Cloud software that is used by the client

Cloud software that is used by the client

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I am just wondering which cloud package everyone thinks is the best for just the client - in other words, which cloud package is easiest to understand - from what the brilliant Paul Scholes has said in the past, I am guessing it's FreeAgent but any opinions would be welcome?

I am sorry I haven't been on here for a while by the way but my wife has been in hospital since the end of September so business has suddenly become 'part-time' - not a great position to be in especially as we're now in January!

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Universe
By SteveOH
06th Jan 2014 10:10

FreeAgent

I mainly use FreeAgent and my clients that use it seem to like it. Mind you, if a client doesn't quite grasp bookkeeping then any package will cause some initial problems.

One client I put onto FreeAgent entered most of their purchases and expenses twice; once under Bills and again under Expenses (those who use FA will know what I mean). I couldn't work out how they had a creditors balance of over £5,000 when they paid everything by cash or cheque.

And the number of my clients who can't manage VT CashBook properly. One client emailed me recently and said that he would be entering all his transactions on a spreadsheet as he found he was having too many problems with VT CashBook. I mean, how simple can a bookkeeping program be?

Another client used my very simple Receipts and Payments spreadsheets to enter her transactions. I asked her why all her expense payments had been entered on her Receipts spreadsheet. She told me that she thought it was where she entered all her receipt vouchers etc.

Mind you, they are small sole traders and it just goes to show that, however simple and straightforward we may think a particular program is, it will invariably cause problems to some clients.

By the way, I wish your wife a speedy recovery. Three months is a long time to be stuck in hospital. Get well soon.

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By Ken Howard
06th Jan 2014 11:22

Free Agent and Kashflow

Our clients use a mix of Free Agent and Kashflow.  Almost all have quickly learned the basics and are producing decent enough book-keeping.  Both are very easy and written with the non-bookkeeper in mind.  The main benefit of both is that they're easy for us to correct the inevitable mispostings etc.

We've tried other cloud packages such as AccountsPortal and Xero, but found that the clients made more mistakes and their mistakes were harder for us to correct.  I.e. with AP, you can't easily change an expense allocation once paid and reconciled, whereas with KF and FAC, it's just a mouse click without messing up the bank rec.  

We've only ever had one client who couldn't get on with either FAC nor KF and she was supposedly educated - she would never tire of telling us she had a maths/statistics degree so it was the book-keeping programs that were wrong, not her!!!  After giving up with software, she went back to doing her book-keeping on her home made spreadsheet which was virtually impossible to follow.  Luckily, she got the hint and went elsewhere a couple of years ago.

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By Moonbeam
06th Jan 2014 11:31

Sorry to hear of your news, JayBee

I'm really sorry to hear of your wife's illness. I do hope things improve for her this year.

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
06th Jan 2014 13:18

Clearbooks

I spent a bit time looking at Xero and whilst its good I felt the accountants registration and assessment process was a bit unecesary and the costs for recommending their software were quite high. I have moved to clear books who are a lot more helpful and the product is very good. I use it myself and have 2 client on it and 3 more to start on it before end of January. The software is quite easy to use and non accountants will get to grips with it better than say SAGE or others.

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By CatherineR5
11th Jan 2014 09:35

Do any of these handle default nominal codes?

I'm reviewing online/cloud based systems on behalf of a client to potentially migrate them from TAS (!).

They have a complex Chart of Accounts, and what mainly concerns me is the lack of 'default nominal code' functionality against customer/supplier records in both Xero and Freeagent.

This seems **fundamental** to me, in terms of something that the accountant/bookkeeper sets up for the client, and then the client tries not to mess up...

Re-entering these codes on each transaction means we're going to have stuff all over the place....

 

The obvious migration from TAS is to Sage, but Sage Online just isn't a proper grown-up system in IMHO.

 

Any ideas, anyone?  I'm about to look at Clearbooks, but I've just heard that a contact has abandoned that in favour of Xero...

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