Clients Accounting packages

Rachel

Hello All

Please be gentle with me if I sound stupid.

I have recently set up as self employeed (well 2 years ago but going slowly) as I have 2 small children and chose to bookkeeping/accounts etc for sme's

Anyway most of the clients I have gained didn't have a computer package so I have put them on my VT software and the others were in excel.

My query is what do I do if they are already established on sage or quickbooks (I do have experience using the packages), do I have to purchase the licences if I want to "do it" on my computer? I have a VPN link to one company but that was set up by the IT guy there and took hours.

Any advise gratefully received.

Kind Regards

Rachel

JodieR

I don't know about sage, but I use quickbooks all the time. With Quickbooks you'll need to install the software on your PC - hopefully the client will still have the CD but if not you can use anyone elses (or I might have a spare one here if you need it). You'll need to have a licence number and I think I product code which your client can get if he opens QBs and goes to help and then about, or presses F2. I always thought that each licence could only be installed on one computer but I read recently on an american site that it can be installed on two, so I tried it in April and it worked - I've entered my licence number into two computers and have full access to all the features I've paid for on both. So your client can keep QBs on his/her PC and you can have a copy on yours and then when you need to work on it you make a backup of the data onto a USB stick and restore the data to your PC, and then restore it back to his when you're done. Unless the business is very small the backup files are usually too big to email, but if you can't physically be there to use a USB stick you can use something like box.net to transfer the data to each other.
There is a way to purchase additional licences and link the PCs up so you can both work on the file simultaneously, but I've never had the need to try that so I don't know much about it.

Hope this helps!

Jodie

Rachel

Thank you very useful. It would start to get very expensive if I have to purchase licences for every product that clients use

I am still interested in what other people do.

Many Thanks

Monsoon

If clients use their own software, then for year end, just get them to export the reports you need.

As long as the bank is reconciled, you need the following reports:

Trial Balance
Nominal Ledger (so you can see the detail of what happened on each account)
Debtors and Creditors (not really needed if the books are kept properly)

You then put the TB into your ETB of choice and off you go.

If they want you to do the books too, then you'll either have to go to their premises, or get them to switch to your in-house software. Or you buy their software but that's highly expensive and impractical.

Hope that helps.

burg

I would go with Monsoon,

Just get the reports you need to compile the accounts.

I do though have Sage as we also do bookkeeping for a number of clients. For this we are part of the Sage bookkeepers club. It costs around £400 per year but you get all new releases of the bookkeeping software as a client manager edition. You can load around 5 companies on and there is also some kind of accountants transfer wizard where you can make adjustments which can be imported.

Sorry my knowledge on this side isn't great as I don't really have anything to do with the bookkeeping side of things.

Have a nose around the Sage website.

Quickbooks do a similar thing for around £300 I think. We don't have this though as we only have one client on QB.

Monsoon

Even better (and cheaper) is Solar Accounts. It's multi-company so you pay for it once and can use it for as many clients as you like.

It's a relative newbie to the bookkeeping software market but it's our in house software and it really, really is good. We've customised the chart of accounts to mimic VT (our accounts production software) so it really streamlines things.

There's a free trial so worth checking out

[disclosure: we are resellers of Solar, but we only pimp it out because it's fab! ]

jilt

Hi Monsoon, so you use solar in your practice? I like the idea that you can have it on up to 3 PC's. Would you say it's similar to any other packages as in reports, data entry etc?

Monsoon

jilt wrote: »

Hi Monsoon, so you use solar in your practice? I like the idea that you can have it on up to 3 PC's. Would you say it's similar to any other packages as in reports, data entry etc?

Yes, Solar is our in house bookkeeping software. It's great.
It's not as detailed as Sage/QB, but it does everything an ordinary small business needs it to.

The reports are all the ones you'd want to see, both year end and in-year debtors/creditors etc, and they are flexible in date range etc. There is a year end function.

It's really user-friendly, it's very clear in terms of seeing how the double entry works and we love it

jilt

Thanks for that, I do keep saying I don't want to take any more bookkeeping clients cos they always seem to cause me problems but at least its regular monthly income. Am back at my employers for the first time in almost 2 weeks and just hate being here. Think you could find me a load of lovely new clients so I can go it alone fulltime? :tongue_smilie:

Monsoon

Sorry hun, we don't have any spare! Keep at it though, you'll get there

jilt

Monsoon wrote: »

Sorry hun, we don't have any spare! Keep at it though, you'll get there

Well it was worth a try lol Actually I got my first call from my first ad in Bakewell (where my office is) yesterday which was nice to have after a stressful morning in the MAC exam!

anniem

JodieR wrote: »

Unless the business is very small the backup files are usually too big to email,

Jodie

Try this for emailing big backup files; it's what I use at work:

http://www.mailbigfile.com/

We just use the 'free trial' option every time with no problems!