Hi all,

Which accounting software or services do you recommend for hosting companies?

We've been using Intuit's QuickBooks forever, but it simply isn't good for a utility company -- any business that regularly invoices its customers and tracks customer balances from month to month.

I want to send a one-page statement to our customers, which includes:

o Unpaid balance forward
o Past-due finance charge on balance forward
o Current monthly hosting fee
o Current one-time fees (bandwidth surcharge, for example)
o Perforated tear-off return slip *

* Despite years of complaints to Intuit, QuickBooks still does not allow one to customize the invoice or statement to include two copies of the customer address fields.

Peachtree? MYOB? Some other software package or third-party accounting service? Please give me your experiences and recommendations. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Dave

Try Microsoft Money 2001

Microsoft Money?! Isn't that a "personal finance" package, like Quicken?

Originally posted by Circa3000
Microsoft Money?! Isn't that a "personal finance" package, like Quicken?

Yupp, I just installed it a few hours ago.

I use Quickbooks Pro, its amazing, but kinda expensive

Originally posted by Circa3000
Hi all,

Which accounting software or services do you recommend for hosting companies?

We've been using Intuit's QuickBooks forever, but it simply isn't good for a utility company -- any business that regularly invoices its customers and tracks customer balances from month to month.

I want to send a one-page statement to our customers, which includes:

o Unpaid balance forward
o Past-due finance charge on balance forward
o Current monthly hosting fee
o Current one-time fees (bandwidth surcharge, for example)
o Perforated tear-off return slip *

* Despite years of complaints to Intuit, QuickBooks still does not allow one to customize the invoice or statement to include two copies of the customer address fields.

Peachtree? MYOB? Some other software package or third-party accounting service? Please give me your experiences and recommendations. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Dave

I use MYOB (FirstEdge), it's pretty good for my needs and basically the only worthwhile accounting app on mac. MYOB has trials on their website, never hurts to try.

Thank you for the recommendation. We did resolve most of our problems, but through considerable change to our billing procedures -- no thanks to QuickBooks.

Our solution was to drop paper-based billing altogether. We built a web-based billing and payment system that requires advance payment by credit card. All payment forms and accounting presentation are done by our design, exactly as we like it. Then, we export the web data to QuickBooks for permanent storage and reporting.

By requiring payment in advance, all "past due" issues are elliminated. There are no balances to track, late fees to charge or collection agencies to deal with. It's a dream.

The only remaining issue is QuickBooks' inability to associate a discount with a particular charge on import -- a real nuisance. A customers' "balance due" and "unused credits" grow further and further apart. Fortunately, we needn't care. We don't look at QuickBooks' balances to determine who needs disconnection.

We find quickbooks to be the most helpful.

CDX,

READ what Dave said, read what I bolded in my last post. They use QB already and looking for OTHER application recommendations.

20+ years of running my own business,

I can say that even with the positively horrible support, and thier seemingly care less attitude about the customer (although they have a user BB that helps)

Quickbooks is the easiest for NON accountant type users, I have tried all the others, My accountant prefers PeachTree but that particular software requires a certain level of Accounting competency due to terminology.

Quick Books has some nice things like email and online billing, Of course at extra charge.

The one thing they DONT have that would be nice is recurring billing for the month to month accounts.

As far as the balances in QB, There is a function to apply credits to outstanding balances. Rather a pain but there if you really need it.

try quickbooks online.

few bucks a month for re-curring and online billing support and accessible to 5 users.

not a bad deal!

Try Sage Instant Accounting or Line 50

We use Microsoft Money at the bank account level and custom software to track customers, recurring bills, bandwidth bills, payments, etc.

MS Money is a big help around tax time, assuming you setup and use categories correctly, our CPA/tax person actually gives us a discount because it makes it so much easier on her.