ForumsHome

I am a Quickbooks Consultant and I like QuickBooks for just about everything.
Again QB is a good online accounting or bookkeeping program you can use on the web.
Good luck, LUCKIEST

Hi Alex, just so you know my experience here

• the date format thing is a hassle, I agree 100%
• the terminology (e.g. GST) is an internationalization thing they previously promised me would be out Q1 2008, fingers crossed, minor issue in my mind though
• estimates are called quotes under sales (I think you picked that up already)
• lists like industries can be changed under setup > contact categories
• not using payroll but you are probably right, in the meantime I use separate records and just do a journal, it is pretty easy
• am loving the inventory management stuff, very neat

Thanks - I agree, neat concept. I wonder though, how many small businesses with inventory tracking and payroll in the US, can SAASU work for, today?

Definitely not mine, for reasons I already stated, plus a few more:

• doesn't allow negative inventory, i.e. I can't sell an item I don't have in stock, and that's a big one for business that do drop-ships - these just wouldn't be able to use saasu.
• doesn't save transactions in progress, i.e. u start a sale, put customer data in, etc., and then click on some other area of the page, your transaction will not be recorded, no prompt, no warning - nothing.

Fiirst,

All the solutions you mentioned, do the following:

• billing and expenses
• multi user

Payroll: seemingly, only QuickBooks Online Edition (QBOE) does payroll.

Trials: all except Billing Circle, seemingly.

Cheap/free accountant access: seems to be available for all of them, if not as a separate feature, then as an integrated multi-user access feature.

Data Backup: all of them, although the main question for me is, if they go out of business, become too expensive, go down, etc., how easy will it be for me to export all the data and import it into an alternative solution (locally installed software) so that the business doesn't stop?

Additional features:

• Client access to their billing history, online payments: Billing Circle, FreshBooks.
• Integration with payment processing services (Merchant Services, Authorize.net, PayPal, etc.): Billing Circle, FreshBooks, not sure about QBOE.

Most advanced e-commerce solutions have that, along with other book keeping features (sales tracking and reporting, some inventory tracking features), which makes me wonder if one of them (Amazon, eBay, Google) will finally present a viable alternative to Intuit solutions. I certainly hope so.

We use our online banking combined with peachtree. We did look into a service that allows you to see your office computer's hard drive from remote locations, which we felt handled the same thing. Does anyone remember seeing something like that?

Remote access would have been a good alternative, if you didn't want to free yourself (and your business) from constraints, limits, liabilities, dangers and problems associated with locally installed software, in the first place. Loss of data and access due to accidents and disasters such as fire, floods, earthquakes, theft-n-burglary, dog peeing on your server. If there is a hiccup in your computer (or DSL or router) and you are halfway across the world, you are less likely to get help than with a hosted application (i.e. when you explicitly pay for it to be up and running no matter what via SLA)? Also, locally installed software doesn't scale well and has a wonderful way (I've written about it before) of forcing you to routinely upgrade both the software and the hardware it runs on, as well as worry about the physical security of your servers and data. Hosted applications don't, as a rule - just think of Gmail and Google Apps.

Not to mention that QuickBooks (as well as its nearest competitors) is slow as molasses in multi-user environments, no matter the brand-spank-new dual-quad-core 64-bit 8GB RAM 2TB RAID5 server you just installed. Remote access won't solve that problem - but will force you to spend loads of dollars and hours on upkeeping your servers and IT infrastructure.

C'mon guys. The whole point is to outsource your bookkeeping software and data, free yourself and your business from severe constrains of existing accounting software for small businesses such as QuickBooks. Remote access makes you a slave not just to your accounting software, but also to your hardware and security system, whereas the idea is to free yourself as much as you can, from it.

If only you could... I know I can't: the nearest feasible SaaS proposition (NetSuite, InAcct, etc.) will empty your pockets to the tune of $10K a year - not exactly a sweet alternative to less than $1K (amortized) for QuickBooks.

We'll wait for Google to write an accounting module for Google Apps. Or someone else will.

The price looks good. Checked them out and here are immediate questions that come to mind.
How mature are they (how long have they been in business, how many clients to do they have)?
Where is a feature list, detailed info about the product and editions? A few screenshots just aren't enough.
How good is their support?

From the look of it, they are fairly new, and you wouldn't want to trust your accounting data to a company that doesn't have a proven track of service and support.

Accounting software is mission-critical: not something you could play with for a year and throw away without regrets: switching accounting solutions is a huge pain in the neck, something you want to do once and stay with it as long as you can.

Sorry, Appgen is a no-go.