Visitor Rating: 1 Stars

Visitor Rating: 1 Stars

Visitor Rating: 2 Stars

I think this review is too critical of what I find is an excellent product. I was using quickbooks se which is a pretty good choice for self employed sole traders.

Still I joined zoho books, crunch, quickfile to name but a few on a temp basis to try them out.

Crunch was hopelessly slow interface and could not deal with my tsb csv files which is a pity because it looks to be a fairly simple product which could have fit the bill for me.

Zoho was quite good but I found Quickfile made better use of my screen real estate and I could jump about better. This due to it being quick but also although there are a lot of menus it easy to get to them.

The good –

1. Quickfile is super snappy response wise almost always usually.
2. I can also quickly open a second browser window to check or reference another view which is great.
3. Excellent search feature which allows multiple tagging of transactions with purchase receipt records auto generated in the blink of an eye.
4. Search also allows tracking down date or price transactions or purchases without a receipt from the purchases view.
5. The chart of accounts report lets you see where everything is category wise, good for checking each category has the right stuff in it.
6. Standard profit & loss for me as a sole trader and balance sheet.
7. Relatively intuitive and easy to correct mistakes. *see below though
8. Good documentation and community discussion and help.(no direct help though)

The bad –

1. *There is a learning curve as to the correct way for doing things. (see snags below)
2. Making mistakes is easy, which you find out later was the wrong way to do something.
3. Seems as if it’s free, but really it’s likely to cost you in the long run. (price is reasonable though)
4. Is very much a chart of accounts rather than an income and expense record.
5. Requires you to embrace bookeeping on some level.
6. Some quirks to embrace for the purposes of self employed sole trader.
7. No direct help, only via community & discussion boards.
8. Mileage can be accounted for in P&L by setting up a supplier called expense mileage account but it has to be manually entered & calculated.

Snags & Tips –

Tip 1 – Business expenses.
Business expense transactions need a Supplier & Purchase receipt record so you can attach a receipt.
I really did not like this idea but when you embrace it, it’s really not so hard to do.
If you just tag transactions via something else, then a category, you have no purchase record or supplier or place to attach a receipt.
Most other accounts ware let you attach actual pdf or jpeg directly to bank transaction, with Quickfile you attach to a purchase receipt. That just a record where purchase details are held.

You could just tag categories and keep all receipts somewhere else but that would be a shame.
So when tagging a business expense select payment to supplier option, if no supplier exists all that’s needed is a name and the purchase receipt record will be auto generated in purchases where you can upload the actual receipt or pdf whatever.

Tip 2 – Drawings.
Drawings come under two categories
1. Proprietor Drawings
2. Proprietor & Partner Drawings

The bank transaction tag menu has a ‘direct salary or other drawings’ option, if you select this drawings it goes under Proprietor Drawings and ends up in a category of ‘assets’ in your balance sheet.
BUT if you select ‘something else not on this list’ you can manually select the ‘Proprietor & Partner Drawings’.
This goes to a different place on your balance sheet under Capital & Reserves.

From what little I know at trading years end you may make a nominal ledger moving all drawings from 1202 to 3100 or monthly ledgers doing same.
However if you are a sole trader for ease saving having to do this double entry debits and credits round the other way hassle, just post to 3100 – Proprietor & Partner Drawings and jobs done.
Clearly you don’t have partners so are unlikely to select this initially and left with the problem of embracing double entry bookeeping and nominal entry ledger adjustments, not what you want really.

Tip 3 – Reconcile your bank.

When doing a reconcile if you have worked from bank transaction outwards it should go well.
However remember that starting balance is more that first transaction balance.
i.e. say first transaction is for 5.00 pounds and has balance of 100.00 pounds next to it.
Then start balance is 100 + 5, otherwise 105 pounds else the reconcile will be minus 5 pounds.

Tip 4 – Bank accounts

Not only are your bank accounts treated as a bank, petty cash, stripe clearing, paypal etc
is an account. Also people can be bank accounts when you wish to track the flow to and from them.

Tip 5 – Read the instructions, familiarise yourself well first.

I waded in as everything is fairly easy to do and seems natural.
However while good for getting to grips with things and eventually discovering what I actually needed to know I did have to redo stuff as I had been doing it wrong.

It’s better if you know the workflow first. For instance I did a years transactions before I realised I had no purchase receipts for my business expenses as well as all drawings were in 1202 not 3100.
Now I could have just manually created each purchase receipt than connected it to each transaction etc.. but I just batch retagged them and auto generated the purchase receipts. Anyway if you have to redo things you can sometimes end up with duplicate purchase receipts or some customer invoice numbers lost or similar tangle.

By redoing I discovered how easy it is to sort out and how I can quickly search and batch categorise, check or change stuff. It works very well and it’s different from most other products in a good way. More like a spreadsheet on steroids.

Visitor Rating: 4 Stars

Visitor Rating: 5 Stars

Visitor Rating: 4 Stars

Visitor Rating: 5 Stars