Marginz [1] is another online accounting package that claims to unite the client managing their business and the accountant supporting the client. Indeed, it claims to be the ONLY true online real-time accounting system. (This claim has been disputed by rival companies. See comments below - Ed.)

It certainly offers all the advantages of a hosted online service, with secure 128-bit SSL security, full data backups, invisible maintenance and upgrades, and, of course, instant access from any PC with access to the internet.

Marginz is certainly comprehensive ' unlike most bookkeeping packages, Marginz even (rather scarily) produces a set of 'statutory company accounts'! Whilst these are well presented, they do lack quite a few essential current Companies Act and accounting standard disclosures (and there are no abbreviated accounts). Enabling clients to prepare their own statutory accounts, badly at that, is probably something that few accountants would be happy with. For me, this feature alone would rule out Marginz unless it could be disabled by the accountant.

The presentation of final and management accounts is very good, but in contrast the TB and some other reports appear in a rather chunky HTML table. The alternative output to CSV just dumps the same raw data into a bare spreadsheet, so isn't much better. I'm assuming this part of the program is still a work in progress as it looks a little inconsistent with the rest of the output.

Marginz comprises 13 modules:

• Customers and sales


• Invoicing


• Nominal ledger


• Products


• Suppliers and purchases


• Reports


• Reporting operations ' allows you to use Marginz Data Tags, units of information based on the database tables, to build your own custom reports


• Financials


• Banking


• Tools, including facility to upload any files into a secure online store for later retrieval by the business or the accountant


• Fixed assets


• Business details


• Security

Online help is excellent, comprehensive and well laid out with screen shots and step by step guides.

Data entry is straightforward, from posting a transaction or journal to reconciling the bank account. Shame about the US date format on the main screens and lookup boxes, although reports themselves show dates in UK format.

Marginz includes VAT reporting, which has a basic control in that transactions shown on a Return can be 'reconciled' to avoid them being included on a later return, although there is nothing to remind or force the user to do so.

A single-user licence costs £29.95 + VAT for one year's subscription for the Marginz combined Internal Management Accounts Application, Secure Document Retrieval/Storage Facility, and Full statutory Accounts Production together with Online Help & FAQ's, plus free 30 day telephone support.

However, the partnership programme allows firms to offer Marginz to their clients. They can manage their clients and client data using a Back Office Application, which provides the functionality to manage clients and the Front End Application, the online accounting application that they and their clients use. It means that firms can allow clients to do as much or as little of the data entry themselves, and then pick up the rest of the work and finish off, say, VAT returns or management accounts. Clients can always open up Marginz in any web browser and view their accounts in real time.