UKH

Hello,  any treasures of climbing clubs out there? 

Our club's treasure is retiring and he was a big fan of excel and chequesfor accounts.

Can you recommend a reasonably priced package we could use for accounts,  that is suitable for the non-accountants of this world?  We are also considering moving bank account, but we are structured as an unincorporated trust which seems to be hard to find a modern account for. Any suggestions are gratefully received.

We need to account for these things. 

1, Members pay a yearly subscription, today by BACS or cheque but ideally moving to direct debit. would be great if they could self administer this online

2, we pay bills directly

3, we refund members expenses if they buy something for the club

4, we hire out our hall, to regular and one-off bookings which we invoice monthly. 

5, we have some  employed cleaners who are on PAYE

6, we have to pay corporation tax on our letting income

7, we run courses which members pay for by BACS or cards through sumup (which are considered trading between members)

8, good link to  bank acount

thanks

james

Moving bank is a right pain for clubs etc.  I would sort out accounts package first.  Try zero.  

As someone has already suggested, look at Xero. I own a tax consultancy firm with 13 staff and we shifted from Sage to Xero last year and it's so much better. Integration with payroll and banking is slick. Costs about 40 quid a month. 

I also have another small company (no staff) with a similar number of transactions each month to the one you have described and it costs me 13 quid a month. 

Xero is generally regarded as the best for small businesses and a huge number of accountants we work with have shifted to Xero over the last 5 years. There's a reason why. 

Oh, and HSBC is the bank for my tax firm. Not brilliant. 

I use Starling for my little company and it makes a mockery of HSBC. I assume the ownership structure (unincorporated trust) wouldn't be an issue but I'm not 100% certain. 

Both HSBC and Starling integrate with Xero pretty well. 

I'd agree with Axel, although i would personally stick with Sage if thats what you are used to (i've used it for years in various incarnations), although for a club that is not likely to change much in size i'd go for Xero if its a new start after spreadsheets. For what you would require, i'd suggest the basic version would be ok to start, and its less than £15 / month inc VAT.

For banks, and I dont know what their attitude to clubs is, have a look at a couple of the newish challenger banks, such as Starling / Atom / Handelsbanken. Sometimes a more open and refreshing attitude than the usual suspects; certainly worth a try.

Have a look at at Moneymanger, https://moneysoft.co.uk/ £50 one-off charge and does everything you need to do to run club accounts.  Free demo available.  I've been using it for more than 20 years to run club accounts and my own business accounts.  Really just an automated spreadsheet but deals with online VAT submissions.  PAYE bolt-on available.

Have a look at Gocardless for Direct Debits, all online, cheap and easy to manage.

I would say don't be tempted by Quickbooks Online

I worked for a small company which used Quickbooks desktops for a number of years but switched to the online version .

It just didn't do what we needed; fortunately I was able to retire and get away from it!

Another vote for Xero. I work for an SME and we use it...I'm not an accountant but have to use it for invoicing etc and it's very straightforward and easy to work with.

One of my clubs uses Zoho. It’s not as intuitive as you’d like but seems to do the job.

Thanks, Everyone for the comments.  I will play with all of these and pick one from a first past Xero looks good.  my reservation is that the expenses function is very expensive.