Clear Books Fortnightly Update 26/03/2010

Friday 26th March 2010 by Nick

This is the first of what will become a regular fortnightly update on the Clear Books blog, helping to keep you informed of what is going on at Clear Books.

Clear Books Update List

- Show an invoice on a VAT return even if not previously recognised

- VAT exception report

- Changes to Paypal button

- Ability to control co branding from partner accounts

- Import contacts from Google

- VAT owed summary on the homepage

- Email users of updates to Clear Books

Promote Your Business Through Our Blog

If you would like to gain some coverage for your business why not consider becoming a guest blogger for Clear Books? Not only will you raise the profile of your business to our blog readers but the popularity of our blog also means that it will also raise your company’s profile in Google.

We are looking for people to blog on the topics of small businesses, accounting and cloud computing as well as any testimonials. If you are interested please drop an email to nick@clearbooks.co.uk.

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Receiving a refund

Tuesday 23rd March 2010 by Nick

Help Article

Receiving a refund

Links

N/A

Steps

1. Either enter refund amount through Manage Money or select appropriate transaction from Bank Import

2. On explain transaction page click Refund tab

3. Enter details of refund and click Create Transaction

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Furnish.co.uk using Clearbooks

Tuesday 9th March 2010 by Nick

Up until relatively recently, I’d always done my accounting using a Microsoft Access database I’d knocked out years ago. It was pretty basic and 100% manual, but it worked. The alternative was using off-the-shelf accounting software, which all reminded me of either something out of the 1980s or someone’s school homework internet project.

To be frank, I started using Clearbooks because my company, furnish.co.uk, and Clearbooks share some of the same investors, and they insisted I use it (If you don’t know, furnish.co.uk pulls together home furnishings from the best interiors stores and designers onto one site so you don’t have to trawl through brochures, magazines or shops). At the time, Clearbooks was still very much in beta, maybe even alpha, and was far from perfect. But it was great, because Tim was open to feedback and was modelling the user interface and functionality around the needs of those using it at the time, turning over requests very quickly.

The result is that now, to me, Clearbooks doesn’t feel like accounting software at all. I find it extraordinarily simple to use, especially compared with other accounting software. I also like that it doesn’t perpetuate the perception that software that helps people manage money needs to be expensive. It’s actually rather cheap. I love the fact that it’s software-as-a-service, i.e. everything stored online rather than on my local machine. There’s no question that this approach is the future of accounting (and most other) software, plus I want the convenience of being able to work on accounts from anywhere. Basically, it’s a perfect fit for me.

I have now started using an accountant who works with Clearbooks. All I do is automatically import furnish.co.uk’s bank statements into Clearbooks, consolidate what each entry means and then the accountant takes over whenever anything needs to be submitted to HMRC or Companies House. It really does work well.

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