Bookkeeping, VAT, Solar and VT+

wildgoose1uk

I am in the process of creating an accounting system from scratch for a client. The business is in its third year but there has never been any proper bookkeeping done other than the annual i&e her accountant does for the tax return.

The bsuiness is currently not VAT registered but looking at the sales data for April it seems likely that the company will pass the threshold this year (assuming the targets are realistic).

I was going to use Solar as I have a multi-company license for it but I wonder if VT would be a better choice?

As always opinions sought and valued from you good people here!

wg

burg

No reason not to use Solar if this is what you prefer. Personally I don't like it but I know many do. I found a few weaknesses over VT mainly the entry process was slower as there was no batch entry option. Also the bank rec was open to errors. I find VT much quicker and it does what I need it to for most clients.

However if you are used to Solar then you may find your entry time is better as you have got used to it and you may be comfortable with the bank rec process.

I was previously used to Sage and I just found Solar slower but VT considerably quicker.

wildgoose1uk

Hi Ian

Many thanks for the reply. It's not that I am used to Solar.... More that as a fairly new MIP I bought it for when I needed it.

wg

Monsoon

I now have issues with the way Solar handles VAT. It's a brilliant bit of software but we are going to be migrating VAT reg clients from Solar to VT T+ now, as the lack of a reconciliation is both frustrating and time consuming and we have had enough. I've asked them to fix it, but they have said it is not a priority, so fingers crossed they put one in evenually. It's ok for clients with few transactions but for those with lots, we just don't want to work with it any more. Which is a shame, as otherwise it's brilliant software.

We haven't used VTT+ here (but use VT Accounts extensively) so will form an opinion in due course, but I know T+ has a VAT lock, which is what we want/need.

wildgoose1uk

I have just had a proper look at Solar (probably some thing I should have done before I bought it!) and have decided I do not like it. Unless I am missing something it is incredibly long winded when you are trying to enter a batch of transactions.

Have I missed the batch entry feature and used the single screen for each entry by mistake or is that really how it works? From Ian's comments it seems so.

Think I may download the trial of VT ++ and see if it is better.

Monsoon

Solar is great in many respects but transaction entry is single screen: however, if you add a few entries and use the Export function, it will go to Excel and this gives you the format of .csv that you and import. Thus, you can "batch entry" via excel and import. Once you have the csv set up, this can be quite quick and easy to do.