Simple Accounting software

[thegraduand]

My business is up and running and I'm working for my first client. I was trying to keep track of incomings and outgoings through excel, but it's not really working for me. I'm thinking I need to buy some simple accounting software, does anyone have any recommendations? i want to be able to present everything in a nice and organised manner to by accountant if possible.

Do not, whatever you do, buy Quickbooks. Your accountant will hate it. :) Sage Instant might be suitable?

I am surprised that the XL spreadsheets are not working - I work in an accountant's office and the majority of our small business clients use these quite successfully. Can the accountant help out at all with this and point you in the right direction.

Thanks for the advice on Quickbooks. I'll ask my accountant on Excel, I think I've just not formatted it into a useful format yet. It's slightly tricky, my accountant is my best friend who is a top tax accountant, she volunteered to do everything for me. But she's so busy I find it tricky to ask advice. I do keep wondering about just paying to get things done

Have you had a look at Xero? It's very easy to use and inexpensive.

Not Sage! Talk to your accountant and ask what they recommend.

We've been using Quickbooks in our accountancy practice for about 10 years. we recommend it to our clients as it is very easy to use

Quickbooks is fine as long as you learn to use it properly. The thing is I found many clients didn't.

It's also way to easy to edit/delete posts that cause massive errors in your TB/NL

I've heard great things about GnuCash www.gnucash.org/ which is a totally free accounting software for Mac or Windows (and I think even Linux) machines. I've never actually used it, but it looks like it does a lot of the things you'd expect and more for a small business.

we are using gnu cash

I have found Kashflow very easy to use. Not free but links to my accountant.

I've used Kashflow but switched to Xero as it sweeps your bank accounts daily and imports the figures into the software - very handy:)