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Replies (13)
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Sorry
David - Interesting to hear that your response was actually intended to be offensive. Sorry for my "who in their right mind" comment; sometimes one forgets that posts are read by people with a (commendably) personal attachment to their product. In this light, I accept that it was rude, and offer my apologies.
No bank recs; input directly from bank statement
Isn't this putting your trust in your bank to get your cash book right? Have I misunderstood? Who in their right mind would input their transactions directly from their bank statement without checking them, and how can you check them without a bank rec?
Reconciliation
Ian, as you may have seen from one of Nigel's earlier reviews, Liberty Accounts offers an excellent online bookkeeping service that includes bank account reconciliation and should definitely be a consideration for you.
Bank handling / reconciliation
Hi Ian,
Part of the idea behind Twinfield is to move towards zero manual data entry, and so get as much of the data as possible electronically, as Nigel's review explains. That, plus the fact that the banking system works rather differently over the channel means that Twinfield's approach is different to some more traditional systems.
Basically we have turned the entire bank reconciliation on its head, and in our opinion have simplified the process considerably. As you know we process both payments and receipts in the one entry screen in Twinfield, and follow the paper bank (or electronic import) statement line by line, matching against the appropriate invoice either in the bank entry screen itself, or with our separate matching process (you chose which to use). This means that the bank position in Twinfield always matches the actual bank balance, and a bank reconciliation function, in the traditional sense, isn't required. Where cheques are issued or received and there is time lag to when they hit the bank account, they can be recorded in our cashbook facility, and then matched subsequently.
It's probably best if I show you, so you can see how straightforward it is, so I'll call you and try and arrange that. However, I'd also like to add that if you think we should change the way we do it, we'd love to discuss that too and try and get what you want in to the product plan.
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
Patronising
David - Thank you so much for taking the time to explain what a bank reconciliation is. Other than this, however, your answer tells us nothing; you appear be saying the reconciliation is easy because, doing it your way (i.e. posting from the bank statement), the statement will always agree to the ledger. It seems you have learnt the definition of a bank reconciliation without ever having understood the point.
Bank handling / reconciliation / Nominal extracts
Tom,
I guess your "who in their right mind" comments started me off... we do the cross checking, just in a different way - maybe I should show you. I notice you haven't responded at Nigel's wrap up article where you've suggested that none of the major SaaS applications do full nominal download. Twinfield does, I believe Winweb does, and I would guess a few of the others do too. I'd be interested to know what solutions you've tried or got experience of. Please make contact.
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
Thanks Tom
Apology accepted and much appreciated - I'm sorry I responded in kind. Yep, if you're passionate about your product it's a little too easy to take it personally - and in this medium the words may not come across in quite the way or tone they were intended. But the fact that we can have the debate is excellent!
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
SaaS GL download
Hi Tom,
Actually I guessed wrong about Winweb - I'm told they don't have an adequate Excel download facility yet. Twinfield on the other hand has got a comprehensive browse and download to Excel function for files and transactions (including the fields you are looking for) as well as an Excel plug in called Twinfield Analysis which provides you with a number of pre-built data cubes for you to analyse, covering things like the full GL, year to date ATB, time & expense data, etc.
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com
True collaboration
Twinfield is a very exciting product. We're a firm of accountants (Goodman Jones) and have been using Twinfield for over 6 months to power our GJ Online offering. It allows us to truly collaborate with our clients something that is just not possible with traditional desktop systems. You just can't beat everyone sharing the same source data regardless of their location. Twinfield have designed the system to let Accountant and client work together with ease.
David
Glad to hear we can have the debate David. If you remember, my original question was about why someone would want to populate their ledger directly from the bank statement, with all the risks inherent in doing so.
Incidentally, with regard to my comments about downloads, I should have said they do not provide "adequate" downloads, i.e. a list of transactions showing all relevant fields (account name, transaction number etc.).
Twinfields
I spoke to a Twinfield representative a few months ago (Mr Terrar). It sounds a very good product except for one major drawback - there is no bank reconciliation option. It only accounts for bank transactions when they hit the bank account. A lot of businesses still deal with cheques with a minority (albeit a sizeable one), writing cheques and holding on to them for a week or two.
We were looking for an online solution for our bookkeeping but as Twinfield can't deal with this its not the product for us.
A different way of working
Hi Tom,
A bank reconciliation is the process of systematically comparing the cash balance as reported by the bank with the cash balance on the company's books and explaining any differences. We do the process of checking, but just not in the traditional way. And we do have 20,000+ happy users, some of whom have been with us for over 5 years.
David Terrar
Mailto:[email protected]
web: http://www.d2c.org.uk and http://www.twinfield.com
blog: http://biztwozero.com