Taking on my first employee - now I have software issues

Taking on my first employee - now I have...

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All of this might be a silly question and the answer is probably straightforward (and expensive).

I'm about to take on my first employee but obviously I need to get my IT up to speed before doing so.  When I started out a couple of years ago I (foolishly?) joined the Sage accountants club.  They gave me a nice, shiny version of Sage50 2012 Client Manager.  After a year I'd had enough of Sage and joined the Quickbooks ProAdvisor programme, who gave me a nice, shiny version of QB Accountants Edition 2013.

I do quite a lot of bookkeeping and management accounts for my clients hence having these packages.  Originally my intention was to move all the Sage clients onto QB when they reached their year ends, but after using it for a while I found that Sage was better in some circumstances so I have quite a few still on there.

The issue I have is that I'm pretty certain both packages are on single user licences.  Therefore I can't simply load up the discs I have onto a second PC for the new starter.  Is there any way around forking out hundreds of pounds for new licences?  With Sage, given I'm no longer in the Accountants Club and haven't been for nearly a year, is there even any way to get hold of Sage 50 2012?  I've briefly looked at Amazon and Ebay and it's as rare as rocking horse manure.

I'd be interested to hear what others have managed to do in similar situations (obviously without breaching Sage or QB's Ts & Cs - we wouldn't want to do that).

I also don't need to hear about the wonderful benefits of cloud accounting software.  I've come around to that but it isn't going to solve this predicament!

Replies (5)

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
14th Aug 2013 08:30

Server?

Wouldn't dirty any of my kit with S*** but I'm sure we used to run QBs on our server so that one person at a time could use it, might also work peer 2 peer?

Other than that you'll just have to see it as part & parcel of expansion, you soon get used to it!

And yes, you really should be migrating to the Cloud, I'll not take on any new clients now unless they use it.  For those who need (and I mean need) the buttons & whistles of QBs or S*** then Xero or ClearBooks are worth looking at but for most small clients, without loads of transactions, and where clients can do a chunk of the work (eg invoicing, expense claims and money in), FreeAgent (via Iris OpenBooks) is Brill.

 

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By merlyn
14th Aug 2013 08:42

Concurrent licence

Usually with Sage (don't know about QB) the licence is a concurrent so you can install it on as many machines as you like, but only one user can use it at any given time.

 

 

 

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By fiona_howells
14th Aug 2013 12:02

QB

Don't know about Sage but QB will be fine. 

Install a copy of QB on the second machine, phone Intuit and ask for the code the software requires - if they ask say your computers broken so you're having to re-install your software. 

You will both be able to use QB at the same time BUT you wont be able to access the same client data at the same time.

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By merlyn
14th Aug 2013 12:24

Is QB Concurrent ?

Found this site which says that QB licencing (unless you have multiuser) is not concurrent,  so by installing it on another machine for someone else to use would be breaking their licence terms.

http://blog.betterbottomline.com/scott_gregory_quickbooks/2011/02/understanding-the-quickbooks-license-agreement.html

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By andrew55
14th Aug 2013 13:23

Book keeping PC

We have a cheap Dell PC in the office which has these installed on it. Anyone working on book keeping or a clients backup just uses that machine. It's sometimes inconvenient but I'm darned if I'm paying Sage for a multi user licence!

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