Clearbooks
We rate Clearbooks as the best and easiest of the online finance programs
We like this online software available from the UK. You can evaluate for yourself here.
Alternatively have a look at the Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ClearBooksVideos/videos
We rate Clearbooks higher than its major rivals Xero and Quickbooks Online for a simple reason. The transactions in Clearbooks are fully amendable. It is much cheaper than Freeagent Central (which we also recommend) at only £7.20pm through to £16pm for a more complex user with a two year deal. It has a strong UK-development focus. It has a modular pricing system. There is a wide variety of online filing of tax returns.
But the sheer ease of use makes this product stand apart. The software will produce a simple profit and loss versus last year. It will track transactions against that budget over several months. You can enter your own budgets and track cashflow. You can enter non cash transactions into other asset and liability accounts that are not related to an actual bank account.
Our key test is ease of use. If you are moving from MYOB you will appreciate the simplicity and easy amendment. There is a bank register with a running total. Therefore reconciliation doesn’t really need to work as hard as the way that MYOB users will remember.
You can import txt file bank statements into the software. Clearbooks will wisely guess the codings based on its own assumptions of what the description in each transaction might mean. You can amend its guesses easily. You can then set the software to look for the bank transaction description as a way of deciding the coding in all future transactions it downloads. Since all the transactions are imported for you there is not the same need to match line by line reconciliation to be sure that you get the entries all in. The new method is to use the bank register. The bank register function is easier to find than in many other software packages.
A key new feature from this sort of software is that it will enter transactions from your bank account automatically. This sounds good but is actually quite difficult to manage in other online software packages that offer this. No desktop software (that we have tested) can yet do this. Clearbooks has a higher subscription for a link that covers most UK Bank Accounts.
It works with these banks. Some banks are missing – for example our favourite, the Unity Trust bank.
- AA Bank
- Asda
- Abbey National
- Alliance and Leicester
- AIB
- Amazon
- Amex
- Bank of Scotland
- Barclaycard
- Barclays
- Bradford and Bingley
- Brewin Dolphin
- Brittania
- Capital One
- Citibank
- Clydesdale
- The Cooperative
- Coventry BS
- Cumberland BS
- Egg
- First Trust Bank
- Goldfish
- Handelsbanken
- HSBC
- Halifax
- ICICI
- Ice
- Investec
- Metrobank
- Mint
- Morgan Stanley
- Post Office
- Royal Bank of Scotland
- Sainsburys
- Santander
- Smile
- TSB
- Yorkshire Bank
- Yorkshire BS
- Zopa