Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
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For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
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Hi James
Avoid Sage like the plague.. as far as I am concerned. I used Sage Instant Accounts for a number of years in a previous job, it is overcomplicated and very unforgiving, with double entry book-keeping. Not heard of Quickbooks..
I use Excel spreadsheets and Word for all my gardening accounts. I hand write invoices for my customers there and then, once the job is done. Or they get a monthly hand-written one. I would like to e-mail more professional looking invoices, but as quite a few of my customers are elderly and not all are computer literate it wouldn't work at the moment. I use Vistaprint for logo-ed stationery etc..
Not sure if LJN has invoice templates that you could use..
Debbie
Take a look here :
http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/garden-maintenanc...
http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/accounting-softwa...
http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/gardening-managem...
http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/forum/topics/computer-software...
Should give you some initial guidance, following that use the search function on the home page to find even more threads on suitable industry software
Thanks Debbie.
Thanks Gary, Some good reading for tonight.
Quickbooks is one of the de facto accounts packages for 'contractors' of any kind. Very popular in the US and in the UK, it comes in several sizes and has many add on such as scheduling/job costing/mapping.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_10?url=search-alias%3Dso...
It is also what Barclay's supplies as part of its Simply Business offering to business clients. It can link to and reconcile your business account automatically online.
Out of any, I would suggest you look at it.
Separately, there are a number of good 'standalone' packages from US companies that work perfectly well in thye UK as either desk top programs or cloud based (ie for access anywhere, inc smart devices)
guys you have not lived
try xero..
.beautiful accounting software that has live feeds of your bank accounts..
.you can use your iphone to record your bill and have it stored next to your expense ...quickbooks is made for accounting folk - xero is made for dummies
www.xero.com
and a screen shot - please let me assure you - i get no affiliate sales here - now of course there are a few issues - its a total nightmare to bring previous books into the system - best to start fresh at the beginning of VAT or company books period - also you do need to understand balancing books - but there is help online or get a book keeper/accountant who also uses the system
I can vouch for Xero too. I used it for the Creating Landscapes' accounts. Pretty easy to use although I did need the help of my accountants, Wettone Matthews, to fully understand it.
You might like http://www.freeagent.com/
I have been trying it out myself but am undecided at present. Good for recording time and expenses and then putting them into invoices with automatic mark up etc.No split entries on expenses though which is a pain.However tax processing seems good too.
I use Accountsportal which is cloud based (online) after using spreadsheets for several years, its easy to get to grips with and much quicker and more features than excel based software i had before, incl bank reconcilliation, invoices, email, expenses, purchases etc. Costs me £9.60 a month for the basic package which is more than adequate for a soletrader, which i am by the way.
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