Small Business Advice

kilburn

hey guys, i have just taken over an office in a small company where I will literally be doing everything. I want to nail down a very good accounts system for myself but there are no funds available for software. I was looking at Tas Basics and am seriously considering it, but any tips would be appreciated. What records or books do you suggest I keep physically apart from computerised accounts to make it easy for me and the future accountant? Was thinking a Sales Book and a Purchases book for definite maybe petty cash also but after that not sure, so all tips welcome

DoMyBooks

Simply keep a record of every financial transaction, Sales, Purchases, expenses, payroll ect. .

The filling system can be anyway you choose as long as you can find your documents quickly and its tidy.

At the end of every month if you know exactly how much the business is owed, exactly how much it owes out and you have recorded transaction on the bank statement correctly your well on the way.

Take a look at Sort My Books online which is an excellent Irish based online system where there is no initial outlay http://www.sortmybooksonline.com/

Herbalist

Hi OP,

Tas Basics is free and it may suit you but it really depends on what you would like to be able to record and what you want to get out of the program.

Tas Basics will allow you to set up customers and supplier and bank accounts, record suplier and customer invoices, record cash payments and reciepts through the bank and record journals. This means you can run an aged debtors or creditor report at any time to see what money you owe out to suppliers and what customers owe you. You can also do a bank reconcilliation and you can get your profit and loss, balance sheet and trial balances.

This is the sort of functionality you can expect in most entry level products. However Tas Basics does not produce invoices for you to print and post or email to customers and it does not produce statements to send to customers.

If you need these features I would advise to look at another entry level product like Sage Instant Accounts which does all of the above.

Alternatively have a look at Big Red Book, Thesaurus or Turbo cash

If you want to do things like stock control, purchase orders or foreign exchange you may need a slightly bigger package it all depends on what you need to record and process using a software package to help you run your business.

I am associated with Tas / Sage

EamonOSullivan

Can you give other posters an idea of how big the system is? In terms of number of transcations,.

If it is small enough then Excel should do the trick at no cost - just record Date, Supplier/ customer, total, VAT etc for every transaction for Purchases, Sales, Lodgements and Cheque Payments.

Send me a PM if you want some Excel templates.

ssbob

For a small company I normally just use the following 4 Excel templates:

1. Sales Invoices
2. Purchases Invoices
3. Cheques Journal
4. Cash Receipts

But Tas Basics seems to be pretty solid and would at least give you some reporting tools.

Just remember that excel is only a help to the overall accounting process, it is not a reporting tool so going forward you should be trying to move away from this.

kilburn

Hey guys thanks for your tips. My story anyway is that I am second year IATI or ATI now and want to use this as my work experience to get my letters, so just wanna do as much practical as I can. It is a fas WPP so I am doing it solely for the experience in the hope I can get a full time job down the road. I intend on starting either ACA or ACCA or CIMA in September leaning towards CIMA.