Accounting Solutions For Online Stores

[pressprintnow.com]

Hi Guys, I was just wondering for all of you whom have online stores how you manage your accounting?

We have recently been testing Tradebox Finance Manager & Tradebox Cash Manager, has anybody else tried one of these?

Both Require Sage Instant Accounts (plus version works too) or Sage 50

Tradebox Cash Manager downloads all your PayPal transactions (and fee's) and inputs them into sage, effectively will give you a Turnover/Expenses & Current Balance. Meaning Financial Reports are available if an Audit were to happen.

Just wondering what everybody else out there is using?

[Andrew]

Haven't got an online store myself but a very good accounting package which is stand alone is Kashflow. I know it can be directly integrated with the likes of ebay and other ecommerce solutions along with credit cards etc. It's online software as well so can be accessed anywhere you need. Very helpful people in the background as well.

[pressprintnow.com]

I've signed up to the Kashflow Trial but haven’t tried it out as of yet, I have around 9 days left of Cash Manager trial, it seems to be working ok but having my wife learn sage could be a bit of a problem. How long have you been using Kashflow and how easy have you found it to use?

We pretty much just need to put the in's and outs and find out the usual stuff (turnover/expenses & bank balance).

[JSR]

Haven't got an online store myself but a very good accounting package which is stand alone is Kashflow. I know it can be directly integrated with the likes of ebay and other ecommerce solutions along with credit cards etc. It's online software as well so can be accessed anywhere you need. Very helpful people in the background as well.

I don't know if you use this one from what you say but, being that this one is online, do you feel comfortable handing all of your business details over to a third party? I notice on the Kashflow tour that you put customer details in there. How do you handle the Data Protection Act? If you stop paying the monthly fee (because you've decided to switch to other software), what happens to all the data you've given to Kashflow?

Until now, all we've ever done is manual book-keeping - printing off invoices, PayPal summaries, etc - copied to a spreadsheet, and then pay an Accountant each year to do the official stuff. I'm always keen to learn about software that might make things easier, but every "trial" I've had a go at so far always puts me off because they tend to want oodles of money to use the full thing. Online services always worry me when it comes to critical data.

Can you explain more how Kashflow works? Thanks!

[Andrew]

Reporting isn't as indepth as Sage but it covers most of what you need. We swapped from Sage and it's far easier. It was actually set-up with an ex-Director of Sage involved and based on that software but made more simplified to use for smaller businesses. Great bit of software that's continuously developing. Certainly worth a look and very cost effective. Phone them up if you have any questions as they are always willing to talk and help...... even after you pay up.

[John G]

We use quickbooks - print off paypal sheets etc and manually input. Its an old version but ideal for us - we may have to update though as the version we are using isn't win7 proof.

[pressprintnow.com]

Were currently in process of transfering all our payments from paypal & our accounts into the new Tradebox Cash Manager, so far so good, will let you all know how i get on and how it's helping us with our work.

[JSR]

Has anyone ever used GnuCash? http://www.gnucash.org/

I've been intrigued by it because it's (i) free, and (ii) can run as a PortableApp, and (iii) it's cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux), but I don't know anyone who uses it.

[mrs maggot]

ive started using http://www.adminsoftware.biz/index.html ive yet to integrate it al yet, but its free and their forum is very helpful (like this one lol)

[JSR]

ive started using http://www.adminsoftware.biz/index.html ive yet to integrate it al yet, but its free and their forum is very helpful (like this one lol)

Looks good. Apparently that can also be run in "portable" mode, too. I might try that.