Accounting software can be an extremely useful tool to help a business manage its finances. A good software will help you to manage and sometimes automate regular financial tasks such as employee payroll and recurring financial payments from customers.
Additionally, it can also help you to manage and understand your financial position in the future, as some accounting software can help you to create forecasts that can allow you to properly monitor your business performance now, and in the future. However, if you make the wrong decision, you could in fact end up making your job a lot more difficult.
It is so important to do your homework before making your final purchase and transition to a new accounting software, to ensure you are choosing a software that is a good fit for your business.
In this blog, we are going to discuss the top 6 questions you should be asking yourself before making any commitments to a brand-new accounting software.
1. What Do You Need Your New Software to Do?
Now, there are a lot of potential answers to this question however, when planning to transition to a new accounting software it is important to streamline your essential needs so your search can be focused and allow you to find the best results.
Although it is important to look at what you do want out of your accounting software, when looking at potential accounting software, it is equally important to consider what you don’t want.
Thinking in this way can be useful when trying to weed out potential vendors; there will be millions of software vendors that will offer attractive and useful features, however a lot of them will also offer features that will be useless to you too. The risk here is that you could end up spending all of your budget on excess products that you don’t need.
To try and avoid this, consider asking yourself the following questions:
- What features you would like from your software such as bookkeeping, payroll, invoicing, and customer account information?
- Would you like your software to be cloud based or locally installed?
- How much capacity does the software offer?
Although this is just a small example of the types of questions you should consider, they will help you to massively refine your search when looking at thousands of potential vendors.
2. Can You Easily Migrate Your Existing Accounting Information and Customer Data?
Ensuring that you can migrate your existing data to your new accounting software easily is essential to guarantee a smooth transition.
Particularly if you are handling sensitive information such as client details, it would be beneficial to avoid manually transferring this data, and risking leaking any information and breaking any GDPR laws. Additionally, manually transferring data can take a substantial amount of time which can prolong your time away from normal working.
When choosing your new accounting software, make sure that it has the storage capacity to hold all of your existing data to avoid having it spread across different systems.
Further, make sure that your new system can complete this migration for you to save having to do it yourself.
3. How Does Your Budget Align with Your Needs?
Next, it’s time to think about your budget. If you’re going to upgrade your software, then you most likely want it to elevate your current financial abilities. More often than not, acquiring these extra capabilities comes with an increased price tag.
Take time out to look at what is on offer in the market, and what the standard price point is for the services you want. This will help you to refine a realistic budget that is reflective of what you need. Sometimes, this can mean spending slightly more than you initially planned but is often a positive sacrifice for a software that can support you doing your daily duties.
In order to align your budget with your desired level of service effectively, consider what your responses were to the first question; what do you need your software to do?
Initially, this will help to reduce your options from a massive bulk and allow you to see what kind of vendors are a good fit for you. Based on these refined results, you can assess each option against your predicted budget to find something that works for your business and is affordable for you.
4. What Have Other People Got to Say About Your Potential Vendor?
Another enquiry to make when transitioning to a new accounting software would be to look at how other customers feel about your potential new vendor.
It is useful to gather this information from customer reviews as they can provide you with a true and honest representation of how good or bad an accounting company, and its products are, when being used in real-time.
When gathering these reviews, try to look at both customer reviews and official reviews from reputable tech websites.
Official reviewers can give you more insight and information as to how the software performs from a technical perspective and how it can improve your business functions. Alternatively, customer reviews can give you a good indication of its usability, particularly for novices, and what the customer service of the vendor is like.
All of this can inform you as to what your experience with a vendor could be like and can save you a lot of trouble and wasted time in the future.
5. What is Their Client Support Like?
The last problem you need for your business when running your accounting software is for it to unexpectedly crash and this can be made even worse when your software vendor provides no support or solution to your problem.
When looking for your next accounting software, confirm that there is a sufficient support service in place, and that it will be available to you in the event of any technical issues. Make sure that this support is accessible during key working hours too to ensure you have the correct means to resolve any issues that you have.
It is at this point where checking reviews can become useful as you can acquire first-hand information on the experience of previous customers with your potential vendor, and the quality of their support service before you purchase.
Why Choose Us?
Here at DCS, our primary focus is our people, and the service that we provide to them. We understand that asking all of the right questions is essential to be able to make a well-informed decision regarding your accountancy software.
When you come and talk to us, our team will be more than happy to answer any burning questions you might have about our accountancy software to provide you with some peace of mind that you are making the right choice.
If you’d like to discuss any of your accountancy needs further, contact us here.