Penny

Thanks for the reply.  So is Clarity account based?  Also, any ETA on IACEZs account based offering.  Will you then provide a balance sheet report?  What specific benefits are there between IACEZ over clarity..any specific features beyond tax management?  Thanks

Penny

To provide additional info:
I have a small person architectural firm, currently utilizing Quickbooks desktop.  I really want to move to the clouds, but for some reason have hesitated for my accounting program...everything else is:  email, invoicing via Freshbooks, Evernote, Basecamp, Toodledoo....but I just haven't jumped into one of these services.  I've been eyeing Xero, Clarity and IAC-EZ for over a year...testing them out and asking questions.  I feel that anything is better than the system I am currently running, but I just can't jump in.  My bookkeeper highly recommends a double-entry system...while others say keep it simple.  I want to set it up for future expansion and robust enough to handle all of our needs, but simple enough to use either by myself or a basic bookkeeper.  So I am not sure if transaction based or account based is fitting for my needs.  Any thoughts or guidance will be appreciated.

Penny

You're awesome.  Thanks for the info.  I do want at least a balance sheet, so I may either wait for IAC-EZ to provide this feature or jump into Clarity.  I am re-trialing Clarity and IAC-EZ.  Both seem very well developed.

Penny

Last, quick question.  On your new features section, you do show an ETA for bank reconciliation and balance sheet between Oct 15 and Nov 15.  Is this still scheduled.  I don't mind waiting a few weeks or a month...but 6months to a year is another story.  Thanks.

Hi tarch,

Clarity Accounting also allows you to upload bank statements in digital form and use those to enter your expenses, which can be a bit of a time saver if you bank provides bank statements in a supported format (QuickBooks, MS Money, or CSV).  Eventually we'd like to do "direct connect" to your bank where you don't have to do the download/upload step, like Mint does.

Because you can do bank reconciliations in Clarity Accounting, that can help you detect duplicate or (more importantly) missing entries in the system that might otherwise have slipped through unrecorded.

Also, Clarity Accounting has support for multi-currency transactions, so if you (or anyone else who comes upon this thread) do business internationally that can be a plus.

Clarity Accounting currently doesn't have income tax estimation so you'd need to take a guess at your rate yourself and multiply that my your net income to figure out how much of the money you get you can keep.

IAC-EZ has really focused on simple income and expense tracking with a bit of assets and liabilities so that it's very easy to understand and get started.  Clarity Accounting is slightly more high end, intended to be able to take the place of QuickBooks without losing too much functionality.

Neither of them has all the functionality of QuickBooks, however, so do evaluate whether you're using any features of QuickBooks currently that aren't available in the packages you're looking.

Hi Tarch,

Actually I don't have a detailed comparison with Xero right now.  They recently added multi-currency which was one of the main things that we had but they lacked.  I think that Xero is a pretty solid product, so it may come down to a lot of small details in terms of how they differ from Clarity Accounting. 

I haven't had a chance to look more closely at this recently.

Hi Tarch, I'm Catherine from Xero.

If you've been testing these systems for a while I'm guessing you're quite familiar with Xero by now. Xero is double-entry accounting, all behind the scenes, you just enter your invoices, expense claims, set up your bank feeds for automatic statement import into Xero (if supported by your bank, otherwise import them yourself) for reconciliation and the rest goes on behind the scenes to produce the full set of standard financial reports (Balance Sheet, P&L, Executive Summary, debtors, creditors, tax etc).  We offer multi-currency, fixed asset management, basic budget, unlimited users (who you can give different levels of access).

We do get a lot of feedback from our customers about how easy, beautiful and fun Xero is to use so if you're looking for something with a great UI we could be a contender.

Yes indeed we are in the final throes of testing our integration with FreshBooks - look out for the release notification on your Xero dashboard (if you have a trial or Demo Company running) or our blog (http://blog.xero.com) or Twitter (@TeamXero).

I hope this helps - if you haven't already, feel free to email our great Customer Care team with any questions - support@xero.com or have a look through our Help Center & videos (http://help.xero.com).

Catherine