Online accounting applications

After deciding to write our own invoicing application in-house and rejecting over 50 open source book-keeping or accounting applications, we re-evaluated online billing applications to see if we could make use of their non-invoice functionality.

After revisiting this list, we ended up with the same few candidates plus one new one which came to light.

Shortlist of online accounting applications

1. Free Agent Central
2. Freshbooks
3. KashFlow
4. Less Accounting
5. Saasu

Requirements

1. Must have an API – so that we can automate the exchange of data between systems
2. Must permit access from any web browser
3. Must offer basic book-keeping functions
   • Invoices issued, outstanding & paid
   • Expenses
   • P&L reporting with adjustable dates
   • CSV or Excel export
   • VAT return & adjustments
   • Allocate different VAT codes for different countries
   • Bank Reconciliation
   • Credit card reconciliation
   • Regular monthly bills & memorised transactions

Nice to have

1. Easy to use – so our accounts people don’t throw a wobbly
2. QuickBooks import – would save some time moving over

Price Comparison of Online Accounting Applications

1. Freshbooks – $14 per month
2. Free Agent Central – $20 per month
3. Saasu – $20 per month
4. Less Accounting – $24 per month
5. KashFlow – $26 per month

Freshbooks

Managing expenses seemed a little clunky because it’s necessary to enter the expense item and the payment of it separately. It is possible to allocate different rates of VAT to different suppliers but is per category of client rather than per client. This might mean creating a different category for each client – which seemed a bit clunky too.

There’s a data import from QuickBooks 2005 (the one we use). There is a VAT summary for expenses and income but Freshbooks doesn’t mark items as reconciled or do the VAT return. Our accounts people couldn’t find a way to manage bank accounts at all in Freshbooks – the main reason for rejecting it as suitable for our online accounting application.

Free Agent Central

This application does not seem to offer any manual bank reconciliation facility. Their solution is to upload a bank statement – fine if your bank can output a statement in a compatible format – ours can’t.

Our accounts people liked the nice simple VAT return report but couldn’t figure out how to use it to pay a bill at all. Free agent Central was rejected because it wouldn’t allow us to reconcile bank accounts.

SAASU

We didn’t review Saasu previously when we were looking for an all-in-one system. We probably would have rejected it because of the lack on integrated European credit card payment gateways. Saasu is primarily aimed at the Australian market, although it is being UK-ised currently.

Our accounts people liked that it was easy to enter an expense and the payment of that expense at the same time but overall found it a little complicated to navigate. The show-stopper for us is that Saasu has been designed with the Australian tax system in mind. There is a beta version for the UK system, but this seemed a little clunky – and we’re not into being beta testers for this area of our business.

Less Accounting

To get all the features we’d need, it would be necessary to upgrade to the ‘More Accounting’ level at 24 USD per month – which unfortunately we didn’t realise until our accounting people had spent some time evaluating the ‘Less’ level of subscription to this service.

This upgrade would include the two features we’d need which are missing from the ‘Less’ version – bank reconciliation and variable VAT rates on expenses.

It’s a shame we didn’t realise this before the evaluation because Less Accounting looks like a real contender – and it scored well when we evaluated it as an all-in-one application. For now, though, it is playing a reserve position in our lineup of online accounting applications – because KashFlow is, once again, the hands-down favourite.

KashFlow

KashFlow was our top-scorer when we were looking for an all-in-one invoicing application, and it does an admirable job when using it simply to manage expenses.

Our accounts people liked that it is based on UK accounting practices which makes it an easy leap for someone familiar with QuickBooks. They liked that it’s easy to enter an expense and its corresponding payment on the same page. It’s also easy to change the VAT rate per transaction or per supplier. They liked that KashFlow has a useful bill reference tracking system which allocates reference number for each new bill as it is entered and reminds you to write it on the actual bill for future cross-referencing.

They liked the repeat expense feature which automatically enters the bill on any day you specify per month. They liked the bank transaction feature which allows you to enter a transaction which is not necessarily a bill, such as bank charges or credit card commissions.

They liked the easy bank reconciliation feature and the VAT return page which also allows you to submit it direct online to UK tax man.

Overall, KashFlow is the closest like-for-like replacement for QuickBooks and is the easiest application for accounting people, familiar with QuickBooks, to feel comfortable with.

KashFlow also has the extra advantage of being one of the most capable applications for generating invoices and processing credit card payments. Even though we won’t be using it to do this, it might be handy to have access to those capabilities in the future as they are developed or as a fail-safe in the event that our primary methods fail.

The next step before we whole-heartedly accept KashFlow as our saviour is for our software developers to evaluate their API to ensure that we can exchange data with it from our own systems.

Next Step: Evaluating the KashFlow API

Spread the word