As far as accountancy software goes VT+ and VT Accounts for me.

I spend much more time in Excel though although such is automating processing, accounts production, management accounts, etc. Probably don't use it the way that most people do though as my world lies behind alt + F11.

I generally avoid Sage as not a great fan of nominal codes and closing off periods, but I can use it.

Tried Quickbooks but wasn't particularly keen.

Won't have anything to do with cloud offerings.

VT Accounts is an annual licence and if always up to date with the latest changes in legislation. A lot of accountants use other software for bookkeeping (i.e. Sage, Quickbooks, Xero, Kashflow, etc.) and then enter the trial balance into VT Accounts.

Personally I use VT Transaction+ for bookkeeping as the link between that and VT Accounts is just the click of a button (provided that you remember to get out of the clients books first before trying to import it which I keep forgetting).

Cloud software is back to pay per client. There are all sorts of other reasons to avoid it. Just look up some of Vinces old threads and you'll get a feel for the divisiveness of cloud offerings.

Hope that you enjoy reading those books. Personally I prefer the David Cox book but it's all a matter of teaste. I know that Bill (Wella) always swore by the Frank Woods book.

"What's wrong with Cloud offerings?"

What's right with them?

I use QuickBooks desktop and online as well. i resisted online for years but decided to get with the programme. i have to say, 6 months on I actually like it. I went on the QuickBooks advanced training and that was really good. I'm loving the bank feeds, the automation of transactions. It's no fun not having more than one screen open at a time but I've bought another monitor and am working around that. Once you get used to it, it's a lot quicker. I've started looking at Autoentry to automatically enter bills into QB and although that looks good I can't see how I would make money out of it at the moment as the cost is more than I would charge to do the bookkeeping manually. times are achanging and I fear we will all have to go online eventually...

If the likes of Sage and VT disappeared from desktop usage then I would just build them myself and sell them (writing bespoke accounts reporting packages for companies is basically what I do anyway).

There's two theories, Destructive Creation (Schumpeter (1949)) and Disruptive Innovation (Christensen (1995)... And perhaps Guerrilla Marketing (Levinson (1994))... Which are the basis of change by small, new entrant companies into established markets. Their insignificance makes them invisible to the incumbants who they cannot hope to compete against on an equal footing so they attempt to disrupt the market.

I did my dissetation proposal based on the ICBs and IAB's use of these theories to enter accounting unnoticed by the big boys. I could have equally chosen Uber, AirBnB or indeed any of the cloud offerings who have all employed similar business models.

The truth is that the cloud is disruptive innovation that nobody wanted, nobody asked for. But clever spin has now made too many believe that they are somehow being left behind if they use their existing, often much loved software. And the more people who believe that slower, less dependable, pay per client, ransomware is actually somehow better then less and less the market for software like VT and Sage desktop.

As Joanne says, you're not going to see cloud offerings in real corporate environments which are predominantly SAP, Sage or bespoke (My experience is predominantly SAP except banks which are predominantly bespoke).

Shamus wrote:

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I did my dissetation proposal based on the ICBs and IAB's use of these theories to enter accounting unnoticed by the big boys. I could have equally chosen Uber, AirBnB or indeed any of the cloud offerings who have all employed similar business models.

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Hi Shaun

The difference is though that where Uber and Airbnb have in one sense undercut their market and opened up new revenue, the accountancy cloud has actually increased costs for the client. As you know I use VT+ so non of my clients are charged any extra for something they neither need or care about.  That said, if they want to use cloud I'm equally happy to accommodate it, but it will be their choice and they will ask for it, I won't force it upon them like some accountants have.