide a pack of info so they let me access their accounting system (read only) and I run off the relevant reports.
I have looked at data on a major cloud based accounting package recently. It's chronically slow.
Running a sales ledger aged report took 20 minutes and that's for 50ish debtors and I needed 12 months worth.
Running a transaction report took nearly an hour.
I checked with the supplier's help desk, there were no reported issues!
Equivalent reports on the most popular PC based accounts package would take about 10 minutes total on an average laptop and would most of the time would actually be converting the data to Excel format.
Not impressed so far.
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Cloud based accounting (Crunch) suited me as a one man band doing a single contract. I could print my "annual report" whenever I wanted, and had access to more info than I needed. All the statutory stuff was done by them, and they had a quite good technical helpdesk (accountant types) to assist when needed.
I think that was all for about £69 a month which compared favourably with the local accountant I used for the first year or two, as did the processes I had to follow. They had higher level packages which included payrolls etc for larger businesses.
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Can see that it makes sense for a small business that doesn't want to set up its own accounts system.
Processing more than a few transactions on the heavily advertised system that I used today would be painful!
Last edited by: zippy on Wed 26 Feb 20 at 00:00
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Until just under 2 years ago a son ran his own business for 14 years.
He used a local accountant who ran his accounts & did the required reporting for Companies House, Corporation tax, VAT Returns, PAYE and his own Personal Tax returns which included Company Director & PAYE status - started at £50 and rose to £120 per month. The 2 partners + 4/5 employees did very nicely as they had 200+ of similar 1 man band companies + bigger fish.
Many small companies fail as they do not keep on top of accounts. At 55 years I worked in an accountants office for 6 months - farmers, haulage company, small builders would turn up with a cardboard box with receipts, bank statements, cheque stubs etc a set of accounts were produced from the "incomplete records".
Today they might try and run Sage accounts on a PC.
Fail to keep the PC updated, fail to take back-ups, fail to record all the transactions & fall foul of the VAT man.
The cardboard box of receipts might not be as common BUT the modern equivalent exists.
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>>The cardboard box of receipts might not be as common BUT the modern equivalent exists.
More than a few years back I was looking at the finances of a small engineering firm in Sheffield.
The sales were partly computerised, great, but my job is about business finance and cash flow is key so I needed to know who the suppliers were and what was owed.
The proprietor, who called us in, was a great bloke, but from another century. Modern business finance had got away from him and he needed help. He had no idea what his cashflow needs were and VAT caught him out each quarter.
He handed me a wooden block with a spike through it. The oldest supplier invoice was at the bottom of the spike the newest at the top!
We did far more number crunching and drawing up cashflows than we should have and arranged a loan to upgrade their equipment and our local sales guy recommended a local lass who part-timed as a book-keeper but wanted to increase her hours. It was a condition of the loan that a book-keeper be employed.
I checked on Companies House recently and the business is still going with no outstanding charges registered and in a position to have to file full accounts and is doing ok. I am convinced it would have been another story without good books.
Last edited by: zippy on Wed 26 Feb 20 at 12:01
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I’ve recently started using Xero for my own stuff, and so far it seems excellent. For a fiver a month (first 6 months) rising to £10 it sucks the data from my bank and automates bank reconciliations, links with HMRC for VAT, and provides well formatted P&L/BS/CF reports. It’s also very easy to use. Whilst I am a qualified accountant I’ve never raised an invoice, posted a journal, prepared a bank rec or prepared a set of accounts in my life until now! But it was very easy to set up, the phone/iPad app works well, and the dashboard views has everything I need in it. I was up and running in under 15 minutes of subscribing - but I don’t have 50ish debtors and only raise around 5 or 6 invoices as month!
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Online/ Cloud Accounting - smokie
