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Do I need the small biz accounting silver bullet or outsourced book keeping?

I've been ranting back and forth on twitter about my accounting system trauma.  For the last year I've been trying out new systems since my transaction volume is low, my needs are typical, and my main goal is 99% automation.

I was on Quickbooks for windows.  Powerful but not web based which I prefer now.  Oh there is a version of Quickbooks for the web you say....BUT NOT FOR MAC! What????  How difficult must it be to create a Mac friendly version of a web based accounting app?  Oh yeah, there are tons of other options so Quickbooks loses.

Here's the deal, there are a million great applications out there with specific goals.

  1. Mint
  2. Wesabe
  3. LessAccounting
  4. Freshbooks

But all of them do 80% of the equation.  The ones that do a GREAT job (Mint) of automating and auto updating bank data aren't really geared towards business and thus don't really do invoicing.

Those that do invoicing still don't seem to have the ability to auto-import expenses from a credit card or otherwise. 

People are on there (like me) requesting this functionality but it seems that this is something that "everyone takes note of and will get to eventually". 

Well I'm here to say, if any ONE of you get to the point where you have a web based small biz/entrepreneur oriented accounting application that has ultimate automation and invoicing and expense management wrapped up into one package, I know a boatload of people who'll migrate instantly.

So if I'm paying $14-$30/month for this service and I'm disappointed and left with say 2 hours a month of accounting work, could I get an outsourced bookkeeper/virtual assistant to make my life whole for $100 month?  $200?  I don't know. 

If this was simply handled by someone else (ie THEY got the expenses from paypal, bank, amex) and uploaded/reconciled and i just billed people (that part is fun anyway) could I streamline this process and be happy about accounting again?

Help.

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Comments

Dobes Vandermeer

I feel your pain - we're still working on that bank statement upload, but please keep an eye on us, we've got a very nice accounting solution and we'll probably have bank statement uploads Q1 next year.

It's harder than you'd think to get the banks to give access to their customers' bank statements, which is why that's an often-missed feature in new applications - the time and money needed to connect to all the banks just isn't there yet.

Anyway, take a look at our solution and let me know what you think:

http://www.clarityaccounting.com

http://twitter.com/dobesv

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