Accountancy Software - For Retail!

Tsunami404

hi there

First post..a question which has been driving me mad.
I have a retail outlet (shop!) and have been doing accounts in Excel which is fine (Im fairly PC literate) but there is a lack of reporting features in it, i feel i am not getting a decent overview of the business - especially considering how much time I spend doing the VAT returns.

I currently use Sage for Payroll and it is superb and I tried Sage instant accounts but it doesnt really seem geared towards retail - I dont need to Invoice anyone (as I can do that for the few non cash customers we have via my EPOS system)

I just want to input sales figures probably by week

ie
100eur at 0% VAT
100eur at 13.5% VAT
100eur at 23%

Unless there is a trick Im missing in Sage - and I've rang their (very good) support a few times and they dont seem to know but it doesnt seem to be the solution for me.

Anyone any recommendations?? My accounting year starts July 1 and I really want to get off Excel and move on to a structured Accounts package, its driving me nuts!!

Brewie

I presume you must be keeping a record of all your sales? Does your till record sales & the net/vat/gross of each sale you make? If so, just print a report off at the end of each day and batch enter it. Remember to keep the daily reports for your records.

Enter your purchas invoices individually as they occur (ie not batch entered).

This should cut down alot on your VAT on Sales recordings while still maintaing good records.
The VAT on purchases will also be kept properly.

Tip for Sage accounts/any accounts systems:
Always reference items properly! It will enable you to pull records/paper trail to all entries at a moments notice.

Tsunami404

yeh i run an X report every day..tells me sales VAT etc..I guess my problem with Sage is entering Sales as a customer..it seems wrong from a flow point of view.
The purchases end of things is pretty easy.

lakill Farm

Its very easy to enter them.

Run your till report with vat breakdown

Enter the sales €100 @0%
€50@9%
€715@13.5
€300@€23%

It depends how you get paid for the sales. ie if its straight to the bank or held for a few days in a safe.

Ok collsoft is a cheaper and an excellent payroll system (just a happy customer)

If your just looking for reporting info then Excel would be better than an accounting package. Software packages are designed to prepare accounts not as reporting tools. Excel is a very powerful tool and is great for analysing data. Depending on the EPOS system your using, you may be able to export your sales data into excel. If so, the reporting functionality that you can get from excel is almost limitless.

Brewie

Tsunami404 wrote: »

yeh i run an X report every day..tells me sales VAT etc..I guess my problem with Sage is entering Sales as a customer..it seems wrong from a flow point of view.
The purchases end of things is pretty easy.

Set up a Customer in the Customers/Debtors listing & name it for example "Cash Counter Sales".
At the end of each day enter your batch sales entry as invoice(s) to the new customer.
Then record receipts using a cash account.
Your lodgements will be debiting the bank account and crediting your Cash account.

This will sort your "flow" issue out if you think about it.

Herbalist

You can use Sage Instant accounts for retail. You can do this in two ways.

The first is by entering daily til takings into the bank account. You can do this by creating one entry or you can enter a few different entries with different references if you want to split it into sales for different areas.

The second is as Brewie suggested. In this way you create a customer to represent Cash Sales at the counter. At the end of each day create a batch invoice against this customer account to represent daily sales.

e.g. 25th July - cash sales total - 400 euro

If you want to seperate into different areas of sales (e.g. tobacco, magazines etc) you can set up different sales nominal codes - one for each section and use your til reports to then enter a batch invoice for each for example

Tobacco - 100 euro
magazines - 50 euro
Groceries - 250 euro