Cloud based accounting software

[lilydaisyrose]

I am in the process of buying a very small local publication and need to also purchase some accounting software - ideally cloud based.

I've looked into Sage & Quickbooks but am not sure what would be best. I just need to create invoices & statements for advertisers and note when payments received. I think that's all I need.

Do you have any (cheap if possible) recommendation/avoids please?

I am currently looking at QuickFile. You have reminded me actually that I need to have a play with it and see if it will do enough for what I want. It may be worth a look. www.quickfile.co.uk/

I use Kashflow and really like it

We are using Xero for a sports club I am finance director for. It's great for people who aren't accountants to understand and sending and inputting invoices is very easy.

As an accountant it took me a while to get used to it but I like being able to log in and check things without having to contact the staff or the bookkeeper. I also like the dashboard.

Thanks everyone - will research those suggested.

My husband uses Xero but I use FreeAgent, I personally love it. Its also included as a perk with our bank account (Barclays) so it may be worth seeing if your bank account can offer anything, or my husband got a discount on the monthly Xero costs through his accountant.

The other thing to consider is what plugs in to them, so FreeAgent we use a CRM system and can do mailmerge's etc with bolt on products

Best bit for us for cloud over the likes of Sage is, no matter where we are we can log in and check, both can be syncronized to our bank accounts so the day after a payment arrives it registers. My Freeagent is set up to send a thank you email to people who have paid and chase those pesky late payments without me having to do anything.

In my practice we'd be suggesting Kashflow for a business like yours. Clients tend to take to it very quickly due to ease of use and more importantly, errors are easy to correct. It's competitively priced too.

We'd suggest Quickbooks for a more complicated business and Freeagent for a more labour only based business such as consulting/freelancing. Both are more expensive, but have more features than Kashflow.

Sage is a pretty poor comparison so we don't use it at all. Xevo, Clearbooks, and Accounts Portal are all similar products, but we chose not to use any of those as the three we have chosen fill the needs and criteria of most of our small business clients.

Thank you so much everyone for the brilliant advice.

Watch the price of QuickBooks. It looks very cheap I initially, but prices go up after the initial offer. Take a look at Xero.

I'm looking into the same. Really useful info. I'm quite small scale so the £19+vat of free agent is a bit much.
I've tried using Wave as its free, but it seems a little buggy and I'm not totally convinced it will categorise my expenses right.

Personally I have switched to www.capium.com which is better than other so if you need professional services they are there when you need them. So far been really impressed and consider it equal to FreeAgent and Xero which are both paid hosted account applications

I use Kashflow. It's brilliant and cloud based. Very intuitive any easy to use. I can do my own book keeping and vat returns.

I'm a bookkeeper and Xero is my preference. I find Quickbooks very slow, maybe it's my dodgy rural internet, but don't have the same problem with Xero.

There's a free one called Pandel (or something along those lines) which I've heard good things about but I haven't tried it yet.

Another vote for Xero.

Check what your accountant uses so that you have some synergy when the time comes for you to need their help.

And my preference is Xero too.....