Alternative ways to manage your business ?

[nominal]

Hi guys,

I've tried to summarise the alternative ways available to micro businesses (all of us) when it comes to managing their books.

I was hoping to get some feedback from professionals as well as soloists to this post, as I want to make sure that I provided the right background for each option and that it is not one sided.

http://www.nominal.com.au/blog/222

Thanks!

[Couple It]

Hey Uri, that's pretty good !!

But you haven't mentioned pricing in the Nominal option. No on-going costs, reasonably priced.

Wendy

[Keeta Nova]

Love this! Great work.

[StellarScott]

Here's my 2c worth

- I think your being generous to the desktops - when ongoing maintenance and support is as much as the product itself (and compulsory if using payroll)
- If you use a product with bank feeds the time savings are enormous whether work done by you or the bookkeeper
-The book keeper will cost more than the DIY options assuming your time is free...of course it never is
-You also assume the owner knows what to look for to gain the insights from Nominal...mostly there so involved in the business that they miss these insights... this is where the bookkeeper/adviser/coach/accountant can be invaluable

BTW there's a couple of typos there you may want to fix

[nominal]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

Originally Posted by StellarScott

- I think your being generous to the desktops - when ongoing maintenance and support is as much as the product itself (and compulsory if using payroll)

A quick comparison that I'm basing on:
* MYOB license + cost = 429 (license) +325 yearly cost = 2054 over 5 years
* Xero = 588 per year = 2940 over five years
* Nominal = 339 (license) + 150 yearly (not compulsory) = 1089 over five years

Originally Posted by StellarScott

- If you use a product with bank feeds the time savings are enormous whether work done by you or the bookkeeper

This is the strongest selling point for Xero, I think it is WAY over used.
You must agree that it is essential to review each transaction whether auto-imported or manually imported. If you do than the difference between the system auto-magically doing it for you every night or you downloading a file from online banking and importing it every X days is negligible (is that a word ? :-) )

Originally Posted by StellarScott

-The book keeper will cost more than the DIY options assuming your time is free...of course it never is

Yes off course this is a valid point - I mention the dollar cost and time=money is still true.

Originally Posted by StellarScott

-You also assume the owner knows what to look for to gain the insights from Nominal...mostly there so involved in the business that they miss these insights... this is where the bookkeeper/adviser/coach/accountant can be invaluable

Another valid point, I think we make it the SIMPLEST for micro business owner to understand their status, but I also mentioned that a professional is the best source of information of this sort. (for a fee)

Originally Posted by StellarScott

BTW there's a couple of typos there you may want to fix

Thanks will try to dig them out.

[Dardee]

The bank feeds time saving is NOT overplayed. It is a massive time saver. Try coding 1000 entries in 3 hours. That includes reconciling them all. It is physically not possible to do it without importing bank statements and coding them the way Xero does.

If you have regular payments that are EXACTLY the same every month (eg bank fees, finance payments, etc) then they can be "reconciled" in 5 secs tops. You can't even pull up the bank statement from a lever arch file in that time. Everyone who uses the bank feeds says the same thing, it is a big time saver. If everyone says the same thing it must have some truth in it.

You seem to b the only one who doesn't agree. But why would you when you are trying to sell a program in opposition. A desktop program at that.

[nominal]

Originally Posted by Dardee

... when you are trying to sell a program in opposition...

We both are, LOL :-)

I tried to keep the thread on the options that are available to micro businesses and not online vs desktop - which is our usual discussion.

I just want to explain the difference the way I see it:
Xero:
1) You setup your bank feed by signing forms and sending to your bank
2) After a few days feeds start to appear and transactions show up on your bank account within xero
3) You manually match transactions to accounts ( coding )
4) If similar transactions appear on your bank account, the system will do it's best to find the correct account (algorithm)
5) Every day (?) the system gets a feed from your bank and does the same thing (auto coding) and you need to review the result and can make changes if you want

Nominal:
1) You login to your internet banking and download the last day/week/month to a file
2) You load the file into Nominal reconciliation wizard
3) You manually match transactions to accounts ( coding )
4) If similar transactions appear on your bank account, the system will do it's best to find the correct account (algorithm)
5) Every X days you do the same thing again, download a file and import the transaction, and you need to review the results and can make changes if you want

As you can see the process is very similar, the only difference is how the transactions get into the system, not the auto-magically coding.

The fact that Nominal is a desktop doesn't mean we can't do bank feed in the same way Xero does it, we can do it very easily. But the costs involved are just too high to justify it - for now.

I really don't see online accounting as direct competition, it is a different solution that appeals to different businesses. If anything we have some things in common in changing the status quo.

Nominal is a micro business management software, which means we focus on micro businesses and we provide a lot more than accounting software.

[Trevor Monaghan]

This is a good healthy debate, albeit with some fully disclosed biases. I own a Chartered Accountant firm and I have recently moved from myob to Xero for my own books and for recommending to small businesses. It took me a while to go over to Xero because those using it were pushing it like a cult and I'm not the type of person to mindlessly follow what's popular.

However, I couldn't ignore Xero forever and I am quite satisfied now that I've made the change. All of the big claims have some substance.

But having said that, I have also recently been shown the quickbooks online version which looks damn good as well if you're used to the quickbooks interface already. I haven't seen the online myob yet, so I can't comment.

My key message to new businesses is to choose the one you feel most comfortable with, get a bookkeeper that already specialises in that software and get started immediately. Don't procrastinate over it for too long. You are a small business...you do not need the PERFECT accounting system and none of them are perfect anyway.

Make the decision, then get out of your office and make some sales so the bookkeeper has something to code.