I look after accounts for friends and family, which includes three limited companies. That means I need professional accounts production software to help make sure I put everything in the right place and comply with the Companies Act 2006 and other rules and regulations.
I used, quite happily, to use VT Accounts Production running on Parallels on my Mac. But when I switched PC-emulation software to VMWare, VT really didn't like that. It kept corrupting. And VT isn't supported on a Mac so there was no help available - but they were very good about giving me a refund.
By then I had a PC at home - it's my husband's actually but he lets me use it :-)
TaxCalc's Accounts Production software is very expensive for what it is (£499 + VAT), when you consider what VT and PTP cost. VT costs £150 + VAT per year and PTP only £99 + VAT a year. But I needed something urgently and I was able to download TaxCalc straight away. That initially worked sweet as a nut but then for some reason it decided it didn't want to behave. Support tried their best to fix it but after two attempts that didn't work, I lost patience and I asked for a refund - which I did get in the end.
Now I'm using PTP, from IRIS. As I used to use the full range of IRIS software it felt blessedly familiar. I could even remember some of the account code numbers it uses.
My only gripe was having to do 3 separate downloads to get this up and running - first .NET, then SQL, then finally PTP. It would have been much easier to run that all as one download. And it took three hours to run everything.
Still, that's all safely loaded now, and I've done 2 and a half sets of accounts today - a half because I'm still waiting on a set of bank statements to do the current year's accounts, but I've been able to post up the prior year and notes.
And I'm now looking to switch from TaxCalc to PTP tax software as well, I think. PTP is all integrated and that saves a bucketload of time and reduces the risk of error.
But right now, my brain's gone to sleep. I'd hoped to get this all done by lunchtime but the long downloads put the kibosh on that. I need a very large cup of tea.
