Now part of the Wolters Kluwer empire, Dutch-developed Twinfield is a well established Cloud accounting program that caters for the mid-size and larger organisations. Nigel Harris takes a closer look.
Twinfield was founded in 2000 by a team of ex-CODA developers who had been working within the company on an online version since 1998. Rather than trying to adapt CODA to work as a true software as a service (SaaS product), they set about building Twinfield from scratch.
Now in its sixth major version, more than 80,000 financial accounts are compiled using Twinfield in 22 countries. The company was acquired by Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting Europe earlier this year and will be helping its parent company to bring its core UK accounting products online in future.
I remember being very impressed by Twinfield in the early days of online accounting and I was a little disappointed that it had not kept ahead of the competition. It is not as slick and user-friendly as some other online offerings. The company has focused on the Dutch market until this year but has now focused resources on delivering a comprehensive UK service and marketing it to the accountancy profession.
Twinfield
Target market Small and medium size finance teams looking for project accounting, multi-currency and reporting features usually found in mid-range accounting and ERP software. The service is often provided for clients through their accountants.
Cost Five user levels ranging from read-only Shared View at £7 per month to Complete Accounting service at £52 per month. There are additional charges for extra users.
Strengths
● Quick and simple set-up, with customisable chart of accounts and good import facilities for supplier and customer data
● MyDesktop home page has a simple menu structure and a good selection of financial KPIs
● Advanced functionality in areas including budgets, project time/expenses and billing, batch payments, payments, credit management and fixed assets
● Accounting periods can be open or closed, and other authorisation processes can be set according to the organisation's needs
● "Self learning" recognition of previously entered account codes
● Strong reporting capabilities based on reporting "dimensions", projects and other functional modules
● Good VAT handling with strong controls over completed returns and unmatched transactions
● Programming interface makes it possible to add in third party programs
● iPhone app for entering timesheet and expenses data.
Weaknesses
● More expensive than entry-level Cloud accounting systems
● Because of the application's sophistication, it can be complex to configure and learn; but online help system is weak - and some of the material is written in Dutch
● No built-in support for sales/purchase order processing or stock, but third-party add-ons are available
● No support for VAT Flat Rate Scheme, but this is not a common requirement for target users
● No bank data feed facility - yet.
For free trial and more info, visit www.twinfield.com
Getting started
- Twinfield uses a secure three-part login (user name, password and organisation code). For extra security you can add “SMS secure login” whereby a single-use six-digit logon code is sent to you on demand by text message.
- A new company can be created very quickly; a standard chart of accounts is provided and most settings are fairly intuitive. The chart can be edited and added to at will. Unusually, an organisation can have several charts of accounts to meet reporting requirements in different countries.
- Customer, supplier and other data can be imported from Excel or other file types, and the API is freely available for developers and advanced users to design their own links to other software.
- Five user levels are available, from full access (Complete Accounting at £52 per month) down to read-only access to view reports (Shared View at £7 per month). The organisation can set customised access permissions to individual elements of the system for each user – or simply accept the default.
- The latest version of Twinfield sports a clean, clear screen with a single top menu bar that reveals all menu options for each section in a single drop-down so there are no complicated menu layers to work through. Indeed, all the core accounts operations are simply accessed via the Accounting menu.
- Other main menu options are Credit Management (and invoicing), Projects (time, expenses and billing) and Documents (for saved reports).
- Within Accounting you have access to data entry and reporting, Dimensions (additional analysis coding familiar to CODA and SunAccounts users), Pay and Collect (batch payments for large purchase ledger operations), Budgets and Assets (fixed asset register).
- The My Desktop home page features shortcuts to key features and a nice selection of KPI graphs and charts.
- For those used to newer small business accounting software, it may come as a surprise to find that Twinfield uses period accounting, in common with most larger accounting and ERP systems. Postings can only be made to open periods. Periods can be locked or left open at the organisation’s preference. Some leave all periods open until the year end, while others leave only the last two or three open and lock all prior periods. Controls can thus be set according to an organisation’s needs.
In use
- Bank transactions can be entered via a simple cashbook, so all types of receipt and payment can be posted on the same screen, including ledger items. A routine for posting cheques is currently being added as part of the UK-specific development.
- Electronic bank statements can be imported; there are no live bank feed facilities (like Xero) although the company is looking at offering automated feeds via Yodlee. The system tries to match and code as much imported data as possible.
- Naturally, Twinfield supports full multi-currency bank accounts and accounting.
- Invoice posting is similarly straightforward with a lookup facility for accounts and codes. To save data entry time the system remembers the nominal coding of invoices from a supplier and will suggest the same coding next time. Purchase invoices can be scanned in while being posted so that a PDF copy is available online.
- Twinfield includes what it calls “self learning” intelligence. When entries are made through either the cash book, bank statement or any input screen, the software has the ability to remember the settings for these and apply them in future. For example, once “Interest” or “Bank Charges” have been coded on a bank statement, Twinfield will automatically remember and post these in the future saving vast amounts of time and effort. This can also be applied to supplier payments in the cash book where the supplier may be “Southern Electric” and therefore always coded to the nominal code for electricity.
- An iPhone app is available for entering timesheets and expenses.
- A separate matching process has to be applied to sales ledger receipts and purchase ledger payments, which would be tedious in a small business but allows larger organisations to delegate or even outsource bank posting while leaving ledger maintenance to the relevant staff.
- In a similar vein, transactions can be entered as “Provisional” and then posted as final by a supervisor or accountant. If not required, transactions can be posted as final at the outset.
Reporting
- Twinfield excels in the reporting department, although the process is not entirely intuitive. In fact working out the criteria required to produce some reports totally defeated me, combined with the lack of useful online help. Where help articles do exist, much of the Twinfield Knowledgebase is in Dutch!
- A good range of standard reports is supplied, with the usual export and print options. These can be customised extensively and then saved as templates for use either by the user or by some or all other users too. Commonly used reports can be saved as favourites to speed up access.
- For advanced reporting options Twinfield Analysis, an Excel plug-in enables users to design complex Excel reports, pivot tables and so on based on the live Twinfield data.
- VAT handling seems good, with strong controls over completed returns and the identification of unmatched transactions posted to a prior return period. VAT returns can be filed online directly with HMRC. Flat Rate VAT is not supported yet.
- Data can be exported as an XML Audit File, giving the user the ability to save their own copy of all data, either as a backup or to import into other software.
- The company's website has links to a few third-party applications, but Twinfield can be integrated with many other applications by those with the requisite skills. Export of data into final accounts production software, for example, is easily achieved with most standard packages. There is no support for sales/purchase order processing or stock, but good third-party add-ons are available.
- For those of a nervous disposition with respect to data security, all systems and data are stored in the Netherlands but encrypted copies of the data are backed up to data centres on both east and west coasts of the USA.
Overall
Twinfield is focusing in the UK on offering an online solution, at a level above entry-level solutions such as Xero and KashFlow, to clients of accountancy practices. Under the bonnet is a hugely powerful system capable of handling the needs of the largest organisations – the largest user has some 1,000 users accessing the system from many sales offices across Europe. The company does not offer a bespoke service to its larger customers; all have access to a single solution with the same features.
Twinfield is not cheap: the top Complete subscription costs £52 per month and a charge is made for each user, although this is completely flexible as it is based on the number of users set up each month. Not cheap compared with other online SME solutions perhaps, but very competitive when compared with the cost of rolling out and maintaining an in-house ERP system across multiple sites and countries.
Firms wishing to offer Twinfield to their clients are provided with a free administrator view of all their clients, and discounted subscription rates to resell either separately or as part of their compliance fees. Clients can be directed to log on to Twinfield via a firm’s own client portal and the firm can create one or more standard charts of accounts for use by all clients.
New users will need support to get started on Twinfield, but since most will be introduced to it by their accountant, the lack of online help may not be a major issue. It is something that the company needs to address in the long run if it is to market direct to smaller end users.