REAL-WORLD REVIEWS
QUICKBOOKS
Like Barry ( see p39), I had held out on Excel for my small company accounts. It was a pain to do the VAT, taking most of two days each quarter to bring the spreadsheets up to date. But it was a method that had worked for decades.
After a false start, I dived into Quick-Books Online (QBO) at the beginning of my 2018-2019 financial year, which starts in May. I did the first quarter using both methods, because I needed to be sure that the QBO solution was giving me the same numbers. Or something close enough that I could believe it was right. It wasn’t an easy transition, but was definitely made easier by starting the financial year in QBO; a mid-year transition would be painful to contemplate, as Barry discovered.
I kept my manual invoice generation system (which uses Apple Pages because I love the DTP style and the embeddable spreadsheet elements), but made sure I created an invoice in QBO in parallel with the paper/ PDF that I sent to clients. My first quarter worked out fine, and I was very impressed with the way that it automatically recognised things that I had categorised already. After a year, it’s now almost all just a simple banking update and posting process, which takes a minute or two every few days. I don’t live in the app, but could see how an accounts department could get a lot of value out of its capabilities.
One oddity I noticed is that, despite setting up the software to be cash-based accounting for VAT, it actually does on-posting basis for all expenses, which was a shift from how I used to handle VAT on the old system. I presume it’s right; after all, it is HMRC-approved.
Quirks? There are a few, especially around VAT refunds, but for
most things, almost all of the time, it’s seamless. The iOS app works well, too. I get an instant view of my VAT liability, which reduces the quarterly “VAT shock”. I haven’t yet had my accounts do the year end (my year end closes today, as a matter of fact) but I will get my accounts over to them more quickly than in previous years. After all, they just need to log in and do their magic.
Concerns? I’m not 100% confident over what would happen if there was a meltdown at QBO. I regularly do a download of the data that has been input, but how would I go about recreating new accounts in the event of a major system failure? I don’t know and that makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I’m just being cautious, but the download of a binary blob that would allow the full re-import into QBO would be reassuring.
Overall, though, I like it and so far I think I made a good choice. Maybe my year-end will prove to be a disaster and I will hate it with a vengeance in a month or so’s time. But at the moment, I sleep at night not worrying about the accounts. And that has to be the mark of a worthwhile solution.