What accounting program in a small business?

Almost everyone who sets up a business is faced with the choice of an invoice program, and usually an accounting program. Yes, there are those who decide on the services of an accounting office from the very beginning, but in the era of convenient and modern online systems, an online accounting program can be equally good, and at the same time cheaper.

Let's start with whether the accounting program in a small company, especially in the smallest one-man business, is definitely needed. And as usual, the answer is "it depends."

A micro-firms accounting program?

If you issue invoices for one, up to three contractors, you are not a VAT payer, you have virtually no costs, maybe you just need a free program for issuing invoices or even Word / Excel (or their free counterparts). You can also keep a book of revenues and expenses (KPiR) in Excel, a special book bought for this purpose or in an ordinary notebook.

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However, it is worth asking yourself what your future plans are. If your only customer is a de facto employer, and you are not going to develop your own business - do not think about the accounting program at all. But if you have one customer because it is your first "capture" and you are already working intensively on convincing subsequent ones to your offer, then you can assume that the number of invoices issued will increase. And with it taxes and costs will increase, and as a result, settlements will become more complicated.

And then what? If at the beginning you give up the software, but decide on it during the tax year, then you will have to rewrite all your data from paper notebooks to the accounting program.

In my opinion, if you intend to develop your company, it is best from the very beginning to decide on a good and proven accounting system, with all these options that you may need even in a few years.

It is worth knowing that also the transition from one system to another during the tax year will be difficult to implement . And even in the situation of transition to the new system from the new year, you must ensure that you do not lose data collected in previous years, because the law requires you to have full documentation of the company for the last five years.

What accounting program - what to look for?

When you are just starting out, you need an invoice program . However, it soon turns out that this is not the only important functionality. If it was all about invoices or even invoices with a book of revenues and expenses, you will now find free systems on the Internet.

Unfortunately, I know a person who quickly burned on such a program. It turned out that, yes, KPiR is, but ZUS and taxes must be calculated independently and entered in the program "manually". And that's functionality almost at the level of a paper notebook.

A good accounting program should have many more options - from my point of view, the following are particularly important:

• automatic calculation of the advance for income tax and VAT (so as not to bother with the calculator),
• the option of convenient posting of import invoices (all you have to do is order an ad on Google or buy an add-on to a website and you will become an importer),
• a separate option for settling costs related to vehicles (both company and private, used for business purposes),
• issuing, correcting (and sending) PIT declarations for a given tax year, based on data from the system, but with the option of editing the data (important if you also have income from outside of business operations).

If you are a VAT payer, then the option of sending VAT declarations to the office electronically directly from the accounting program should also be important for you .However, from 2018, the option of generating a Uniform Control File (JPK) will be very important .

What we usually do not pay attention to at the first contact with a given accounting system, and what later turns out to be our "last resort" is the help available. And I do not mean only technical support, but support in accounting and tax issues . It is important that access to the program also means the right to (included in the price) accounting service via e-mail or hotline. The idea is that if you do not know, e.g. how to settle a cost, you can count on the specific and substantive help of a competent person.

I have used this help many times - e.g. in leasing, delegation, but also a more prosaic issue, such as the purchase of a telephone with a subscription, where the telephone cost was divided into installments. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought.

My experience with an accounting program

I founded my current company five years ago. Earlier I had two more - the first was settled using a paper booklet, the second was operated by the accounting office. At the third, from the very beginning I decided to do accounting myself, but with the help of the In Fact online system .

After five years, I can recommend this program with a clear conscience. Although at the beginning of our cooperation it was not so rosy - I reported a few bugs myself, which I found. However, I have to admit that Infant developers responded quickly to requests and most of my comments were taken into account.

In Fact has all these options that I mentioned above, and many more. You can read about the program's functionalities directly on the system page , but I would like to draw attention to some small things that matter to me.

What do I like about In Fact?

• Appearance - modern, legible, aesthetic. Like a trifle, but if I have to watch an interface almost every day for 5 or more years, I would like to make using it pleasant.
• Customer search by NIP - just enter the customer's NIP (also a new one!) And the program will provide its other data automatically (if necessary, you can edit it manually).
• Possibility to send invoices directly from the program . Initially, I printed the invoices issued as PDF and only sent by email. For a long time I have sent almost every client an invoice via In Fact, immediately after being issued. In practice, it takes less time.
• Option to attach a quick payment to an invoice . The customer, if he wishes, can click the invoice link and pay for it immediately. For now, few of my clients use this option, but there is a potential 😉.
• Invoice templates - yes, I am an esthetician, which is why I am glad that I have various interesting invoice templates to choose from.
• The ability to print all documentation for a given month with one click - thanks to that I have everything I need in one PDF file.

I haven't mentioned many important features of this program, but you know why?Because I care little. Infact is such an automated system that, as an entrepreneur, I use it primarily to issue invoices, in-check payments made by customers, enter costs, check the amount of taxes and ZUS, and generate a monthly statement, which also includes KPiR. However, all calculations or declarations are made by themselves .

Well, there is one more thing I like - statistics . For example, I can include a chart showing how my income, expenses, or tax liabilities have changed over the course of the year. In fact gives you a choice of several such combinations. The only thing missing is the possibility of comparing data from several years with each other.

However, when someone asks me what accounting program in a small company I recommend, I honestly point to In fact. After five years of our "relationship" I can probably give a credible recommendation.