Clear Books: About as good as you get when it comes to an entry-level online accounting system

• Tim Fouracre
• Thursday, 24 June 2010
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It’s official, Clear Books is “About as good as you get when it comes to an entry-level online accounting system” according to the Software Shortlist.  It was great to see Clear Books going toe to toe with the likes of Clarity Accounting,  KashFlow, MoneyWorks Express, MYOB AccountRight Standard v19 (nee MYOB Accounting), Peach First Accounting 2010, Quickbooks Accounting, Saasu, Simply Accounting and Xero. We got 4 stars out of 5 which put us joint second in the ratings.

Product Review
About as good as you get when it comes to an entry-level online accounting system, with some great additional features on the way. Hard to fault, really. Remember, though, it is very low end.

What we liked: The first thing that stood out was the simplicity of product and the clean design of the user interface. We particularly like that it retained some ownership of accounting terms that are quiet often ignored in small business products. The simplicity of getting started was a highlight, only a minute after registering we were able to get a sales invoice emailed off. While Clearbooks has all the necessary features for an accounting system, you can simplify it further to be purely a basic invoicing system. This strips out the functions associated with purchasing. We really like that when you email an invoice to a customer, they have online links to view it easily- including their statement.

What we didn’t like: We are not that keen on transaction-based pricing models, as we don’t feel that a business can be defined by the number of transactions they complete. But, in saying that, their unlimited package is very cheap, so difficult to complain on that front. Another point is that, for customers outside the UK, there doesn’t appear to be tax reporting. You can fudge the VAT system to work for you but you can’t change VAT to your local tax label (eg. GST). Finally, the support option is good but it is through a third party, and you have to setup an account to access it- you can’t use your Clearbooks login.

Point taken about the labelling of the VAT - we’ll get that sorted. Although our support is in house and if you phone or email our support team, a support rep in our London office will pick up the ticket. We do, in addition,  use a third party piece of software called Get Satisfaction which brings our community of users together for collaborative ideas, problems and questions.

I picked up this story from Xero who posted a similar analysis of their review.

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