Cloud Accounting Software

Bookkeeping is never the most fascinating topic, but I thought I’d jot down that I’ve just started using Kashflow accounting software to replace the aging copy of Quickbooks I’ve been using for the last few years.

It’s a Software As A Service (‘SAAS’) package meaning, rather than buy outright and install it to a PC, you pay monthly to access it via a browser – all your data is stored remotely and backed up. For someone like me who uses many different PCs and other devices to work, that’s a pretty useful feature.

First impressions are OK – it’s certainly very easy to use and I’d recommend it to people who aren’t very familiar with accounting software already. A lot of packages (even Quickbooks) do seem to want the user to think like an accountant, which is the last thing most people want, or indeed need, to be doing. It’s missing some stuff I’d like – such as allowing expenses to be assigned to customers, so that they can be automatically reclaimed next time you bill that client – but does most of what a small business would need. Customer support seems excellent – when I mailed to ask if the expense feature was there, I got a reply within the hour, and the feature’s being suggested as a future upgrade to the team.

There’s a free 60-day trial here, which sounds a bit less ‘no risk’ than it really is – having spent the last couple of days getting my accounts up to speed with Kashflow, I’m pretty much committed to it since the alternative is to do all that accounting work again. That said, it seems as good a solution as any I’ve seen, and £15 a month for a year works out to be less than getting an upgrade to Quickbooks anyway.

I’m certainly sold on numerous other cloud apps such as (Google Apps and Basecamp, and hope that Kashflow proves as useful to my bean counting as the others do to my productivity. I appreciated being able to file a VAT return online yesterday from within Kashflow itself, so the signs are good. Will report back after a couple of months.