Accounting & Bookkeeping & Small Business Forum

[angelique]

I'm new to the forum so I will start by introducing myself.
Hello! My name is Angelique, I work as the Office Assistant for a Naturopathic Physician in British Columbia, Canada. Love where I live, love where I work :)

I'm sure you'll learn a lot more about me as I become more involved and I look forward to getting to know you folks too.

Let's go on to what brings me here.

I've been at this office for a year now and before becoming a member of the team (which is just me and the doctor) I had next to no experience in bookkeping and accounting software other than fiddling around with Quickbooks and Simply while taking an Administrative Assistant program. My employer has been using a DOS based accounting program (BusinessVision Turbo) for ages. Because of the costs to upgrade and because it has served her needs until now, she's kept it. With the Canadian Payments Association cheque formatting standards we realize that BusinessVision Turbo is non compliant and we have to make the choice as to whether we should upgrade to BusinessVision 7.2 LE or look into something else. I have come to learn that converting data from a DOS based program can be complicated, and I'm not even sure if it can be done at all should we opt for something like Quickbooks or Simply?

So I'm here seeking opinions and advice. We need something that will match or exceed what BusinessVision Turbo has done for us but not kill us financially. Upgrading BusinessVision is challenging since we have to have a Sage BusinessVision partner come in from out of town to set us up and convert. Labour for installation, conversion, and training is costly even if the promo price for the upgrade seems reasonable (it's about $350 for the software and $80-$100/hour for the tech work). We haven't been please with Sage's customer and technical support and other local businesses have reported the same issue. Here are our needs:

An accounting software program for small business that is reasonably priced.

It must have strong technical support that won't cost an arm and a leg should we run into problems down the road.

Ideally, we'd like to be able to convert our data from BV TURBO into the new program but will consider the alternative of starting with something fresh at year-end.

So for those of you with the wisdom and accounting software experience I'd like to please ask you this:

What accounting software option would you choose and why?

Thank you in advance for your help. It is extremely appreciated and admired. I'm sure I'll add to my enquiry later on.

[asnider]

angelique, welcome!

you have to go with Quickbooks, there's really no reason not to. the only other option would be custom software since you are a doctor's office and you probably have the money for it.

[BirchAccounting]

Welcome! In our Accounting firm we use a number of different software - dependent on the client and industry. We have found that Simply works best most of the time and with the clients that do most of the day to day bookkeeping themselves the opinion is split between Quickbooks and Simply. Either way support is good from the vendor - although our clients usually just call us when they have an issue! I think that is because they generally like knowing they get the same person every time. I know that most DR's offices use medical specific software it should be fairly easy to find something online or talk to other medical offices. Good luck finding something that works for your office - as far as I know there isn't an easy way to transfer data but at year end you would be able to take your account totals and input them into your new software fairly easily.

Amanda