Simply Accounting Vs. Quickbooks
There are an abundance of reviews of both Sage Accpac Simply Accounting and Intuit Quickbooks, so this comment will not be exhaustive.
I just want to point out one very important disdinguishing issue between these otherwise similarly featured products.
Although I do prefer the cleanness of the Simply accounting interface and I also find Intuits marketing somewhat aggressive, the bottom line is that for me, Quickbooks is the clear winner. This conclusion is related to online banking functionality. Let me explain...
For a single proprietorship where the owner is the accountant, online banking is a necessity for getting the job done with minimal fuss. Most importantly this feature can prevent overlooking or forgetting any business related transactions. In a perfect and old school accounting world(that A-type finiky accountants love), the user would sit down at the end of the month, have all their expenses chronologically organized with nothing missing and enter transactions.
However the reality is that the self-employed consultant, bike shop owner or hair dresser is not always that organized. Receipts are lost or misplaced in a purse or wallet compartment. But what if we did *everything* possible electronically?
When that small business owner puts all their business expenses on a single business credit card and/or a single debit card account, these transactions can be downloaded. The business owner is then obligated to choose the expense account to be associated with that transaction. This is a perfect check against forgetting to enter any expenses/transactions, ie after putting a small receipt in your wallet.
You should still do a monthly reconciliation of your bank or credit card statement and check for any fraudulent transactions or inaccuracies on the part of your bank. Another important consideration is that your designated bank and/or credit card should be used *exclusively* for business expenses.
Quickbooks handles this perfectly, setting up expense credit cards, and bank accounts where each transaction has a debit/credit that balances to an income or expense account.
So what is lacking in Simply Accounting? This latter program has what I would consider a fundamental design flaw. Although Simply accounting allows for online banking, its design wants the credit card itself to be 'linked' to an expense account. This may have been fine for say an Esso Card where all the expenses are 'Automobile', but there is no provision to categorize each transaction. It may be possible to download a statement, and then make a bunch of journal entries to categorize things, but this effort (if possible) would be way too much work.
A discussion with a Simply Accounting technical support confirms this lack of functionality. Until Sage Accpac hires some forward thinking programmers that will get around this limitation, Simply accounting will continue to lose ground to Quickbooks. As mentioned at the outset, I do prefer the Simply accounting interface. Are you guys listening....?
Also an FYI: I am a user of gnucash. Although not having all the features of either the above commercial programs, it is free, does double entry accounting, and more than takes care of my needs. It also does not hound me to buy cheques, make constant upgrades and offer umpteen different versions.
References:
http://www.zisman.ca/Articles/2009/BIV1011.html
http://www.gnucash.org