Xero: Accounting for small businesses
One of the hardest things for startups (and small businesses in general) is the accounting side of things.
Over the years we have used spreadsheets, self-built Filemaker-based systems, MoneyWorks, and other small Mac-based accounting packages. None worked very well for our needs and you need a degree in accounting to understand or appreciate their complexity.
Earlier this year we finally made the change to Xero (www.xero.co.nz). Xero is a web-based accounting system that is simple, intuitive and downright beautiful.
It makes bookkeeping for us non-accountants really pretty simple. As a web-based application, users can login from anywhere in the world to view the state of things, fiddle with the books, etc. It has multi-user access with various user-levels so staff don't have to see everything that the boss does!
With the recent addition of the Xero Network, there is a rapidly expanding collection of other systems that integrate tightly with Xero to syncronise information such as contacts, payroll information, invoices etc.
All our job, staff and client management is handled online through systems that integrate with Xero. More about that in another post.
I highly recommend taking a look at Xero and giving it a test drive: www.xero.co.nz
“this reads like a press release testimonial. security starts at home. why would i want to have some private company i never heard of keep all my financial information on their servers? do i misunderstand, or is this a cloud computing service? i am not big on the whole idea of handing over my private docs and infos to web companies. what is the compelling reason to do so? there's already too much of my life on-line. even big, well known companies like yahoo cannot be trusted. they were ready to give up search info with ip addresses. how safe is my email from "authorized" spying? and "don't be evil" motto or not, can I _really_ entrust google with my docs and spreadsheets? when is the next hacker gonna crack into a million people's private data? i like to keep it simple and keep my financial and other private or important docs to myself as much as reasonable.”
“Hi Mojo, I agree with your sentiments about security of hosted systems and it's always something one has to weigh up when deciding to place so much trust in a hosted system. I guess one can never be absolutely certain about the integrity of their data even when it's stored locally. The hosted model works for us because of its low maintenance requirements and the ability to connect to it from anywhere with multiple users. As web designers and hosted application developers ourselves, we get excited about good looking, intuitive software that is a pleasure to use.”