We have
an unlimited user licence for 10 concurrent businesses operating Sage
Financial Controller software and can supply and support Sage
Line 50 software and read data files generated by that software.SEARCH, INDEX, UPDATES, CONTENTS, SOFTWARE
We use IRIS software for preparation of Sole Trader, Partnership, and Statutory Accounts for Companies together with the Self Assessment Tax Returns and calculations of tax liabilities.
We have
an unlimited user licence for 10 concurrent businesses operating Sage
Financial Controller software and can supply and support Sage
Line 50 software and read data files generated by that software.
We have Quickbooks Pro software and can read data files generated by Quicken and Quickbooks.
For other alternatives see Links, Computing
Are you aware of the Business Software Alliance? If not, click BSA.
Selecting Computer Software
Sometimes an investment of a few pounds is not as good value as an investment of many thousands depending upon the benefits obtained, the Return on Investment
(ROI).
Many people implement computer systems which are little more than a computerised version of simple manual records, but computer systems can represent a collection of information (database) about the business available to all people, to whom that information is useful, wherever they are located.
Before implementing a computer system, it is wise to consider all the possibilities of what a computer system can do for your business and then to consider how valuable each of those possibilities would be to you and what the cost of implementing that system is.
Do you wish to implement a computer program which is easy to operate from day 1, but which will not give you the information that you would like, or is it in your best interest to invest more time and effort into implementing a more comprehensive system, not quite so easy to understand on day 1, but which provides information to help your employees do the job you require of them in a very appropriate way wherever they are in the world?
Convenience has a cost. With the widespread availability of Broadband, this has a potential to affect your business significantly. If your office computer is connected to Broadband at a cost of up to £30 per month and your home computer is also connected to Broadband at a cost of up to £30 per month then you can have access to the data on the office computer using remote terminal services as though you were sitting at your office computer, and for similar cost so can those of your employees who would find such access useful. If you wish to have access to the data other than from home then, with a Vodafone red card in your laptop computer, you can be connected to that data when visiting customers etc. worldwide.
How much time can you expect your employees to devote to reporting sales orders? Is there any benefit to your business having them enter a sales order straight to your office computer at the point that they are discussing it with clients, and, if you have the appropriate stock control system, telling that client when the goods are going to be delivered because they know what is and is not in stock?
Larger firms employ their own in house accountants, but most small businesses do not. Given the appropriate Broadband connection we can assist in maintaining your records and preparing monthly accounts without the need to visit your offices and we can therefore add our accounting skills to your interpretation of the reports. Similarly a self employed bookkeeper could help keep your records up to date without having to spend much time in your offices.
Some firms spend a lot of money building up details of contacts using specialist contact relationship management (CRM) software. Generalised software will never match the quality of specialist CRM software for what that is set up to do, but if you consider your business, the majority of your contacts are your suppliers, your customers, and your potential customers, details of which might already be recorded in your accounting records.
Would it be helpful to you if your accounts software gave you the facility on screen to bring up details about all of your contacts whenever they contacted you or any member of your staff? In that respect ease of use is most important and you need to identify a system which can identify the right Mr. Smith when you start to type in “smi”.
When Mr. Smith telephones you, if you start to type in “smi” while you are discussing the latest cricket scores, your accounting system can show exactly how much you owe to him or how much he owes to you and if required the age of both those balances and the history of the account with a summary of turnover and possibly your margin so you know how valuable a contact this person is.
It is possible for accounting software to control other programmes such as Word and Acrobat and, correctly organised, you can have easy access to any letters which you have written to your contact, memos that you create arising from any calls, as well as calling to screen an image of any letters which you have had from your contact, provided this information has been introduced to the computer system. The same software can make it easy to create a memo about that particular call, for all your staff to see (or not as the case may be depending on your password settings etc.).
Obviously if you create letters to your contacts by computer, that data is already stored somewhere on the computer and the accounting software only needs to link in to the location of that file in order to display it to you on screen at the appropriate time.
Scanners vary in price from a few hundred pounds to approximately £1,200 for a powerful scanner that could handle all your incoming mail. There are systems available that can scan all of your incoming letters and link them into the contacts part of your software. If you scan all your incoming invoices for expenses etc. then your accounting records in the form of cash books, invoice day books, expense ledgers and customer accounts can all bring up an image of that original invoice by double clicking the appropriate line.
Some businesses merely keep accounting records for the purpose of providing information to the statutory authorities, but businesses which are well organised organise their accounting records in such a way that they are beneficial to the business. To be able to look at details of an individual contact’s account for a month, consider an invoice unusual, and to bring that invoice up on to screen instantly starts to make the computer accounting system more easily used than searching through a manual record, although that is not a system which can be set up and used within a matter of hours of installing the software.
What is your procedure for managing outstanding orders and knowing what quantities are in stock? A sophisticated accounting package will advise you when stock levels trip a minimum stock quantity that you specify and if you wish can potentially send a detailed message to your mobile phone.
If your computer system knows the running average cost, and / or latest buying price of any particular stock line, when a customer is hesitating over price, by having detailed information from a computerised stock system available on the screen, you might be able to negotiate an appropriate deal better than if you were working from your memory in respect of knowledge of margins on a particular line. Would that be of benefit to both of you?
If you are highly dependent on computer systems, you may need to ensure that you have sophisticated failsafe systems and data off site but on that basis you may be able to simplify your filing system in respect of correspondence and invoicing. We would not recommend that you destroy any original documents in less than 7 years, but you could file those documents on a daily basis without having to allocate them to individual contact’s files provided your computer system can indicate the day on which they were stored so that, in the unlikely event that you need an original document, you would go back to that record to recover the original.
When an original document is scanned into the computer you can of course send it to a number of people within your organisation who need to deal with it, perhaps with a memo about who is going to do what on that particular item.
If your business raises charges to customers based on time expended, you may be able to link your time recording records direct to your payroll. The records of your employees (and other contractors) maintained for your job control can link directly into your payroll costs and that record can relay a time cost back to job costing.
Some parts of your accounting software may be appropriate to distribute to all your members of staff, but other parts such as wage rates may be confidential and access to that information can be controlled through sophisticated password routines.
Do you want your software to record all your fixed assets? Would it be helpful to know the original cost and depreciation of all your plant? How about the repair costs of all your vehicles?
If you have plant off site, what is it’s location? If you hire out plant, what is it earning? When is it booked for use?
When computers were first invented larger firms operated main frames which controlled the whole business. In 1982 IBM introduced its version of the PC as a stand alone computer but a modern networked system of PCs linked to the Internet through Broadband now provides the facility to manage quite a sophisticated small business.
So do you want software which records your accounting transactions or software which helps all your staff manage your business?
Having decided what you want, how do go about selecting it? Traditionally you wrote a specification and sent it to prospective suppliers who provided with a demonstration. When you buy a car, do you tell the salesman what you want and then let him give you a demonstration drive in the model he suggests – or do you expect to take the wheel?
If you decide on a cheep package, it may not matter, but you will still make a considerable investment of time entering your data to that system. However if you are going to make a significant financial investment, or the software is going to be important to the running of the business, we suggest you need to take a test drive, with your own live data. We have known businesses to assume that computer software can attribute input VAT between taxable, exempt and residual categories, because that is normal to their business, but very few software packages can.
You will not get as much information from two or three days of demonstration as you will be a day entering your own live data.
Reminder - disclaimer applies. Please feedback your comments. This page was last modified 3 July 2004.