Technology has enabled designing of software beyond one can imagine. Field of accounting is one such area where passage of time has shown us capabilities and functions of the software ranging from invoicing to complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) grown manifold. The utility is of course subjective, and one cannot deny the fact that advancement of bookkeeping or payroll or accounting software is beneficial to some while it is creating unnecessary complexities for the others.
Business owners may have different requirements as someone might just want a software for invoicing or maintaining books of accounts for regulatory compliances while the other one might look for classified or summarized information and analytical reports to know what is going in with business or to make decisions on various aspects. Software products like Xero, Quickbooks, Tally Prime, Visma E-accounting, MYOB, Brincr, Hubdoc, Zoho Books and list goes on and on. For choosing a right accounting software, consider evaluation under mentioned aspects:
Cost
Cost of accounting software includes cost of acquisition, annual maintenance charges, upgradation charges, costs of implementation (including opportunity cost of employees of your business), server costs and other incidental costs. Make sure to evaluate all of these and choose the option that you think is the best fit for your spends budget. Remember, cost of accounting software should never outweigh the benefits you will reap.
Category of Human Resource
Accounting software can be simple, moderate and extremely complex to use. This will require different category of employees in the business to record and process the transactions. If you have them already, it should not be much of a concern except resistance. But if you are planning to employ new personnel who will work on these software, the availability of skilled personnel, its cost to company and retention probabilities will be very important. Best accounting software works only when best of skilled users use them. Choose wisely.
Output Expectations vs. Features
Software come with lot of innovative and comprehensive features and report generation capabilities. It is important to first list down what all you expect your accounting software and then look out if those features are available or not. If you do the other way round that is just see the features, there are changes more likely than not that you will barely use them. Do not get carried away with set of features.
Applicable Law and Regulations
Compliance with law and regulations is something inevitable. Software that provides automated tax codes, reports for filings with regulators is always preferable. Its always better to define master and tax codes and let the sub-ordinates works hassle free rather than employing someone with additional skills to perform the task.
Our firm provides outsourced accounting services, payroll management services and tax filing services which give us an exposure to multiple software prevalent in multiple countries. Over the years we have discovered that be it any software, since our basic accounting fundamentals and understanding of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) is sound and that our team is inquisitive and tech-savvy, we adapt to and master in all software we use.
Reach out to us for choosing accounting software, setting up chart of accounts, bookkeeping, payroll and tax filing services.
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