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Online Bookkeeping. Is it realistic?

I'm hoping to learn about what other business owners are using for their online bookkeeping. Like many entrepreneurs, I've become overwhelmed with Quickbooks, tracking everything, etc. I feel lost when it comes to accounting and taxes, etc. I'd like to find a solution for our business. Here's some information if anyone has a suggestion. I feel that a lot of the online software like Xero, Merchant's Mirror, etc may or may not work, but I'm not sure due to our business being complex.

I have a company where we outsource the production of our products at different factories across the country. We also hold some inventory here at our office. Most of our inventory is prepaid by us to our vendors, who then hold it, customize it as needed, and then ship it out. I send a PO each time I need something sent to a client.

As far as our clients go, we invoice our clients for prepayment, as we're too small to have a huge A/R. I don't really need to have an up to the minute account of our inventory, I just want to make sure it gets tracked right.

We are also getting into becoming a distributor for a large company selling supplies like we do. I think this would be a fairly painless process of them sending me a PO, I sent out the product and invoice them as needed.

I also love the idea of being able to have sales people log into the system online and do their own invoices. As it stands now, I have to have them send me an invoice from something like http://WorkingPoint.com">WorkingPoint.com and then I have to recreate every invoice in Quickbooks.

Anyone have a suggestion on which software may work for our company?

7 Responses

  • Feb 26, 2010

    President

    I've been using Quickbooks Online Edition for the last two years. The feature set keeps expanding with each update, and I think they have inventory tracking in the Online Edition now as well. Unfortunately, my business is almost entirely services based, so I can't really provice much insight into specifics applicable to your business...

    Good luck,

    Daniel

  • Mar 05, 2010

    Owner/Principal

    I am a cheerleader for FreshBooks http://www.freshbooks.com. Not sure if it hits all your needs but for invoice processing, tracking, payment processing all online its a pretty neat system.

    Otherwise, a step up to an on-demand/online finance software with world class functionality, Netsuite. It might be overkill for you but I thought I might mention it.

  • Mar 08, 2010

    CEO

    We use both QuickBooks and FreshBooks. Our Accountant uses QuickBooks to reconcile end of month revenues, expenses, A/P and A/R. Even though most of our transactions are done using credit card, occasionally, we have to invoice clients for which we use FreshBooks. The good thing about FreshBooks is that our sales people have access to it and can invoice on-demand. As for QuickBooks, it is exhaustive and therefore the accountant is the only one who uses it.

    To track our paper receipts and invoices, we use OfficeDrop (our flagship service). We scan, e-mail and upload them into various folders in OfficeDrop and accountant accesses them once a month to close the books.

    I do not think there is one simple solution for your needs but these are few choices.

  • Mar 08, 2010

    CEO

    We currently use Quickbooks but are also looking for alternatives. The inability of our clients to self-serve in terms of updating their credit cards, getting past invoices, and other items leads to a lot of frustration.

    So I've been looking for a hybrid approach where day to day billing, recurring billing and invoicing are handled on an online system and QB is used for the heavy lifting on the backend. Something like you are doing at OfficeDrop.

    Risk:
    The main risk I see in an online only solution is backing up your data in a portable format. What if the online provider pulls the plug on the service, goes out of business or goes offline? You will want to have your data in a format that you can use. This is why I'm leaning toward a hybrid approach. While we may lose some details we will still have QB updated monthly.

  • Mar 11, 2010

    Julie Rains

    I'll echo the suggestion to consider a more integrated solution such as NetSuite, mainly because of the manufacturing side and inventory issues. Having modules that handle various functions (inventory control, purchasing, and invoicing are separate, for example) that feed into a general accounting package that produces financial statements may be helpful -- especially since your business is changing and growing.

What do you think?

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