Software > Accounting

Accounting Software Roundup

By Phil Cole, Computer Craft Ltd

Which accounts package meets your needs? Phil Cole looks at the different software available.

Many people don’t realise it but Charity / Voluntary Sector accounting is generally far more complex than for a commercial organisation of equivalent size.  The demands of SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice) and the need to account to Funders and / or the General Public, to show them that you have spent their money how you said you would, is often an onerous bookkeeping and accounting task. 

Most commercial firms have it easy.  And this is the problem with computer accounts packages, most of them are written for commercial users.  They don’t adapt easily to the requirements of not-for-profits.  They don’t have the features or facilities that you need.

So what’s the solution?  Well, as with most things there are a variety of solutions depending on your organisation’s size, complexity and budget but they break down into two main categories. 

You can either purchase software that is designed for far larger commercial / business organisations and includes some of the features which will make your life easier, or you can purchase a simple bookkeeping package and adapt it in inspired and unconventional ways or do extensive processing outside the package using other software (e.g. Spreadsheet or Database).

You need to identify where a computerised solution is going to save you the most time and effort.  It’s all very well having wonderfully sophisticated software but if it only saves you a few minutes each month preparing a report that you have happily been creating within MS Excel for the last three years, is it worth it?

Some of the questions you need to ask prior to selecting software are:

• Is the management of your income or your expenditure the major problem?
• Is our income, high volume low value or low volume high value?
• Could we employ a part timer instead, with the money we will spend on the software, training and support?
• Do we have other software which needs to integrate with the accounts package?
• Are we currently providing the information that our colleagues want/need, and if not where do we need to improve?
• can we provide ad-hoc reports easily or do they take a lot of time and resources to create?
• are the systems well understood and can they continue to be operated if we are absent?

If your problems are primarily to do with paying your suppliers in a timely way and preparing simple monthly and EOY (end of year) accounts, most of the business solutions will offer a lot of help. 

However, if you need to do extensive project or fund analysis of supplier invoices, or you need to analyse your income, or provide a lot of reports which analyse and present the same information in a variety of ways, you will almost certainly need more sophisticated software or extra processing.

Below I have listed some of the more widely used packages and offer a few comments about each.

Packages for Personal Accounting / SOHO Businesses

At the lowest end of the spectrum we have packages such as Quicken/Quick Books.  These were primarily designed for personal accounts or for SOHO businesses (Small Office or Home Office).  They provide a ready made set of accounts for someone to use straight out of the box. 

However, auditors tended not to like them since they allow changes to be made to the figures after they have been posted and are therefore not strictly double entry.  If you just want to do very simple bookkeeping they will probably meet your needs.  They are also good for getting to know what computerised bookkeeping can do with a relatively small investment.

Packages for Small Businesses

Then we have the Sage family. Sage Instant, Sage Line 50, Sage Line 100, Sage Line 200 and Sage Executive. Sage Instant is similar to Quick Books and is an entry level system.

Sage line 50 used to be called Sage Sterling in all its varieties Bookkeeper, Accountant, Accountant Plus and Financial Controller. This is the original Sage product and is an all-purpose, small business accounting solution providing a range of features for the trading organisation. 

You can create your own chart of accounts and there is a reasonable report writer but the package offers very little scope for modification or tailoring. It’s other serious weakness is that, apart from the account to which it is posted, each transaction can only be analysed once, using the designated ‘Department Number’. 

This is probably the most popular accounting software on the market today and many staff will have experience of using it. It is widely used in the Voluntary Sector but frequently needs to be augmented with pre or post analysis of the financial information either manually or in a spreadsheet. 

Sage offer an additional module, which provides an external link to the stored data so that it can be accessed from a compatible spreadsheet such as MS Excel or database.

Sage Line 100 used to be called Sovereign and was originally a package developed by Sky Software. This became Sage Sovereign before being renamed Sage Line 100. 

The package is written in a database called Retrieve and is sold through Sage Development Centres. The package can be modified and tailored to the particular needs of your organisation, albeit at a price. 

Such modifications are normally carried out by the Development Centre, prior to delivery, but some organisations have developed their own expertise in Retrieve and have carried out their own customisation. More expensive than Line 50, it can provide the answer for many organisations. 

Some Development Centres have created their own modules to integrate with the main Line 100 package. Inevitably most of these are for commercial trading businesses but there are a few specifically designed for the needs of charities and not-for-profits.

Packages for Larger Businesses

Then there are the packages aimed at much larger businesses that include features, which provide a variety of tools and extensive reporting capabilities. Principal amongst these in the not-for-profit sector is SunAccount from Systems Union. This is part of the SunSystems suite. 

SunAccount is an integrated Income, Expenditure and Nominal ledger that allows multiple analysis of each transaction. There is also a comprehensive range of reporting and data modelling tools available as extras to the main product. These include a product called Vision, which installs itself into MS Excel creating an additional menu to allow you to directly access the data in SunSystems for use in your spreadsheets.

These ‘add-on’ products allow managers and others in the organisation, not involved in the bookkeeping, to access the data and perform sophisticated ‘what if’ and ‘drill down’ investigations. This is a top of the range accounting suite, which can handle all of the SORP requirements of large charities but is also used by smaller organisations where the amount of work saved by analysing income and expenditure and preparing reports, makes it cost effective.

Over the last few years, many of the companies which produced account software packages have merged and been acquired by larger software conglomerates. SunSystems and Pegasus have recently been acquired by a single company but still operate independently. 

Sage too, have continued to add to their range by buying up other companies and Tetra Accounting is now owned by them. This has enabled the company to add two further products to the Sage range, namely Sage Line 200 and Sage Executive. These are higher end products. Microsoft acquired Great Plains Software and their package Dynamics, which was re branded as Microsoft Dynamics GP. They subsequently acquired Navision Accounting, and this is now called Microsoft Dynamics NAV.

Costs

It is difficult to provide detailed costs for the above systems since they will vary greatly depending on your organisations exact requirements.  However, they can be broadly grouped as follows;

• Entry Level - under £100
• Business Bookkeeping with basic reporting - several hundred pounds
• Bookkeeping and Accounting with flexible reporting - a few thousand pounds
• Very flexible Bookkeeping and Management Accounting packages with extensive and sophisticated reporting - several thousand.

This is the price of the software only.  Installation, training and support will be extra if you require them, and you almost certainly will.

Further information:

• Volresource - information including: issues to consider when choosing accounts software, comparison table of products, checklist, case studies and links to other useful resources.
• Business Links - see the article Accounting Software - printable guide on selecting appropriate accounts software.
• IT For Charities - list of various accounting products / services and links to supplier's websites