Well, it’s time for another rant because it’s tax time. I’ll try to make this one somewhat more constructive.

There is hope on the horizon in the form of Software As A Service (SAAS) providers like Saasu, Xero and a Clarity. There are surely others worthy of consideration. If you know of one you like (or at least don’t despise) then please add your thoughts via a comment.

My initial thoughts on these are that the developers of all 3 are very keen on hearing feedback and engaging with their users. This alone puts them leagues ahead of QuickBooks & MYOB. Leagues. Miles. Light years. You get the picture.

• Saasu – If you’re familiar with QB/MYOB then the Saasu interface won’t confuse you. It’s more straightforward to use than the Ones. For me it is a bit too much like them to warrant the leap of faith. Not yet, at least. The dashboard in the demo just shows news items – it should show what I would expect to see if I set my own company up and ran it there. I can see where to manage it and add stuff but you can’t edit the demo. You can in Xero. I haven’t bothered setting up my own accounts in there (why would I if I was just testing it?) but the empty dashboard for my company file shows more promise. I still don’t know what would be clickable there though.

• Xero – is the pretty one. It has a really nice interface and User eXperience (UX). It does automatic bank statement imports for a lot of NZ banks and some Australian banks which is full of WIN for me because I’m lazy and disorganised, just like you. The UX is my favourite of these by quite a margin. The dashboard is nice (ooh, graphs) and you can click through items in the Aged Receivables report to drill down to details, something I couldn’t do in the Saasu demo without going into edit mode. I just wanted to look at it! I could in Clarity too. Xero’s documentation is well done and comprehensive too.

• Clarity – is similar to Saasu. Without spending a mega-hours poking around I think Saasu may be more a little more evolved in some places but less in others. For example-instance, it wasn’t immediately apparent to me how to add an item to an invoice in the demo in Clarity. Perhaps the demo needs a few items in it. I had to manually type in the description, price etc each time. If that’s the way it works then I’d get bored with it rather quickly. I suspect that ultimately you can add items to an invoice but I didn’t figure it out. You can edit the demo in Clarity too.

None of them warned me when I was navigating away from an incomplete invoice (in the demo). That sucks. The reason I dropped MYOB like a hot potato is because it was (and apparently still is – let me know) all-too easy to lose all your work on an invoice by simply hitting the escape key too many times. There was (is?) no warning dialogue about losing your unsaved work. Suckage.

All of them allow you to access your accounts from anywhere in the internet, naturally. Xero has an iPhone version which I must says is bloody noice. That might have something to do with my having just crossed to the Dark Side. Here’s a video of Xero on the iPhone in action, complete with now-fashionable (thanks to The Flight of the Conchords) Kiwi narration. The mobile site should work on most mobile devices. ANZ Australia bank’s site worked on my old Nokia. I’m sure the Commonwealth Bank etc should too.

None of them directly do timesheet invoices or project tracking. I’m sure I am not the only person who bills their time by the hour. All of them advise you to create an item that represents an hour of work. Saasu has timesheets but they don’t allow for meal breaks. Xero interfaces with WorkflowMax (so does Saasu) but I’d like to keep both the portals and the costs (an extra $25/month) contained. Bonus – WorkflowMax too have an iPhone interface.

Depreciation is a pain in the bum. Xero wins here, hands-down. The others need you to set up accounts, workarounds and all that rot. bah. Actually, I don’t think Clarity even has an asset register.

None of the 3 have particularly customisable invoice layouts. My timesheet invoices include a field at the top for an overall project name (which is tracked) and each lines has fields for Date, Project-Item-Name (which doesn’t get printed), Project-Name (also doesn’t get printed), Description of the work, Start time, Finish time, Break duration (lunch), sub-total hours for the day, hourly rate, Tax type (not printed), line total & GST. Then there are totals at the bottom for before GST, the GST amounts and the total to pay. I suggest they take a look at the level to which you can customise QuickBooks invoices and save different layouts. Then forget what you saw because the way you customise invoices in QuickBooks 2007/08 sucks. You can do better. C’mon , AJAX draggy-droppy is all the rage – show me the money! Also, I want to change fonts here and there. Poor ol’ Comic Sans doesn’t get out much these days

All three of them have an API so they are extensible. The API is free, unlike the Others… unless that changed recently. Like I could be bothered checking.

Xero have a UserVoice forum for their API and also take suggestions via a pop-up within their site. Clarity also has a UserVoice forum. Saasu take feedback via support tickets on their site. I’m a big fan of UserVoice and I’d like to see more of it, or at least of its ilk. I like seeing feedback in a public(more-or-less) forum where you can see what’s going on. For one, it saves you from a flood of duplicate requests. I think it also builds communities. My love of UserVoice is a another topic altogether that I probably won’t get around to blogging about. Hell, I’m only writing this because I hate QuickBooks and this is far more interesting than actually doing my tax.

oh, look – another reason to like Xero. Also  Xero’s blog is a lot more active than Saasu’s. Clarity’s blog is definitively worth a read too.

I don’t care about payrolls (because employing someone these days is too damn hard) but Xero (via an integrated 3rd party) & Saasu handle them.

Halp! I have already mentioned Xero’s documentation. It is dead-easy to get to from the middle of what you’re doing at the time and it’s context-sensitive. Yay!. Saasu has a help link that leads to to their documentation. It’s not as pretty or as intuitive as Xero’s. Clarity also has a link to help from their dashboard. Xero is the clear winner here, taking a leaf from QuickBooks and wiping their … moving right along …

Here’s what I really want, specifically for depreciation in this instance: I am on the “simplified” tax / Small Business Entities oh there’s too many words … System. When I buy a laptop I’d love to be able to click the big green “I bought something” button, tell it how much I paid, what it is (shiny!), tell it what percentage is for business use (100%, of course!) and forget all about it. The software should be smart enough to know if I paid less than $1000 (excl GST) then it is a 100% deduction and if I paid more then it is 15% for the 1st year then 30% for every year after that until the asset pool falls below $1000 then that pool is a 100% deduction. Does your head hurt yet? Here it is explained in a far more complicated manner. There would be another button (perhaps red?) for when I sell or dispose of it that does all the depreciation stuff in the background, generates a tax invoice for the sale, tells me how much I lost made on the sale versus depreciation deal and tells me to go buy one even shinier. This is all stuff that QB & MYOB would insist you pay a bean counter to tell you. I’m calling bullshit on that one. It’s just sums and a logical sequence, the sort of thing you’d get a computer to do.

There are a number of other things I want along these lines and timesheet invoicing is one of them. All the timesheet / invoice really needs to know is ….

1. Who is the client?
2. What are you working on?
3. What day did you work?
4. What time did you start?
5. What time did you finish
6. How long did you take for lunch? Times are optional but that’s a bit nit-picky for me
7. How much is the hourly rate for this task?
8. [optional] How does this compare with a quote / estimate you gave earlier for this job?
9. How much allocated time is left?

The trick is this needs to be simple to manage. You also need to be able to leave stuff out til later if you’re in a rush. If you just need to write some times down with a short note about what it was so you can be reminded to finish the details later then let me do that – and then remind me. You need to be able to add new projects and project items while you’re in the middle of filling out a time sheet or invoice. I am more than happy to wade though documentation and concentrate for a while to set up invoice templates and some workflows. After that I just want it to work. Don’t make me think! I want the computer to do as I say & think, not the other way around. <—Important point, read again.

Saasu, Xero and Clarity are all on Twitter and all seem more than happy to chat. I’m on Twitter too.

Xero is a tad expensive for a lone freelancer at $50/month. I think it needs a tiered pricing scheme so I’m not potentially paying the same book-keeping fees as BHP. Saasu is half the price or even free if I only do 15 transactions per month. Hey, I’m not a marketer so who am I to dictate pricing? Clarity is even cheaper but has no free option. Given the nice UX and abundance of conveniences, Xero might just get away with their premium pricing. Well, they haven’t gone backwards, that’s for sure. QB & MYOB will rob you of at least $250 / year for a version “that works”. I think most of that money goes into printing all the brochures they keep sending me to recycle. Shiz, what do I know about pricing?

I missed 88 Miles from this post initially. Thanks Corneliu for reminding me. I found it very straightforward to use. It is simple but effective in managing time worked on projects. It doesn’t do quote etc but for timesheets, it’s a win. You can even clock in and out on the web page. The only thing I didn’t like was, as I mentioned in the comment below, when you enter a shift manually you can’t account for meal breaks. You’d have to fudge either the start or finish time to get the correct hours worked. The pricing is good though and it interfaces with Saasu.

My Verdict? Well, Xero is coated with sugary WIN, as far as I am concerned. It has the UX win and that’s what I was looking for. QB can count beans but it alienates me, leading to anger, which leads to the Dark Side, which leads to blogs like this. This must be stopped! No, wait.

Alas, Xero + WorkflowMax they are a tad too expensive for me at the moment at around $75/month for the pair. My invoicing and accounting needs are not so complex at this moment in time to require such expense in managing them. Having said that I found WorkflowMax a bit clunky. Also, there didn’t seem to be a way to put either your or the supplier ABN on a Tax Invoice in WorkflowMax. It is actually illegal in Australia to omit your ABN if the invoice is over $1000 and also to omit the supplier ABN at any time (possible exception: if you withhold the GST). I think Saasu might be guilty here too, if memory serves me right [edit: it didn't - see Marc Lehmann's comment below. Saasu does cater for this], which it often doesn’t. [obviously!] I think there are easier and/or more comprehensive ways to track time & projects. Maybe I didn’t take a good look at it but it wasn’t better than the way QuickBooks does it.

Either of the others is, at this stage, a bit more-of-the-same as QuickBooks so I’m sitting tight with QuickBooks for now, despite the fact that I hate its guts. Basically I am just using it as an invoicing tool and doing the sums in Excel. That will surely change sooner or later but not just yet. The temptation is not quite strong enough. Yet

To the vendors – Take a look at the stalwarts (QB & MYOB). You want their functionality (well, some of it) but for Gawdsakes don’t let Bookworms and Beancounters determine your User eXperience. Go ask a plumber or a sparky. Don’t take my word as Gospel. That would be . They’re your customers and they will tell you what you need to know about UX. UX is the path to WIN. Oh, read this about UX too. You’ll find it handy. or not.

Right – your turn – what do you think:?: What do you know:?: What do you want:?:

Vendors – I’d especially like to hear your feedback and corrections. If I got something wrong, let me know & I’ll update the post.

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Stop the Presses – update (July 6, 09)

Apportionment. I’d love to be able to apportion what percentage of an expense is tax-deductible. I operate as a sole-trader, as I am sure many do, so my business accounts are reasonably-closely tied to my personal tax return. Items like motor vehicle expenses are deductible at a rate set by me according to a log book. So, when I enter a fuel expense I’d like the software to apportion the business and personal percentages to separate accounts so I don’t have to do it later to work out my personal tax return. As a bonus, I’d like to be able to update this percentage and apply it to a range of transactions retrospectively. Yeah, have that spanner in your works!

This would be especially handy for a method like Xero’s that automatically guesstimates what a transaction  may be, based on past entries. I really like that feature. Coupled with automatic bank statement imports, I can see that really taking the tedium out of counting my beans. It’s all about getting the computer to do the boring stuff. Having spent the entire weekend cooped up inside, in my pajamas, counting beans – it gets boring.

This is about making your email searchable. One thing that works really well in Outlook, particularly with version 2007 after SP2 is search. Search isn’t going to work if the keywords aren’t there to be found. So, if you’re writing an email and there are a few variations on some terms and keywords that come to mind, mix it up a little and put them in.

If you can’t make them fit in your narrative then go to the trouble of adding a “ps” after your email signature (fer instance) and list them. You could even say something like “I’ve included these keywords so you can find this email in a search later on: yada yada yaa…” or sumfin like that.

Forexampleinstance. The other day I was searching for an email about “WPF”. I didn’t find it under that – it was under “Windows Presentation Foundation”. Simply including both variations on that theme would have returned the email in a search first time around. I eventually found it but, hey, I’m lazy so I sincerely appreciate it every time you make life a little easier for me.

This happened to me after successfully using it in Vista for almost a whole week. It was nigh-on impossible to find a solution to this so I hope Google has been kind to you today and this helps. If not, abuse them. It won’t fix anything but they thoroughly deserve it.

This is (if you’re lucky) an easy fix. It is all about how QuickBooks uses Internet Exploder, sorry – Internet Explorer as its internal browser. QB, apparently, is so shoddily coded that it expects IE’s security to grant permissions for all its hacks. Here’s how to let it do that…

1. Open Internet Explorer
2. Go to the Tools Menu
3. Click Internet Options
4. Click the Security tab
5. In the Security level area, click on Custom Level
6. I set the level to Medium-High (Default)
7. Click on the Reset button on the bottom right
8. Click ok on everything on your way out.

I have had QuickBooks working on windows XP, Vista, and even Windows Server 2008 with only the usual level of issues. It also seems to work ok with Internet Exploder 7 & 8 Beta 2. It uses Internet Exploder even if you have another browser set as the default. I use Firefox.

I have also heard reports that you need to turn the User Account Control off in Vista (in the Windows Security Center).

For the technically-minded – the shoddy code in QuickBooks generates an Access Violation Error which is the programming equivalent of a knockback. The implication there is that the program’s approach is also the equivalent of behavior that “had it coming”. When I searched the QuickBooks support (LOL) forum for "Access Violation" I get 9359 responses. I gave up in there before I looked elsewhere for this answer, ironically from a user in their forum. I think they might have big a problem there. If Google brought you here then QuickBooks is still living in denial. Personally I think they spend all of their money on marketing and bugger-all on development or User eXperience testing

I’m not a fan of QuickBooks but it seems like the lesser of many evils at the present time. Just remember – MYOB sucks worse and so does doing it all by hand.

The only thing I hate more is MYOB. Go on, press the escape key just once too often and you’ll lose everything it took you so long to figure out in the data-entry page that just disappeared. These 2 piles of steaming shit are only written to keep accountants (big buddy customers of both these shysters) in easy money. This sort of trivial stuff is their version of Hello World. Surely it annoys them even more than it annoys me.

C’mon folks – this is a no-brainer. Tax works in a very predictable, rule-driven manner. All we need is someone who understands these rules and workflows to code them up into a workflow so I don’t have to do it step by bloody step.

User Requirement: I don’t want to learn a complicated mechanism for something that should take less than 1% of my time and headspace. I also want it to be transparent and tell me what it is doing in a simple, no accountancy degree required manner.

ForExampleInstance – I buy a laptop for $2000. I already told my software I’m on the Simplified Tax System / Small Business Entities Provisions so it knows how to deal with an assett.

1. Ask me what percentage I use it for business. Why, all of it, Sir (wink)
2. Apportion the GST as per my answer in step 1. Remember this for my BAS
3. Add it to to my short-term asset pool because it cost me more than $1000. If it cost less than a grand the write the whole lot off right now – but you’ll still need to remember it’s an asset in case I sell it.
4. Create a fixed-asset sub-account for the new asset to track its value
5. Create a fixed asset sub-account to track the depreciation for both the business and personal portions.
6. Do other weird bean-county shit
7. Automagically create the depreciation transactions on the last day of the financial year for 15% for the 1st year and 30% every year thereafter. Set & forget.
8. If I sell it, drop it or whatever, remove it from the asset account and record the income from the sale, or my misery at the pile of broken plastic.

For me, the user, all I want to do is click “I bought someting”, pick a category, type in a few details from the invoice / receipt and click ok. I don’t want to got to the Chart of Accounts and frig with registers or whatever the hell they call it. Can you guess how easy it is for me to totally fuck that up ?

I am not an accountant – I am a human being (in my best John Merrick voice with apologies to the accountants out there). I don’t want to be an accountant and I don’t want to pay an accountant to do such boring, trivial CRUD. Accountants should be paid for their expertise and advice, not for deciphering inevitable user-error in counter-intuitive, 3rd rate BookKeeping software. No, I don’t want to pay a bookkeeper for something that should be really easy to do myself … point and click.

So, here is your challenge today – Break the duopoly! Make bookkeeping a pleasant User eXperience. I will pay you. I’ll even pay every year. Tax rules change & so does your config file. That means a software assurance subscription. Just don’t try to extort hundreds of dollars for it – or not.

I already linked to it (duopoly) but this article is an interesting read too.

Somebody – Help!