Simple easy to use accounting software

I’ve been running my own business for 7 years now and for 7 years I’ve hated using MYOB as it is complex and bloated. Unfortunately at the time it was probably the easiest package on the market and so many times I have cursed it declaring to build my own better simple accounting application. I never actually got around to it but as an alternative we pretty much double enter all of our expenses and sales into Excel so I can get a balanced scorecard style overview of the health of my business.

I read that Jakob Nielsen had posted the 10 best-designed application user interfaces. I agree with his rating of Wufoo, their web service is fantastic if you just want to run a basic data capture form on the web. The application really which caught my interest is Xero, an on line SIMPLE accounting application. I checked out the site and the demo and think it is great. The thought of dropping the clunky bloated MYOB for the clean simple Xero interface definitely got me excited. Which is a sad thing given that we are talking about accounting software but this is how desperate I think we have become for a decent application to help small to medium enterprises run their business. Unfortunately Xero is only available to New Zealand and the UK, their site says they are planning to roll out an Aussie version soon. So I will be keeping an eye on them.

The best thing about Xero is that it allows complete collaboration. You can easily give your accountant, payroll manager and even book keeper all access to your file and you can all use them in real time together. For assistance and support this makes a huge difference, no more emailing your company file over to the accountant or book keeper and having to wait for them to send it back before you can continue using the file again.