Quickbooks vs Pastel - bank offer

[AdeleK]

Hi all. I am new here so please forgive me if I have posted in the wrong thread as I'm not too sure which one best suits this question.
I bought Pastel a little while ago and cannot get my head around working with it, my bank offered me a Quickbooks package which also includes all the training software as well as some bonuses like marketing planning, business planning etc.

My question is Quickbooks more user friendly than Pastel?
Not from an accountants/book keepers point of view as I am a designer and need software which is going to be the most user friendly and easiest to learn as I don't have time for long, expensive courses.

You advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[sterne.law@gmail.com]

I have always backed Quickbooks. Not only is it extremely powerful, particulalry on the reports side, but I do not believe their is a simplier system around.

I ahve managed to teach non accountants, and not the most numerically skilled people do invoicing, add stock items(correctly), payments etc inside of 2 or 3 hours training.

[BusFact]

I use Pastel as my main software package, but have also used Quickbooks and Omni Accounts.

The simplest is Quickbooks. Its also easy to fix if you make mistakes (which is why accountants don't like it - makes it too easy to fiddle the books).

Quick books has online forums where you can get help from other users if you get stuck. Pastel make you pay for a years service to get an answer that may take 5 minutes.

If you're the only user, then yes go the Quickbooks route.

My only concern is how (or why) the bank is offering you this software. I'd be nervous about being tied to one bank because they have all your accounts information (if its online). What happens when you have a fight with them and want to move elsewhere.

If on the otherhand, the software is given to you to put on your own PC, then go for it.

[greghsa]

For the small one man business, I would say that Quickbooks is best. If you plan for rapid growth and want to turn your small business into a medium Business, with numerous staff, I would say that Pastel is better, because there are clear upgrade paths as your business grows.
Also, it goes on what kind of business entity you operate. If you are a sole proprietor, Quickbooks is fine.
For the pty or cc, it is best to consult your accountant. If your accountant is on Pastel and you are on Pastel, it is easier (and usually cheaper) to get the accountant's signature. My brother in law swears by Quickbook, but his accountant uses Pastel, so the Accountant is charging him additional fee to recapture books in Pastel

[AdeleK]

Thanks for all the advice.
This is the offer from Absa, will need to give them a call to ensure that the software is given to me to put on my own system.

Business Essentials

For a monthly fee of R185, subscription to Business Essentials offers you access to a software package including:
QuickBooks Pro - the world’s leading bookkeeping software
Business Planning and Marketing Planning Software by Palo Alto
Business Skills courses and videos by MindLeaders
Software and IT Skills courses by MindLeaders

[sterne.law@gmail.com]

Quickbooks was easy to fix mistakes, and still is, however that was prior to network versions and better security and password control. In other words you can now limit, that a person cannot delete transactions or edit, they must pass credit or do journal.

[BusFact]

For a monthly fee of R185, subscription to Business Essentials offers you access to a software package including:
QuickBooks Pro - the world’s leading bookkeeping software
Business Planning and Marketing Planning Software by Palo Alto
Business Skills courses and videos by MindLeaders
Software and IT Skills courses by MindLeaders

I'm generally suspicious of these types of offers.

The bit offering you "access to" the software package implies to me that once you stop paying, you no longer have the software to use. Its probably an online service. Quickbooks entry level option costs around R1000 which means you can have your own package for the same as 6 months of the above subscription. Yes they do offer the Pro package, but most start ups don't need that.

The other stuff on the subscription is soft and fuzzy. I don't know of them and they may or may not be useful to you.

I prefer to be in control of my own accounts.

[greghsa]

I would go along with Busfact. I maintain that accounting software should be owmed snd loaded on your own machine. Cloud computing is a great concept for email etc. but its risky for your accounting data!

[eitai2001]

My mom taught herself how to use quickbooks (no courses) ... Case and Point!

[BusFact]

My mom taught herself how to use quickbooks (no courses) ... Case and Point!

That is the advantage of Quickbooks, although I managed to teach myself Pastel. The only real requirement was to understand what a debit, credit, asset, liability, expense and income was. High school accounts would be adequate.

Of course with Quickbooks you don't even really need that.

[greghsa]

I really believe that you can learn any accounting package in a weekend. If you need questions answered you have this forum!
The only difficult thing about accounting is ACCOUNTANTS !

[Dave A]

In a sentence - Quickbooks is much more user friendly than Pastel.
Period. Without doubt. Finish and klaar.

The strength of Pastel is it is totally customised to the South African legislated environment, but it is probably the only area where Quickbooks is weaker "out the box" by comparison.

Perhaps time to dispel some myths.

For the small one man business, I would say that Quickbooks is best. If you plan for rapid growth and want to turn your small business into a medium Business, with numerous staff, I would say that Pastel is better, because there are clear upgrade paths as your business grows.

Quickbooks has a clear upgrade path and I've seen it deployed in a large USA service business operation, let alone small and medium sized operations. Admittedly they were using a few third party plug-ins for advance scheduling, communication and inventory controls, but that's part of the power of Quickbooks; there is quite a substantial library of third party plug-ins available that cater for almost any business situation.

Also, it goes on what kind of business entity you operate. If you are a sole proprietor, Quickbooks is fine.
For the pty or cc, it is best to consult your accountant. If your accountant is on Pastel and you are on Pastel, it is easier (and usually cheaper) to get the accountant's signature.

Most auditors (the real issue when it comes to companies getting signed off) use CASEware to generate their audit reports, not Pastel.

The real source of resistance to Quickbooks here is that SA accountants are trained on Pastel. My daughter is studying to become a CA and using Pastel is an integral part of the course. This means that accountants are now faced with using a program they weren't trained on.

However, my auditors more than manage - they're actually blown away by the powerful report generating capability of Quickbooks and reckon that Pastel is incredibly clumsy by comparison.

I recently also had the "pleasure" of an audit by SARS to deal with. Not only were they totally satisfied with our record keeping, they were impressed by the speed and ease that I could generate the targetted reports they were looking for during the audit.

My brother in law swears by Quickbook, but his accountant uses Pastel, so the Accountant is charging him additional fee to recapture books in Pastel

Totally unnecessary duplication IMO. Your brother should find another accountant.

[AdeleK]

Thanks everyone for the valuable advice. Quickbooks it is, just going to double check the bank offer and if it is online then will rather purchase cash. If I remember correctly they told be that I only need to have internet access for the training programs but will have a chat to them to verify.

This was a wonderful introduction to the forum with many useful replies. Happy I found this community.

[Jennajay]

I kow this thread is pretty old.

But - is there any software which would allow you to import Pastel data into Quickbooks without spending hours doing mindless data capturing?

[Dave A]

I went hunting for possible answers at Intuit and the best answer was here (which was only marginally helpful imo).

However, it looks like there's hope:



Although there will probably be a fair amount of exporting, reformatting, then importing involved.

We're using a Quickbooks developer script for our exchange of data with other applications, and it's really powerful. Obviously no-one has felt the need to use it to develop a Pastel-to-Quickbooks importer though.