Hi Dee Dee,
Software is one of those areas where one size does not always fit all. Your choice of software will depend on a number of things and a lot of us have a number of pieces of software in our toolkit depending on the client.
While I don't particularly like Sage (it doesn't suit my business model, and I don't have deep pockets) there are a lot of people happily use it for a lot of clients. Sage licensing isn't the simplest or cheapest. Similar to Sage is QuickBooks, you can get a few versions (including accountant) these are multiuser up to 99 clients and it costs just over £30 per month for QuickBooks ProAdvisor. The reports on QuickBooks are great.
Others work thinking about are VT Transaction+ which again supports multiple clients as standard and is great for speed if you have a background in bookkeeping. It's not the best if you don't know your way around manual accounts and it's not got an attractive layout, but at £199 you can't have everything. It can export to excel to compile reports as it only comes with a few built in.
Excel can also be a viable option for smaller clients. You may already have this so wont need to fork out any more money. If you are happy using this you can customise it a lot.
There are also some cloud offerings worth thinking about. I've just added Xero to my toolkit, but there are others. These are good if you work at different locations or want your clients to be able to see reports at any time, or even do their own invoicing. With the cloud software you'll pay per client, but with xero it starts at £2+vat per month.
This is a quick run down, obviously it depends what suits the clients work and your pocket. You don't need to buy the most expensive software.
Kris
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