Quickbooks vs Pastel - bank offer

[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.

[CLIVE-TRIANGLE]

There are excellent importing tools available at www.bigredconsulting.com
I have used a number of them and they are huge time savers and are rock solid.

[bjsteyn]

Hi, I am wanting to create export file from the order system that I wrote that can be imported by Pastel and Quickbooks. Does anyone know where I can find more information on importing data into Pastel and the format it needs to be in! Thanx :-)

[pietpetoors]

We are looking to move away from Pastel and am looking at quickbooks.
Can somebody with experience please help with answers to these questions?
1. Can quickbooks handle multiple stores, currently have 3 stores and we need to transfer stock from one store to another often.
2. Can one integrate quickbooks with zencart online shopping cart?
3. Is quickbooks one package which includes everything, from your POS to your payroll or do you also have to buy hundreds of modules for everything you want to do.
4. Can we import our inventory, customers and suppliers to quickbooks from Pastel?

[SilverNodashi]

I am not too sure about the multiple shops, but this would help for ZenCart: https://www.zencart-manager.com/quickbooks-integration/

[pietpetoors]

Thanx