software requirements for startup

Have a look at www.absolutetax.co.uk.

We can provide everything you need and are already fully iXBRL compliant.  Never knowingly undersold and a five year price promise.

AbsoluteTax looks OK as long as that isnt sold out to Iris too.

I recommend VT for accounts, TaxCalc for tax and Moneysoft for payroll - all very good packages, very reliable, competitively priced, great support and overall do the job well.

I've never yet found anything thats worth the money for practice management.

I answer the above as one running my own small practice not as someone trying to sell their software.

Got fed up with PTP and it's arrogance, reviewed quite a few including VT, Iris, Digita and Keytime.

I found Keytime to be good value for money but Digita served my requirements better.  Don't know anything about this new company, but as I am not using Digita's time and fees and company Secretrial, might just test tese tow modules, only if they can link to Digita products.

Mr Good, why are your FAqs in a language other than English?

Good question - the site only opened two weeks ago and the FAQs section has been pre-populated with the usual doggerel that developers use as sample text. I'll get rid of it this week and put in some more useful info on the software.

I've been using VT Software for accounts production for years and can't recommend them enough. For CT and SA I'm now using BTCSoftware's products which are also very good.

Is it odd that the Absolute products are all published by Forbes? I guess not when you see this http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/technology/tim-good-returns-absolute-accounting/409772. I wonder how long it will be before IRIS buy Forbes?

Greg

  I use IRIS as it integrates well meaning you only enter information in once and do not have to remember to amend figures. They offer a relatively low cost start up package. I have not dealt with the other software listed so cannot comment on their ease of use.

................It's Forbes in disguise.

If you are charging an hourly rate, or just want to track your time - look at Four Four Time for the simplest method - used by many accounting web members.

If you are charging an hourly rate, or just want to track your time - look at Four Four Time for the simplest method - used by many accounting web members.

Really? Do you actually mean regularly plugged by a Four Four Time salesperson?

From one AW member who doesnt use it.

MyPAYE will answer your payroll needs and links to Kashflow, Xero, Sage 50 and economic accounts solutions, with our Partner Program MyPAYE can be fully branded as your own this is free of charge there are no upfront costs.

With MypAYE you can interact with clients allow them to do as much as little of the payroll as you feel they are competent to manage. You can allow more capable clients to run their payroll and just charge them for using your service.

MyPAYE will allow you to add good revenue streams for those of your clients who are using Sage 50 you can also sell the sage 50 link app so they can use MyPAYE and download journals directly into Sage this costs just £14.99 per annum to your client you will buy at partner rate and sell on.

MyPAYE will allow you to take on more payrolls without increasing staffing as your clients can do the bulk of the work. 

Fully HMRC accredited, simple to use, with HR functionality and online filling.

We are paying thousands of employees and working with an daily increasing number of Accountants using the Partner Program.

Please have a look at this article by Dennis Howlett well respected by many for his views and opinion

http://www.accmanpro.com/2010/03/16/lerryn-shaking-up-sage-via-mypaye/

And take a look at MyPAYE with the link below.

www.mypaye.co.uk

Hope this helps I would be happy to discuss MyPAYE with you please feel free to drop me an email.

Neil Seekings

customerservices@mypaye.co.uk

Hello,

I have used for a number of years:

IRIS accounts production.

Digita tax for personal, partnership and trust returns.

TAS for PAYE

EXCEL spreadsheets for time recording etcetera.

Filing online now in place for all functions,including VAT.

I hope this is of assistance.

Best wishes for your new practice.

Ron

I have a small consultancy and log time using http://www.getharvest.com/ and find it to be excellent.  I left a much larger (1,800 person) consultancy using Elite and Carpe Diem and find that Harvest gives all the functionality and more.

 I'll go with Greg. VT+ for accounts plus BTC for tax but would add payroll manager from Moneysoft.  Consider ACT for contact management, work flow and time recording with INVU for document archive/retrieval to link it all together and you'll rarely have to open a filing cabinet again. If finances permit - put it all together when you start - you'll be busy later and will wish you had done it all at the beginning. Pay an ACT consultant for half a day  to configure screen layouts for key client info - UTRs, company info etc, Co Hse codes key dates et al, plus letter templates etc and you'll fly and punch above your weight from the start at a cost much reduced from the inflexibility of an integrated system.

Good Luck!

are you the Mr Good  - if so i take it that your non compete clause is finished which is 'good' news for us all i presume

There is a Tim Good who is a UFO expert.  I am just a tax lecturer.

i remember the old days when yu desribed PTP as your pension

good to see you back i have now read all the links above and am considerably wiser

it appears its a rebadge of Forbes but i will be happy to have a look at all the demos so i am also better informed

good kuck its another well priced offering - thast one and a half further puns

PS interesting to see what one correspondent said about Iris and PTP - there they go again?

I previously posted this answer to another question but I think it will answer your question too!

I used IRIS in my previous partnership and in fact made the original decision to implement it over 5 years ago.

I have since set up my own practice and didn't think twice about implementing integrated practice software, despite the costs - that's a no brainer in terms of time-saving & error-minimisation!  However, I had a good look round at other software providers in June 2009 and didn't eventually put in IRIS.

I would agree that IRIS is the market leader and there are some advantages there but I felt they had got a bit complacent about this position and had stopped investing in their products, whilst they got a bigger and bigger company taking over lots of other software houses.  Their customer service for existing customers was poor, it was hard to get hold of your account manager to raise issues and when you did raise issues, they just said they'd add it to the list for consideration when the product was next updated but never told you when the next product update was due!  I felt they got less good as they got bigger and bigger!  I think they have recently invested and upgraded their products so hopefully they now run properly on Windows SQL which they didn't before.

I also was not particularly impressed with Keytime as I thought it lagged a long way behind IRIS in terms of integration & also product sophistication.

I also looked at CCH but that seemed to be full of bugs even during my software demo!  And again this was a big company and customer service was poor even for potential customers!!

I finally decided to put in Digita as its products were so heavily endorsed by both ICAEW and HMRC.  The integration in the products does lag a little way behind IRIS but it is almost there and is being developed all the time (and I have seen upgrades & improvements coming in regularly since I became their customer in July 2009!).  I have also got to know several of the support guys by name as they do take personal ownership of the problems.  So whilst there have been some inevitable problems, they have dealt with them well. Plus Digita are always interested in your feedback and you do actually see results of them putting your suggestions into place!  I am a tiny player in Digita's customer base but they do spend time even with me!

Hopefully this will help balance things up a little for you!

Hi there. 

Apologies for the late contribution.  I have a small work from home practice and have always used the Iris Starter Pack with Practice Management and Company Secretarial.  I have always justifed to mysef that I'm saving money by not duplicating data entry, despite a serious amount of time spent with problems with my Iris system.  However as a practice that intends to remain very small I have come to the conclusion that if I had a reliable basic practice management system to centrallise my client data and keep me updated on jobs, deadlines  and contacts with clients automatically I'd be far better using VT for accounts and TaxCalc for tax (I already use Moneysoft for payroll, by far the best of many payroll packages I've tried, so would 100% recommend that).  I'd also save more than £2,500 per year.  To that end I sat down and designed an Access database to be my practice management system.  I liked it so much that I'm now looking at marketing and selling it at a low cost fixed one off fee.  If anyone reading this post would like to volunteer to trial it and give me feedback for changes, improvements or corrections I can let them have a free copy of the final software.  Ideally I need a few volunteers with various operating systems (XP, Vista and Windows 7 particularly), and people with or with different versions of Microsoft Access or no Access at all.  If anyone is interested could they please e-mail me on lesley@appletonaccounting.co.uk with detais of their operating system and current verson of Access (or not).  Please note it won't be necessary to have Access to use this database so no big investments in software are required.

Thanks

Lesley Hill

Hi Lesley

Could I have a copy of Practice Management too. haroon7@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks

Arash

BTC tax software now comes with a practice management module.