xset

I want to be accountable … stop making it so hard!

// February 7th, 2006 // Personal

Small business I may be but I really want to get a handle on the accounting side of things so I can see how I’m doing (yes … of course I’ll know how I’m doing but it’s always good to have reports for those moments when you can’t remember who you are let alone what your cash flow is like) and save myself a bit of cash in the long run by not having to spend masses with the accountants at year end.

Being a lover of all things IT I thought I would look at some of the software packages out there. There’s loads to choose from including Quickbooks (came highly recommended), Microsoft SB Accounting 2006, Sage Line and others …

… and they are all over complicated, clunky to use and customise and totally unsuitable for the kind of business I do. Maybe I’m missing something here (or maybe it was because they are all packages geared to US business) but how complex does it have to be? You have customers, quotes, invoices, money in, money out and a few legislative bits. Why the hell do I need 27 different predefined expense accounts?

Yeah I know I could just delete a load of them but that’s beside the point. What happened to KISS?

Anyway I’m now torn between writing my own system (and possibly missing something crucial) or picking one of the piss poor offerings from the “market leaders”. If MYOB isn’t an improvement then I’m probably giving up on accountancy software altogether and building my own.