Software.... HELP!

[WSPLUMBING]

Hi,

I'm sure this question has been asked before, but i can't seem to locate the posts when I want to!
I'll try not to ramble on. My partner has his own business of 10 years, and I have found myself getting more and more involved in the office side of things. We have one chap working for the company and it's very busy. I use Sage for payroll, but all our invoices are done in excel as they were set up at the start of my OH going self employed. I've changed things slightly to make them cleverer, but i'm sure that there are probably better systems out there. My OH (slightly technophobic) is coming round to the idea of a computerised diary, with the addition of tablets for him and his lad rather than the paper diary he uses at the moment. My question to you all is what software would you recommend for scheduling work, expenses, invoicing etc? The scheduling of work / diary needs to be not too complicated otherwise it will scare off my OH and he'll be using his paper diary until the end of time!
Thank you all in advance

 

[kris]

Hi there plumbers other half ,,, I'm self employed and 37 so I'm pritty good with technology but I'm still on Invoice pads n diaries but I have looked into different softwares for running my business and one that looks good is commusoft, but they have a monthly charge, contact them they will give you a free trail n talk u through everything,

 

[Ch4 plumbing]

Hi there plumbers other half ,,, I'm self employed and 37 so I'm pritty good with technology but I'm still on Invoice pads n diaries but I have looked into different softwares for running my business and one that looks good is commusoft, but they have a monthly charge, contact them they will give you a free trail n talk u through everything,

It's a hard one Kris have you tried them? For me the biggest risk is change and by that I mean if for some reason it doesn't work quite right I've then got to muck about again to find something else, have you tried the free trial at all?

 

[cr0ft]

We use Google Calendar for keeping the diaries for the three of us up to date. Each staff member has a separate diary and everyone can view each others in real time on their mobile phones and see what each other is up to.

We use Quickbooks 2013 Premium Edition for all of our accounts purposes. I think the one off cost was around £500 ish. No monthly fees. It's slightly out of date for payroll purposes but with a small business it's easy to manage payroll manually each month isn't it?

You can set it up to print and email PDF invoices to customers along with a standard email. It's a real time saver once it's set up. It's also a lot more intuitive than Sage in my opinion. I started off with Sage and moved over to Quickbooks having also tried a couple of online pay monthly packages. I've been with Quickbooks for 2 years now and am very impressed with the software.

 

[Unregistered]

Thank you all,
Commusoft was one that seemed to come up a lot when I was searching for different ideas. I'm not sure that my partner will be overjoyed at the thought of a monthly fee for doing the job that I do now, especially as the fee starts from about £26 I think I saw. We pay £5 per month for Sage payroll, and that's fine. I'm just being a bit Scottish and tight! I will look into quick books though. It's good to hear positive things from someone that uses it. And i love my google calendar for sorting my life out, so I'm sure that they can probably manage to use that. Do you have ipads or tablets or anything?

Ch4 plumbing, I'm with you re not wanting to change too. But I think we (WS Plumbing) need to move forward and I'm hoping to be able to give my partner a positive experience by going digital, which is why I'm being overly careful now. If this goes wrong, he'll revert back to bartering with sheep!!!

Thanks for your responses )