UK Mac accounting software

At 12:58 -0700 13/10/2006, Ben Rubinstein wrote:
>... then I'd like to ask what recommendations, warnings, or experiences UK
>users can share about Mac accounting software?
>[snip]
>Can anyone on the list comment about these or any other Mac-based systems?

I'm not in the UK, but you should at least look at the Moneyworks /
Cashworks range to see if they meet your requirements:

http://cognito.co.nz/index.php?country_code=uk

For technical support: In UK: intlsupportcognito.co.nz.

The software was developed here in New Zealand and is gradually
moving out to the rest of the world. It runs on both Mac and Windows,
and is available in several flavours.

I'm a very happy user of Moneyworks - I've been using it for my
business for probably 10 years now.

Cheers,

Miraz
--
Miraz Jordan | mirazmactips.info | http://mactips.info

Moneydance is an excellent cross-platform package that is aimed at businesses that are probably smaller than yours but it feels as though it might scale up to a modest extent. It's an American product but it can work in Sterling and handle VAT.

Hi Ben,

I'll add my endorsement of the recommendation you have received from Miraz Jordan.

We have used MoneyWorks for all of 10 years and it now takes care of our busy mailorder service with over 7000 debtors in that file.

This package sells very well in both NZ and Australia. It has a heavy orientation for complying with our respective GST regimes which, I gather, were largely modelled on the VAT system.

I was informed recently that QuickBooks allows a user to change the monetary details of a posted transaction. That is not possible in MoneyWorks. Instead you have to cancel the erroneous transaction which leaves an audit trail for all to see! I would have thought this was a mandatory requirement for any reputable accounting package.

I have no direct connection with the developers -- just a satisfied user.

Cheers,

John Wolff Grandmother's Garden Patchwork & Quilting Hamilton, New Zealand www.gmg.net.nz

At 14:28 10/14/06 -0700, Charles Maurer wrote:
>Moneydance is an excellent cross-platform package that is aimed at businesses

I've been using Moneydance for the past few months. It was actually easier
to convert from Quicken/Mac to MD than to Quicken/Win.

MD is written in Java and is truly cross-platform -- some people report
storing their data on a USB memory stick and updating it on a Mac at home
and on Windows at work. (Quicken not only does not have a cross-platform
file format, it does not even have a workable method of converting between
Mac and Windows.) Many users run it under various versions of Unix, since
the primary players in this market don't have Unix versions.

However, MD is definitely a personal finance program, not a business
accounting program -- it competes with Quicken (and MS Money), not with
QuickBooks. I do use it for my consulting business, but that's as small a
business as you can get, and it still strains the limits of MD. I figured
out a way to do accounts receivable, but it's ugly and contorted, and would
be totally unworkable if I wrote more than two invoices per month. Users on
the MD mailing list always recommend looking at other programs for business
use.

Although MD started in the US, the primary developer (and IIRC the entire
team) recently moved to Scotland. He does work very hard to make it usable
internationally.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

Ben Rubinstein said:

>Can anyone on the list comment about these or any other Mac-based systems?


A while back someone in the media said that there was "no Macintosh
accounting software." I take such statements as a personal challenge, so
I did a survey of Mac accounting programs to show them wrong. Ever since
then I've been tracking Mac accounting software.

I now have a list of over 45 such programs! I can't tell you which of
them, if any, meet your needs, but if you, or anyone else on this
discussion list, would like my list, just let me know.



Randy B. Singer

Co-Author of:
The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Hi Ben

Hi from Nepal. Conflict of interest: Total. We are very biased as we sell and customize Moneyworks for use in Nepal. That said, we can't recommend it highly enough. It is a very good Mac citizen- Applescript, Bonjour for network discovery, etc... That said, it runs fine on Windows too, and the server can be either Mac or Win. A new version is about to be released that is a universal binary, includes multi-currency support and lots of improvements to the report writer... Cheers, Craig Drown Kathmandu Nepal http://sussol.net

I have been using MYOB on a Mac in the UK for about 10 years. It comes in various strengths according to whether you want payroll, multicurrency etc. At its highest end I can't believe it wouldn't give you everything you wanted, including multi-user capabilities.

What else is good? • It's a mature product so they've included e.g every type of report you can imagine; it allows 13 month years; it can get rid of those annoying 1p VAT discrepancies; you can choose whether items are undoable or set in stone; good contacts system. • Quite good documentation and business model templates etc (but fully customisable) • It never crashes and it's good at keeping back-ups of itself. • It falls in the category of boring but dependable. • It seems to produce reports and information that my accountant finds useful. • Ideal for using on that not so up-to-date Mac you retired last year. • The company seems good at providing updated tax & payroll information.

What's not good? • I don't know how standard this is with these packages - but they'd REALLY like you to subscribe to their support line at a repeating annual cost. • The interface is a bit tired and certain windows annoyingly don't resize even when you have plenty of screen real estate to do so. • Forms editor is tragic. • The look and feel of the whole MYOB experience is a bit inward-looking (reminds me a bit of Quark in the mid-90s if you know what I mean).

Hope that helps.

I'm in the UK and have used MYOB for my small business for about 9 years. I'm still using MYOB Version 6 and it is the only app I use that I still need to go into Classic for! But it has worked flawlessly for all that time, and is quite sophisticated in terms of it's features.

Since then the software has developed further and as I understand it, there are versions which can do multi-currency accounting, payroll etc. So you would need to look carefully at which features you needed. Obviously, the software is now OS X native.

MYOB has a good support service in the UK, and they are often at Mac exhibitions (look out for them at MacExpo in a few weeks).

I'm not a Brit ( except by ancestery! ), and I don't have a small business, either! But I have downloaded 6 or 7 'personal finance' programs recently, looking for something to replace Quicken. Most claim to be designed for small businesses. Most also seem not designed to emulate Quicken at all. That may be good? But I have yet to find one that allows me to show both a deposit and a withdrawal in one transaction. That's called a 'split' in Quicken and is usually a result of depositing several checks and taking back some cash. Another instance would be in detailing ones pay check. While the net deposit may be the only thing that shows on an institutions statement, I always thought that info would be needed as a backup or explanation. Apparently not?

Anyway, I found most of my apps with a search at VersionTracker.com . It appears that Mr. Singer has found even more. I plan on getting his list after this post. My only suggestion is to be aware of how any app stores your info, the less proprietary the better. And be sure your accountant can easily use the reports the app supplies. Of course, the more flexible the app, the more it will probably cost, but there seems to be quite a lot of subjectively created 'required/supplied' reports in the software I've so far examined. If possible, you might want to assign the study of possible software to one person and then make sure you can trust their findings! ;-)

Hi All,

I'd like to add one further observation to my earlier post.

MoneyWorks does not do a Payroll module and is not likely to add this feature while different countries make their own individual requirements for the way payroll taxes are calculated and reported upon. In NZ, anyone marketing a Payroll module will pretty much need to have it accredited with our Dept of Inland Revenue -- especially so if it is used for reporting wage and salary returns.

We use a standalone package that was developed in FileMaker and packaged as a Runtime solution. It has an Accounting Export routine which creates a text file that can readily be imported into MoneyWorks. This is a robust and easily managed system and one that I'd strongly recommend.

In this country there are many developers and consultants who make a nice living helping small to medium sized business ditch MYOB and setting them up with MoneyWorks. We don't any hear of anyone wanting to revert back.

Just another $0.02!

John Wolff

Hamilton, New Zealand

At 10:46 10/19/06 -0700, Jim Chaffin wrote:
>I have downloaded 6 or 7 'personal finance' programs recently [...] I have
>yet to find one that allows me to show both a deposit and a withdrawal in
>one transaction. That's called a 'split' in Quicken [...] be aware of how
>any app stores your info, the less proprietary the better. And be sure
>your accountant can easily use the reports the app supplies.

You may want to look at Moneydance (MD), already mentioned in this thread.
As I said before, it's intended only for personal finance -- which probably
represents realism on the developer's part rather than any deficiency
relative to the others you've been trying.

All MD transactions can have splits, as in Quicken -- the entry is a bit
cumbersome compared with Quicken, but it works and is fully featured.

MD is a full double-entry bookkeeping system. Nothing is left
uncategorized. This sometimes confuses newcomers, but most users find it
useful to be required to categorize everything, even if you end up setting
up a catch-all category for some expenses. (I have a "balance adjustments"
category for those occasions when I don't want to track down a
discrepancy.) It also means there are no "hanging transactions" as in
Quicken, because there is always a pair of accounts attached to a transaction.

MD's format is internal, but it easily exports the entire database in XML
format, and reloads from that XML file, without losing a single bit. It
also has a plug-in interface for writing extensions (in Java or Python).

MD is weak on reporting, but they have just issued a call for suggestions
for improved reporting features for an upcoming release.

And as mentioned before, it is totally cross-platform -- put your MD file
on a memory stick and rotate it among the Mac, Win, and Unix versions at
will, without a hitch.

It ain't perfect -- I've filed numerous bug reports and enhancement
requests. The bugs I've seen are mostly minor, though I haven't tried using
it for online banking, where there have been some significant problems.

Hey, I always liked Quicken, at least the Mac version -- the problem was
that it got slower and buggier with each release, support was terrible, the
format is proprietary (an issue you pointed out), the Windows version has a
vastly different UI from the Mac version and frankly I hate the Windows UI,
and worst of all, its files not only are not cross-platform but cannot even
be converted from one to the other without massive loss of data. (MD did a
much better job of importing my Q/Mac data than did Q/Win.) Most MD users
feel the same way, so on the mailing lists there's never any pressure to
avoid mentioning Quicken or to avoid suggesting features that Quicken has.
The ideal is for MD to emulate what Quicken does well while avoiding its
pitfalls.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

I have been a fan and user of MYOB for a while both as an employee in Australia and now with my own business in the UK. I must admit now that I will have to move on. I am on Macs and with our grwoth have had to go to MYOB plus and Multiuser. My advise to anyone going multi user on Mac is dont. So slow you would be quicker on your own. I am thinking about the Kiwi program Money Works, any feedback? Also they offer a server package, what is that all about. Will it be quicker does one think, right now I just want to throw money at my speed problem and solve it.

At 10:46 -0800 15/02/2007, christian Watters wrote:
>I am thinking about the Kiwi program Money Works, any feedback?

MoneyWorks is excellent. I've been using it very happily for the last
ummm 10-15 years in my one-person business.

My needs are very simple and MoneyWorks offers more power than I can
make use of, but I've also recommended it to friends and clients who
are also using it very happily, some with customised extras to fit
their specific requirements.

A new version has just appeared with extra features for multiple
users, foreign currencies, and so on. I'm still using the previous
version.

Cheers,

Miraz

--
MacTips.Info: http://mactips.info

Latest book: WordPress 2 : Visual QuickStart Guide
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321450191

Hi Christian,

The multiuser package of MoneyWorks comprises a server module called DataCentre. It is very well behaved in a multiuser environment but quite a bit more expensive to purchase and then pay an annual licence fee. You need to contact some of the support personnel listed on the www.cognito.co.nz website for their advice in setting up your files for the VAT regime.

There are some restrictions on using the DataCentre when you want to roll back transactions or change product, debtor or creditor codes. The pakage insists upon being in single user mode for these changes to occur. Even though these operations are infrequent they need you to close down other users. Thus I would not suggest sharing the file over widely dispersed work stations.

In many respects the DataCentre is very much like FileMaker Server with the big exception that it does not require a standalone server. We have it running very happily on a G5 PowerMac with dual 1.8 GHz CPUs over 100Mbps ethernet and nothing special by way of hard drives. This setup handles 4 users easily with one being on the server machine.

I don't yet know anyone who has migrated from MoneyWorks to another package.

If you have any other questions please ask.

John Wolff

Hamilton, New Zealand

On 2/16/07, christian Watters <studiocavaniacards.co.uk> wrote:

> I am thinking about the Kiwi program Money Works, any feedback? Also they offer a server package, what is that all about. Will it be quicker does one think, right now I just want to throw money at my speed problem and solve it.

It is very much quicker than MYOB and very flexible.

DataCentre is excellent. Put a Mac Mini in the corner, put DC on it,
put MoneyWorks on your client(s) and just go.

The people I know who have come from MYOB also think it excellent. I
was under the impression that MYOB were deprecating multi-user Mac
support, but I'm not 100% clear on that.

Disclosure: I've worked with the MoneyWorks team for many years on
various things so I'm not unbiased. However, I have always been
satisfied that the program has lived up to its reputation.

Rob
SumWare Consulting