Solutions like FreshBooks tend to grow up fast i.e. they tend to add functionality regularly.  It’s one of the reasons we started with them.  It’s easier to grow into a market than to scale down.

What are your thoughts about http://www.freeagentcentral.com ?

Accounting is the last great business application to make the leap into the cloud, and for good reason: it’s not simple. 

I used Freshbooks with various other online apps for a couple years, and was blown away by how inadequate they were after trying Quickbooks 2010.  I miss Freshbooks, but the functionality is just not there.  No general ledger, trust accounting, or double-entry; no credit card and bank statement importing (direct from the banks), no balance or P/L statements.  These are all essential features in an modern accounting program in my opinion.

Engineering SpecialOps - Jun 15, 2010 06:54am

Solutions like FreshBooks tend to grow up fast i.e. they tend to add functionality regularly.  It’s one of the reasons we started with them.  It’s easier to grow into a market than to scale down.

What are your thoughts about http://www.freeagentcentral.com ?

For a small SMB FreeAgent is a really fantastic. Lot of good feedback from clients about it. Though the caveat emptor is that most of the bonus features are UK oriented - perhaps Outright is a viable option?

Is Quickbooks 2010 also a big improvement from 2009, 2008? I was thinking about going back to QB today in fact as I’m wanting to use a better filing, accounting system to track both credits and debits.

I had emailed Freshbooks a bunch of questions about their service and just lost confidence with the vagueness of their replies about it could do and how it can be used. Also, when I clarified their pricing, it seems that if you are going to be billing multiple people throughout the year (over 25) then you need to go for their higher end package.

That doesn’t work for me, I deal with some many clients that are one time invoices, and I don’t like accounting/bookkeeping as it is, that I’m turned off Freshbooks.

I don’t know what else Solve is planning to integrate with accounting software-wise, but it would be good to know what our options are NOW so we can evaulate and get on those.

I heard Clearbooks? A friend of mine is the developer for Rhino Accounting (http://rhinoaccounting.com/), however that is only for Google Apps, not accounts.

So unless someone produces a list, Quickbooks looks mighty good right now…

I’ve enjoyed QB 2010 thus far(and I used ‘08 and ‘09 as well).  QB in and of it self is not the problem.  I’m just looking for a one cloud fits all approach.  We may be a few years away from that at this point.  I don’t want to enter a customer twice(CRM + Accounting).  I want my CRM to contain ALL valid info regarding that customer.  That is the only way I see value in leaving QB.  Why pay $30+ per month for a Saas accounting solution if it doesn’t add any integration. My opinion is that QB will be better than just about any cloud accounting, but I would be more than willing to switch for integration with CRM.

I went as far as to trial Netsuite($800+ per mo.).  I would never pay that(as I am a one man band and that would never be in my budget) but I was intrigued by the supposed completeness of it(CRM + accounting).  Obviously Netsuite is WAY more robust than anything I need and I spent about 10 minutes with the demo and bailed and haven’t been back(much like my 10 minute Salesforce.com experiment).

At any rate, I truly dig Solve.  Nothing has been easier to use(set up job tasks templates for “won” jobs within 10 minutes of signing up for trial.)  I just gave Solve my credit card so I plan on settling down here for awhile.  I’m just getting a little greedy and thought I would see what the community thought about the future regarding Solve and accounting integration.

Ok, let me throw Clarity Accounting into the list https://www.clarityaccounting.com/

Their SaaS seems to look pretty good, especially their features page https://www.clarityaccounting.com/features Have a look and tell me what you think, is this one capable of being a full service, one stop accounting SaaS that would work good with SolvE?

These guys are in Vancouver, so maybe that helps as Solve is in Calgary (closeby).

Free Agent didn’t grab me.

stratum - Jun 15, 2010 04:01pm

My opinion is that QB will be better than just about any cloud accounting, but I would be more than willing to switch for integration with CRM.

I think the problem is that QB may be better as a standalone service, but like you said, we’re getting to a point where standalone just doesn’t cut it.

For a sole proprietorship, QB works fine. But tracking time, expenses and the likes as well as producing invoices and reminder / thank you emails all within a framework that lets you manage a team - QB has never done a good job of this at least in my experience.

I think there’s a possibly bright future for QB online and inuit in general (though I remain skeptical) - but it remains to be seen how they will play with newly aquired mint.com and if we see any of those great features in QB online.

Still prefer the SaaS offerings mainly for the direction they’re heading, and the service oriented nature of SaaS in general.

New news, Clarity Accounting is now Kashoo https://www.kashoo.com/

I’m meeting them this week and I’ll see if they are interested in doing an integration with Solve. If they are, I’ll shoot Steve an email.

sloughwi - Jun 15, 2010 01:56pm

Accounting is the last great business application to make the leap into the cloud, and for good reason: it’s not simple. 

I used Freshbooks with various other online apps for a couple years, and was blown away by how inadequate they were after trying Quickbooks 2010.  I miss Freshbooks, but the functionality is just not there.  No general ledger, trust accounting, or double-entry; no credit card and bank statement importing (direct from the banks), no balance or P/L statements.  These are all essential features in an modern accounting program in my opinion.

I agree!

Ronald - Jun 15, 2010 03:38pm

Is Quickbooks 2010 also a big improvement from 2009, 2008? I was thinking about going back to QB today in fact as I’m wanting to use a better filing, accounting system to track both credits and debits.

Major upgrades to the Desktop version were in 2006. Intuit continues to improve it.

I’m just getting back into using the online version after about 3-4 years. It has improved as well.

http://www.financialforce.com/
How do you rate this solution?

Stefan - Jun 29, 2010 01:38am

http://www.financialforce.com/
How do you rate this solution?

This is the first I’ve seen it. Looking at the website…this is a SalesForce Accounting program. I don’t see a price listed. My guess it is comparable to the price of SalesForce.

It looks like a complete accounting solution. One thing I don’t like but appears to be present here is the need to “post” journals. It is common in a lot of high end accounting software. You have to take the extra step to “post” your work. If you don’t do this important step your work sits in “limbo”.

I am a QuickBooks user almost exclusively. I would say this program might have some advantages over the Online QuickBooks version. I personally like to host the Desktop version of QuickBooks.

A great thread everyone.  Based on this and others, we are looking seriously at Xero which appears to answer our needs.  We currently use Sage which is an expensive “sledgehammer and nut” nightmare with no customer support (unless you pay additional fees).

We use QB Online with Solve and doesn’t have the integration that it should but I am being patient.  I found that Freshbooks was also inadequate for our needs.  Interesting note to the Eng Spec Ops team, Intuit told me in an hour long conversation that QB Online is now growing to be their flagship.  Give it some time for that to happen but they have quadrupled their user base in the last year, so that says something.  I’ve had good success with it to this point but can see where limitations lie for various business models.

Xero here

I’ve been hearing some positive things about Xero.

I am a big fan of Xero and an integration with Solve would be excellent.

Xero here too.  We’ve been using it a couple of months after migrating off Sage (in the UK).  It seems to be a great solution and their pricing plan suits our team very well.

Q, not wishing to take the discussion off on a complete tangent, I would be very interested in your experience of migrating from Sage to Xero.  We are just about to make that leap, so you are a couple of months ahead of us.
Has there been anything that you miss that Sage used to give you that Xero doesn’t? 
We are writing off nearly £1000 spent on two licenses of Sage, but see Xero as potentially worth it.

I too would very much like to hear how you are finding xero. I am particularly interested in using xero for job tracking.

Latest update from Xero today:

“New add-on - Highrise
Tired of the time and hassle it takes to enter contacts into two different systems? Our new integration with Highrise takes care of this.

We know this simple CRM from cloud solutions provider 37signals is what many of you use to manage your contacts. Contacts are automatically imported from Highrise under a tag of your choice into Xero with updates four times daily.  Nice. See Help to set this up.“

I’m sure the Solve Team can keep up the pace and provide integration soon! (Gauntlet thrown)

Good call Carl, Xero already has a lot of other 3rd party integrations that manage other areas such as inventory management and job costing which is fully integrated. Having this information feed across into s360 contact, company information would be VERY useful.

Re: Accounting systems - I’ve been using Saasu (http://www.saasu.com) for over a year now - great, robust cloud based accounting.

Cheers,
BC

Note that you can still use Solve360 with Xero via Freshbooks.  Xero does an excellent job of pulling in all the invoices and payments from Freshbooks in full detail.

As a Norada partner, and myself a professional accountant, this is something we can help with.

So your suggesting the purchase of a freshbooks to enable xero integration with solve?

Yes, but certainly test it out with a trial account to ensure it meets your needs.  Note that Solve360 only links to your live Freshbooks information.  You still have to rekey or import to create customers/contacts inside Freshbooks.

davieboy - Aug 15, 2011 08:41am

So your suggesting the purchase of a freshbooks to enable xero integration with solve?

interlockit.com - Aug 15, 2011 08:44am

Yes, but certainly test it out with a trial account to ensure it meets your needs.  Note that Solve360 only links to your live Freshbooks information.  You still have to rekey or import to create customers/contacts inside Freshbooks.

davieboy - Aug 15, 2011 08:41am

So your suggesting the purchase of a freshbooks to enable xero integration with solve?

I appreciate your post however I do not see how you can recommend freshbooks when it neither supports inventory management OR job costing as mentioned in my previous post. Even if freshbooks was free there is no way that I would want to link my business and business information to yet another vendor just for the sake of integration with xero. I would be much happier to pay a little extra to solve for integration with xero directly or even just to have an indication from solve that we might see integration in the near future.

Furthermore I have just looked at the freshbooks website. There is no clear pricing model on their website anywhere. It simply says FREE or starting from $19.99 join us for more details!!! Nothing else. The fact that they cannot put clear pricing on their page says alot. No way I would sign up to any product just to find out how much it costs. Anyway I must apologise in advance if this email comes across as bashful to freshbooks as that was and is not my intention. I am just annoyed that a partner of Solve360 would try to recommend that I spend money on something that is not going to be of any benefit to me whatsoever.

I’ve been in touch with Xero and they already have Solve360 in their sights for integration, however they need enough people to be interested.  Please go to this address and register your support:

http://xero.uservoice.com/forums/28866-integration-with-other-products/suggestions/1402539-integrate-with-solve360?ref=title

Yes, if you are interested in Xero let us know, because this type of integration is not an easy task so we need to be sure that we go down the right road.

Oh Special Ops!  If it was easy, anyone could do it!
An initial integration that allowed contacts/companies to be used by Xero would be a great start.

Been a long time since there was any activity on this thread. I am looking at kashoo again and it seems like a very comprehensive offering for SME’s. I am going to start a trial because they now support most of the things I need like multi currencies….inventory management….multi users and its only $10 per month. Superb value for money…..Would love to hear if solve is working on contact integration. I know there is a way by going via freshbooks but I have no requirement for freshbooks.

Great to see this discussion resurrected.  Any updates from Xero users, or others?  I’m at my rope’s end with Sage - painful report generator, buggy inventory stats, and shockingly unchanged Windows 95 user interface have me beating my head in constantly! (Just to name a few)

Subscribed…

There are a few interesting things happening in the online Accounting space.  Respecting that, we’d also like to learn more about how Quickbooks plays into your day (all variants).

eliminated QuickBooks last year - > XERO

We’ve been on Xero since September.  MUCH better than Sage for three main reasons:
1.  As it is in the cloud, we don’t need a server and yet our book-keeper can still access it.  All we need do is send emailed or scanned invoices to him.
2. The user interface is much more friendly than Sage.  Xero lacks very little that Sage has, but is by far more intuitive, allowing not only live bank feeds, but also the ability to easily drill down to the detail.  Currently our one small niggle is not being able to produce Purchase Orders, but as these are not an accounting requirement, it is easy to work around until Xero include this feature.
3.  Sage support is useless unless you pay extra. Xero support rivals that of Solve360.

There are lots of other benefits, but I could get over zealous.

4running, having spent £1000 for two licenses of Sage, I am still delighted we ditched it in favour of Xero. Get a Xero arrpoved book-keeper to help you transfer.
I really hope that Norada and Xero can “get it together” somehow to provide a more seamless interface.

We are using Quick Books Pro 2011, desktop version.  I do not like Intuit’s invasive advertising, or their new-found tactic of getting you to upgrade in order to keep critical functionality. 

We do duplicate entry in Solve360/QB for contacts/customers and their project set up/billing information.  We use a/r (invoice creation), a/p, integrated credit card payments from customers (this is what forced an upgrade), sales tax management, online bank & CC account reconciliation and register entry.  As a result of my forced upgrade to 2011, it seems I can no longer email invoices directly from Quick Books, but THEY have determined that I may need to actually invoice my customers, so have left the ability to save an invoice in PDF format to my hard drive, after which I may attach it to an email that I send to my customer. :(

I had considered going to their service model, but felt it was too expensive to get the service comparable to QB Pro - $480/year, or $758/year with payroll.

Thanks for your advice, Carl.  That sounds like the direction we want to go, I’ll be seriously looking into that now.  (And I hope Norada will be as well….  :-)