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Contenders revealed for Software Satisfaction Awards 2008
After sifting through more than 6,000 responses, the contenders for the Software Satisfaction Awards 2008 have been made public. John Stokdyk reviews the runners and riders in the accounting & finance categories.As with the 2007 awards, the shortlists in the finance categories pit a group of plucky specialists against some of the biggest suppliers in the industry.
The biggest single category, small business accounts, attracted more than 1,800 respondents, who voted in sizeable battalions for the industry's giants, Sage, QuickBooks and MYOB. But also in the running for the small business category are e-conomic and KashFlow, the winner of last year's prize for web-hosted accounts systems.
Access Dimensions , Integra from iB Solutions , IRIS Exchequer and Pegasus Opera II will contest the mid-range accounting & finance category, while the enterprise award is a fight between Agresso Business World, CODA Financials, COA Solutions' Open Accounts, HansaWorld Enterprise, Mardak Construction Accounts and PS Financials.
This year, tax and practice management systems were each allocated a separate category to better reflect the role of specialist and suite programs within accounting firms. Digita and the CCH-owed MYOB PerTax feature in the tax category, where they are up against TaxCalc Pro 2008, while the practice management category nominees include APS, DRIVE, Practice Engine and Sage Practice Solution.
The presence of KashFlow and e-conomic in this category reflects the growing reach of web-hosed software as a service (SaaS) accounting systems. Just under 10% of the respondents in the accounting and finance categories (450 out of 4800 respondents) used online systems - a steady, if unspectacular step up from a 7.5% share for SaaS in the 2007 awards.
Here is the Software Satisfaction Awards 2008 Accounting & Finance shortlist in full. The winners will be announced at the ceremony on the evening of Thursday 30 October, at The Brewery in London. The Software Satisfaction Annual containing the detailed results will be published on the night of the awards and be available as a PDF download the next morning.
Visit the Software Satisfaction Awards 2008 website for further details.
Small business accounting
KashFlow
MYOB Accounting Plus
QuickBooks Pro 2008 from Intuit
Sage 50 Accounts
Honourable mentions:
e-conomic
Mardak Construction Accounts
Mamut Enterprise
Mid-range accounting
Access Dimensions
Integra from iB Solutions
IRIS Exchequer
Pegasus Opera II
Honourable mentions:
HansaWorld Enterprise
Mardak Construction Accounts
Enterprise accounting
Agresso Business World
CODA Financials
Open Accounts from COA Solutions
PS Financials
Web-hosted accounting
e-conomic
KashFlow
Liquid Accounts
Pearl Office
Business intelligence/CPM
Business Objects from SAP
Cognos 8
People Analytics from COA Solutions
Honourable mentions:
Inca Planning
SPSS 16.0
Tax
Digita Personal Tax
PerTax from MYOB
TaxCalc Pro 2008
Honourable mention:
Tax Tips & Tools from BBS Computing
Practice Mgmt
Advance Practice Management from APS
DRIVE fom Relate Software
Practice Engine
Sage Practice Solution
Paperless office
DbArchive from Version One
Docusoft
Rapport from Practice Net
Draycir Spindle Professional
Honourable mention:
CaseWare Paperless Accounts
Accounting & finance reseller of the year
dhc
Enhanced Computer Solutions
Minerva Computer Services
Profile Technology Services
Honourable mention:
Sapphire Systems plc
Number of comments: 4
AccountingWEB.co.uk 20-Aug-2008
Categories: IT Features, Software
Times read: 3554
Dear Bryan
A little late in responding, but if you haven't found an exact match for your requirements you could look at accountsIQ.com. This is a true SaaS solution and handles multi-currency, advanced stock and will link to access.
Check out www.accountsIQ.com
Hope this helps.
Len
Your can consider using a Microsoft Terminal Services server for remote access (assuming you want a number of concurrent remote users). This will keep your maximum options open as to which software might be preferred because just 'on-line' will prove too restrictive I suspect.
It sounds like the look and feel is as important to you as the functionality. There aren't that many online options which cover the scope you require, so you will only need to spend half an hour identifying the few that say they can cope with multi-currency and stock management. I recommend that you look into those that offer a free trial which you can access immediately - within a couple of hours you'll probably know which one to invest more time in exploring before committing your business.
Mark Davies
www.e-conomic.co.uk
We have been using Dimensions (has done for about 3 years). We find it very difficult to use, very modular and with very basic reporting abilities and spend all our time creating reports on Crystal, Excel and Access, rather than straight off the program e.g. if we want reports by area/postcode, etc..
We have sales of about £7m and three main operations:
1. Sales of new equipment.
2. Servicing of equipment (we use Service Manager software for this i.e. organise jobs, allocate parts, etc but don't find it particularly good/user friendly).
3. Refurbishment of equipment i.e. buying in equipment, refurbing and selling on.
We are interested in a simple system capable of coping with departments/divisions (only 2-3), some foreign purchases, continual stock records for new stockand major items of refurb stock (not down to every nut and bolt and hour of labour) and to control servicing. We want something easy to understand, simple to produce reports giving key indicators such as cash position/forecast and profitability. Also, easy for staff to use - with Dimensions they feel they are working for the program, not the other way around! The program should ideally be online or at the very least capable of remote access.
We have our own bespoke software which is based on Access, which we would like to use instead of Service Manager, so ideally the program should be capable of interfacing with Access, but this is not essential.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
