We're always trying to improve Free Accounting Software. If you have any suggestions for us reply to this message.

Just replying to my own message to let everyone know my current plans for improvements.

I am in the process of implementing online tax returns and hop to have this ready for the 2012 financial year.

I am also looking at making the site easier to navigate by improving the layout of the header and the Organisation Menu (which is the page you see after you click your organisation's name). These will be minor changes but I am hoping that they will make a big difference for new users.

Hi Glen

I love the function to be able to email an invoice or receipt straight from the accounting software and I did manage to sort out the PDF templates, thank you.

There are a couple of fields in the cash & sales received screens that would be really handy when doing future updates on the software, then to be able to take them through to the PDF.

My business quite often delivers the products to a different address to the customer so it would be great to have a field to put in the delivery details for each invoice. This can then be added to the PDF template if required.

It would also be great to have a field to add just a message to the customer without having to add it to an email. That way all the info is stored in one place and can be referred back to at any time.

On the note of having everything in one place. Another field that would be really useful would be a booking reference (not to be seen by the customer, just so I could see it and reference back to it for any issues with courier deliveries).

I know theses are only minor things but they would become extremely useful (for me anyway, to be able to consolidate the numerous excel spreadsheets I have into one web based accounting program).

Kind Regards
Stacey

Hi Stacey,

Those are really great ideas. It's amazing how having a different perspective can result in such great ideas. It seems so obvious to me now!

I had not considered the delivery address being different to the customers address, but as you say for a gift based business it makes perfect sense.

The message to the customer is probably best placed into the "header description" which prints on the invoice. However, as you know this is also used in the internal transaction listing. I'm trying to minimise the number of fields to keep it as simple as possible.

The suggestion of booking reference is a good one. Now that you mention it I realise that there is no place for a reference that does not print on the invoice.

Another idea along the same lines is to have some basic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions. One thing I am planning is customer notes so that you can add a notes to a customer record. So that when a customer contacts you, you can easily find the history of your communications with the customer as well as the sales history.

Regards,

Glen

I Love Love Love the idea of the CRM function. This would be awesome as I like to track times and phone calls made per order and supplier etc in order to itemize business and personal phone calls when I receive my telephone bill. (makes it much simpler to reconcile if I already know the number I called, time & date).

Cheers
Stacey

Hi Glen,
Just started using your software and have thus far found it to be a very useful tool. One query - can we get a couple of extra reports? Specifically refering to credit payments.
Can we get a report that perhaps itemises the credit payments by the supplier names?

Cheers
Kylie

Hi Kylie,

It's good to hear that you are enjoying using Free Accounting Software.

Thanks for the suggestion. You can get a list of the outstanding credit purchases by clicking Balance Sheet and then Accounts Payable. This works well when there is a low volume outstanding. But as you have probably noticed if you have a large number outstanding it would be better to be able to filter and sort.

I'll put it on my todo list (which is getting a bit long, but that's ok). I'll let you know when it's done.

Regards,

Glen