Accounting software suggestions

truecockney

I'm in need of picking your brains as there's not much left of mine!

I've been asked to try to automate as much as I can with regards to invoicing and payments (trying to eliminate the Royal Mail fiasco) and the current accounts software we use (Quickbooks Pro 2006) doesn't give us the capacity to generate BACS reports. Their helpdesk has informed me that the capacity was taken away a few years ago and they did not renew the license with BACS software.

I've not had much luck on finding alternatives over the last few weeks that do have this capacity and match our needs so if anyone here can give some ideas I'd be grateful. Some things to keep in mind:

- Needs to be able to read multi-millions (turnover of around £25m)
- We work through a Citrix server so would ideally be compatible with Citrix, although this isn't essential
- Recognised software for VAT return purposes
- Easy to amend postings
- Easy to generate and read reporting
- Needs to be able to have multiple profiles

To give you some idea, I know the other systems I've used wouldn't be suitable (Access Accounts was frustrating to make adjustments on and reporting was too cumbersome; DREAM would be wasted).

Thanks in advance!

blobbyh

We use Iris Exchequer through Citrix servers and while I'm not sure it offers all the functionality you're after (though it probably would if you contemplated all the bolt on modules available), it's beautifully simple to use.

We have a turnover of around £7m with five different multi-currency companies, the data inputting/extracting and report writing is fairly simple while the best thing is we can download/upload using Excel, for example payroll, accruals, prepayments etc journals posting to the different G/L accounts. The OLE link between the software and Excel also allows you to build lovely Excel management reports.

Alternatives are possibly Sage Line 500 (which I've seen but not used) or Microsoft Great Plains aka Dynamics which was horrendous and to be avoided IMO.

truecockney

Many thanks for the list Robert. I can start to build on something around that now that there is a basis on which to make comparisons.

In the technological climate, you would've thought that software makers would automatically set up relevant packages to make payments by BACS?