I manage the accounts for a small Irish company with a UK branch and a VAT Registration in both UK and Ireland with separate VAT returns for the income and expenditure in each country, but the overall totals are as one company. I also operate the payroll for Ireland and the UK. (If you ever thought the UK PAYE system complex and confusing, it is a walk in the park compared to the Irish system).
I currently manage it using an accounts system I created on excel as it has never been possible to find an accounts system which would do what was required, then link and produce all the reports needed, and do so in two currencies. However the client has decided that it would be a good idea to find an online system we can all access from anywhere and I agree it is essential as the company grows.
Does anyone know of a really good accounts system that will do what my excel system does at the moment and manage two currencies. I have it set up so that I only have to do one entry for each transaction and it links to and produces endless numbers of reports including, sales, commissions due, targets met or not at any one time, expense budgets on track or not as the case may be and also cash flow reports.
We have found one system from a company based in Northern Ireland who have obviously been faced with the same problem by many clients working between the north and south, they are probably closer to the problem than we are here in England. However it just seems very basic and I would now be faced with doing everything several times as it does not produce any of the reports linked to the accounts which I have managed to create in excel. I am looking for something which will be less time consuming to operate not more, but it needs to be worth having to make the change.
This cannot be the only company faced with this problem so what do others do? I tried Sage One it won't do two separate VAT registrations or two currencies in the one set of accounts. We could have two separate systems but it would have nothing linking to give an overall picture of the financial position.
Replies (10)
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QB?
QuickBooks will do it - pretty sure you set up an Irish VAT agency and then a UK vat agency and have different VAT codes for each then filter any VAT report to show just what you need. Not sure about the Irish PAYE scheme though
Quickbooks
QuickBooks should do the job, you set up VAT item codes and multicurrency, and you can differentiate the Irish and UK businesses by class so produce separate reporting for each. That's the desktop version anyway which I find very good (far superior and more user friendly than Sage, which wouldn't be hard).
For payroll in Ireland, buy a package like Collsoft or Payback (www.collsoft.ie, www.payback.ie ), only €130 or so pa and saves hours of time and trouble, doing it manually in Ireland is a recipe for trouble with the various thresholds/medical card exemptions etc. I use Payback for about 20 clients per month and it works very well. Let me know if you want any more info.
ABM
We use Advanced Business Manager (ABM), it is very easy to use and has multi- currency and multi- company capabilities. Highly recommend it.
www.advancedbusinessmanager.com or contact 01275 547412
You have three different issues here.
1. Multi-currency - should not be much of a problem and online systems are fairly readily available. If you don't absolutely have to use online, QuickBooks does multi-currency very well. Not sure which system will generate all the reports that you already though.
2. VAT returns for two jurisdictions - this is the main difficulty and we have it too. We have a fairly good online system but this is a problem that is on their development list and had not been mentioned before we reported it. (They are based in Ireland and so are we.) I don't think that QuickBooks will handle the two separate VAT returns but with all the flexibility that it offers, you should be able to work around it. Be careful when doing your VAT returns as it is likely that they will be presented to you in your home currency and you will need to file each return in the relevant local currency.
3. Irish payroll: Again we do both Irish and UK payrolls and I am expert in Irish and competent in UK. Take it from me that, overall, the Irish system (including compliance with the Revenue obligations) is significantly more streamlined and logical overall. (To digress slightly, filing and paying an Irish PAYE return takes a fraction of the time that the UK one takes.)
No-one should do Irish payroll using any of the Revenue tools! There are quite a few cheap and effective packages. Collsoft is an outstanding software package and is very easy to use. €140 per year for one user and up to three payrolls. I recommend it. However, I have no experience of Payback but it seems to be ok. I note from its website that it does a comparison with two Sage packages and the cheaper one of them is very poor indeed so it is not much competition. Both of these will do the job much better than the way you are muddling through at present. Money well spent, whichever one you buy.