10 steps to choosing the right accounting software

Your accounting sofware plays a big role in determining your future so here is our 10 best recommendations.

Sustainability and profitability in business can be largely dependant on making the right choice of software system and with many accounting products available this is quite often difficult to do.

A good accounting system needs to help you to develop your Infrastructure:

1. Accounting System

Daily records of financial transactions must be kept in order to monitor the financial progress of the business and to comply with IRD reporting requirements. You want this process to be fast and easy and provide meaningful reports.

2. Database

A system of keeping records on clients, prospects, suppliers, and others must be maintained. In doing so, repeat business can be processed more efficiently and opportunities can be realised in selling more to the people who have already had dealings with you. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database is a very powerful tool but a Live Database is one step further as is explained in a section below.

3. Products and/or Services Register

A product register stores details about the services and products you supply to your customers. A good products register will help you understand profitability per item and report on and maintain stock movements and popularity of products.

4. Quoting, Invoicing, Packing Slips and Job Cards

Efficient quoting systems provide one of the most important sales presentation tools. If a quotation is followed up with a phone call the statistical chance of winning the job is increased significantly.

A good quotation system will provide several key functions such as

• Identify the profitability so you know you are making an appropriate profit
• Allow for a spreadsheet to be attached to the quote for complex calculations
• Ability to email direct to the customer, speed of delivery is a very important factor in winning a job
• Allow for attachments of brochures to provide the potential customer with more information
• Presentation of terms of trade so there can be no misunderstanding about payment terms and the rights of the customer and your business
• Automatic follow-up with a letter, email, phone call, or a combination.
• Once won, the quote can automatically build into an invoice and job card, if required, saving a great deal of time
• Reporting on conversion rates

Invoicing needs to be quick and efficient, with the same qualities as building a quotation.

It is very practical to be able to leave an invoice open so that additional items can be added to it as required. When the job is completed the invoice can then be closed.

At all times you need to be able to review the invoices issued to a client over the years so that future trading is based upon historical transactions. Knowing the trends of your customers helps you increase sales.

Packing Slips are handy if the goods have to be packaged and/or delivered.  A special module called a Despatch Manager can assist in the delivery of items. Invoices are sent to the Despatch Manager and present the despatcher with a list of items requiring delivery. Once complete, the despatcher can produce documentation and delivery labels.

5. Regular Customer Contact

If you were to ask most business owners how often they contacted their customers the probable answer would be never, other than sending an invoice or a statement. This is a reactive position for a company to be in and can sometimes be costly. Customers need to be contacted on a regular basis so that a working relationship can be established and sales opportunities realised.

Ideas on customer contact include

• A Call Centre module attached to your CRM database where each customer is scheduled to be called on a regular basis
• Including a brochure with all mail outs
• A monthly newsletter printed or emailed

A Live Database is one which makes decisions for itself. For example, when an Invoice is closed, 5 automatic events can be scheduled such as

1. In 2 days send the customer an email or a letter asking if they are happy with the service.
2. In 2 weeks a special offer on training can be emailed to them.
3. In 4 weeks a telephone call is scheduled with a sales rep that follows up the customer and helps build a trading relationship.
4. In 12 months a service letter is sent to the customer.
5. In 12 months + 5 days a telephone call is scheduled to follow up the letter.

Now that’s a powerful system and with the database making decisions for itself, the system is like an extra pair of hands. Just imagine how much it would cost to employ someone who could do that level of scheduling? That’s why it’s called a Live Database. It is one step up from CRM and the truth is that most businesses don’t even have a CRM database. They are lucky if they just have a simple database.

6. Building Teams

Success in business is greatly due to the leverage of staff time. For example, we employ someone for $20 per hour who makes us $50 per hour. Unfortunately, for many small businesses this profitability leverage is not the case because the business owner does not have the skills to develop this structure on their own. If they do achieve the leverage, it is often at a cost of becoming a “controlling personality” and usually leads to a stressful position.

To build a team the process revolves around establishing and maintaining an individual’s daily tasks and performance criteria. A good Infrastructure System will provide tools to help build your team and for the team to self-manage, therefore eliminating the daily struggle that managers have.

Areas of building your team include

1. The Live Database assigning follow up tasks to individuals
2. A Task Scheduler that delivers individuals tasks to do. For example, the rubbish bins need emptying on Friday so the Task Scheduler automatically puts it in John’s “Things to Do” section and prompts him to make sure the job is done before going home.
3. A Sales Manager module can help sales reps set targets and monitor them, therefore making the sales people responsible for self-management instead of a manager having to chase them up all the time.
4. All staff having the ability to recall minutes of meetings so they can complete set tasks or review a policy.
5. A Time Management module that can keep track of billing.
6. A Time Manager that can keep track of every minute of the day and automatically bill clients irrespective of the amount of time involved. One client had 20 calls a day that each lasted 2-5 minutes. To bill each minute would be time consuming and so 100 bills a week were not sent out. Enter the Time Management module and suddenly a minimum charge of $15 per call is automatically billed and the wasted time becomes $1,500 a week.

Building your team is an essential part of a business and when you have mastered leveraging one staff member, you can employ more and truly build the business.

7. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Many people monitor their business with Profit and Loss and Balance Sheets. This is a great way to summarize trading activities but it is very much an “after the event” summary and very rarely provides true guidance for small businesses.

KPI’s on the other hand provide immediate daily results and can be understood by all. For example, you build a budget and from the budget you realise you need to sell $1,000 worth of goods per day or $5,000 a week. This becomes a KPI and a good Infrastructure System will report to you on a daily basis on how well you are achieving this KPI.

There are many KPI’s and a dashboard provides you with real-time feedback.

8. Rapid Functions

There are many tasks to perform in a business and it is very important that the Infrastructure System provides procedures to process the events. For example, at the end of the month there are customer statements to produce. Some business systems require someone to spend one or two days to produce these statements and when time is precious many people end up performing the task during their weekend.

SoEasy has an automatic process that compiles in order the statements, any unprinted invoices and any overdue account notices. It can also include, for example, a ‘This Month’s Special’ message. All within 10 minutes!

SoEasy also has an artificially intelligent bank transaction import facility that imports and processes your transactions to the Cash Book, Debtors Ledger and Creditors Ledger. One client recently caught up on 3 months worth of transactions in 15 minutes!

These are just a few examples of what a good Infrastructure System provides with the main goal being to save time and eliminate arduous and repetitive tasks.

9. Support and Back Up

Most small businesses cannot afford to employ a full-time system technician which is a very important and necessary role. A good provider of software solutions will provide a support contract; your software is kept up-to-date and support is available. Most importantly, if you get stuck, a knowledgeable team can connect to your PC via the Internet and whilst talking with you over the phone, the consultant can also show you what to do or help you resolve the issue.

An extremely important part of your system is backing up the files. This process ensures that if your PC is stolen or damaged, that the valuable data you have been compiling is not lost. Far too many people leave this to chance. A good support program will have a disaster recovery plan and provide offsite backup facilities.

10. Training

Many people purchase software and expect to just start using it. In truth it takes years to truly master the use of software and only a very small percentage of people use it to its full capacity. If you do master it in minutes then it is likely that the system is not very comprehensive and that it will under perform. Part of your software investment should be on training of which there are three phases

• Set Up Training
• Review of current business activities and how best to set up the system.
• General Training
• Basic training on how to use the general functions.
• Progressive Advanced Training
• Practices are reviewed, evaluated and improved.
• Tactical Review

Once you have achieved a competency in the software it is important to get a knowledgeable consultant to review your practices and see if there is a better way to configure the system. This achieves maximum efficiency to increase productivity and profitability.

In Summary

It is these 10 elements that make up the points of difference between SoEasy Accounting’s Infrastructure System and other accounting products.

Business software needs to provide you with a system for developing your business model and provide scalability to suit your growth.

Many people are shoehorned into an accounting program simply for the convenience of the consultant/accountant and you end up running many different systems, which are not seamlessly integrated and cost you time and productivity.

SoEasy is different than most other systems and it is very important to talk with a consultant who can listen to your requirements and show you what you need to know.

Book a free guided tour today and see why many business owners switch to SoEasy. We guarantee you will be impressed!

Ian Stephenson
CEO - SoEasyAccounting.com Ltd