Simpler, Better, Cheaper
You can do in 10 minutes what other accounting packages would take hours to do!!
For small and one-man businesses, doing accounts is something that tends to be
neglected more often than not. These organisations usually do not have enough
money to employ highly qualified accountants, and most do not have the time to
sit and go through their accounts to see if they are running at a loss or not.
This is according to Keith Levenstein, CEO of EconoServ.
It is quite ironic,” he says. “One-man businesses are constantly on the move, selling their products or services from one company to the next - their whole objective is to make money, yet they do not have the time to sit down and check what their financial status is.”
Well at last there is a solution, dubbed the ‘five minute a day accounting solution’ supplied by EconoServ, and I took it on a trial run.
When I first launched the package on my PC it asked me for my company name, and the first thing I thought was: ‘oh no, now I have to start making up cc numbers, VAT registration numbers, managing member names and all the other gobbledegook associated with a company or cc’. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that all users really need to enter to get started is a company name. My company was called ‘Sean’ and, once I had entered the name, I was ready to begin.
Having entered my company name I had to select what type of account I was using and from which bank. Incidentally, because EconoAccounting is designed for local businesses, it lists most major banks in SA, along with the various types of accounts that each one offers. In my case I selected Nedbank and the type of account was a current account.
My next step was to download an electronic statement from my online banking account, relatively easy as EconoAccounting recognises a wide variety of file types and will import most of them. Once downloaded I clicked on the cash book option and instructed the program to import my statement. In less than a couple of seconds it was sitting on my screen ready for me to start working on it. “This process would have taken a couple of hours on other accounting packages, as all data entered would have to be manual, and no matter how accurate the data capturer is, there is bound to be a mistake,” says Levenstein. Well, all I can say is that if I had to input the data manually, the package would be in the dustbin already.
Now, all that was left for me to do was to allocate or name each transaction,
basically putting them into layman’s terms. When naming these transactions,
users also have to specify whether they are expenditures, assets or liabilities.
Also included is the option to specify whether VAT is paid on the transaction or
not.
EconoAccounting also saves time in this regard, as it lets users auto-allocate
their transactions. For example, everybody will have more than one bank charge
per statement. They could range from ATM charges to cheque charges, but
EconoAccounting allows users to specify a common text string to these
transactions and then apply the same set of rules to all of them. In my case I
found the text string ‘Service Fee’ for my banking charges to be common, so I
allocated one ‘Service Fee’ entry to be labelled as an expense and that VAT is
paid on it. I then hit the auto-allocate button, and all other transaction
entries with the same text were labelled as expenses, as well as the amount of
VAT to be paid on them being calculated.
All in all, to sort through my banking statement with no less than thirty entries took me about ten minutes. I then had the option of generating VAT reports, financial statements and viewing common transactions. can also generate their own invoices, quotes, and it even has a stock control function. Users can add contact details to which they can assign various tasks - an excellent way to remember when it is time to hound those clients for money.