If you have a small business (three employees or less) and you really want to limit what you spend on software and implementation, and you havent bought software yet, look at Quickbooks first. It is t
If you have a small business (three employees or less) and you really want to limit what you spend on software and implementation, and you havent bought software yet, look at Quickbooks first. It is the easiest to use, and at the moment has marginally more features for the price than MYOB. If the size of your business is pretty static and youre already using MYOB, stay with it. Quickbooks isnt so much better that its worth changing.
If you expect growth or already have a bigger business, look carefully at Sage. The fastest-running, most powerful product here, priced at not much more than $1,000 out of the box. One other unrelated but significant point is that Sage leads with Internet technology, and its worth, as part of your research, looking at its Web site. Basically there is a plan in place to produce an E-commerce front end for Sage accounting software. This would mean that you could soon have people buying your products on the Web and the sales figures going into your accounts automatically.
With Sage, Pastel and any other medium-level accounting package, you should budget for training and consulting costs of at least as much as the software purchase price. But really, you should also be doing this with MYOB and even Quickbooks if you want to ensure that your system is up and running before the GST commences.
Also, every vendor is still going to deliver changes before July 1st. No product here is in its final form. All of them are pretty close though, allowing for the information the ATO has made available.
Before July 1st, go to as many seminars as you can. Research the ATO and ACCC Web sites (see Web Resources box) and anything else you possibly can. Theres a lot to learn and it will pay off on the first day of the new financial year.