Saasu was updated today with a new UK Tax Code for the temporary 13 month 15% VAT rate.

From 1st December 2008 you can use the new tax code called “VAT15″ available in your Saasu file. We have provided the new code in advance to facilitate workflow changes you may need to prepare for. If you would like a free Sandbox file for pre-testing Point of Sale systems or workflow just create a help ticket and we will action it promptly.

When you have all your data captured for the 30th November 2008 and prior you can then deactivate the current VAT 17.5% code for the 13 months that the new rate is effective.

Learn more about the 2008 UK VAT rate change in Saasu.

Many customers such as retailers, ebay traders, ecommerce stores have been very keen to solve the problem of easily updating large numbers of Inventory Items in Saasu online accounting. We have released the ability to do this by allowing Spreadsheet files (CSV) to be imported into Saasu with the new or changed data you require.

Some of our customers receive pricing spreadsheets from multiple suppliers, others create and manage inventory or stock lists in a spreadsheets so we felt this was an appropriate first step for bulk update of inventory data in Saasu.

You still always have the option of using Connectors that we can build for you that use our API to update items. Ideal for those of you that are keen to fully automate workflow.

There are two ways you can approach the bulk updating of your inventory and the method you choose will depend on your business needs but feel free to get in touch and we may be able to suggest the easiest approach.

Method 1 - Export CSV, Edit CSV and then Import CSV

Export the items to spreadsheet where you can edit, merge or update your changes from suppliers and other records. Choose: Items > Export. Then import the list back into Saasu and our business logic will update records without impacting historical transaction activity. Choose: Items > Import.

Method 2 - Create CSV and then Import CSV

Another approach is to build a spreadsheet which lists Item Codes in the first column and then add additional columns for the data you wish to update. For a detailed explanation see our help item on Importing Items into Saasu online accounting.

See Video on YouTube.com

Wouldn’t you love to pay lots of bill at once?

Saasu has released our Direct-to-Bank File (DTB) payment feature. Simply (a) tick all the unpaid purchases you would like to pay in your Saasu Purchase List, (b) create and save your payment and (c) click the icon/link that becomes available to create the direct to Bank File and save it to your desktop.

(more…)

Here’s a purchase we no longer need to enter in our business. We just tick it off during reconciliation each month. You can see how it’s entered and automated from the screen shot. So let’s keep this post short and simple, Saasu style!

Bulk ‘Big Company’ Salary Handling For The Rest Of Us

This blog entry has been two years in preparation, we think we have solved a major issue for most businesses in a very elegant way.

Interested? You should be - we decided to make a system that normally costs tens of thousands of dollars free for all our clients, at least for now.

Paying salaries and time based reward-for-effort in any size business is a time consuming task.

We have this need here at Saasu.com for our own team and pretty much all of our clients face the same issues - it is a long wish list but if you are a business owner I am sure most of the items on it will resonate with you.

We think the most important point is doing all of the things on the list while keeping it simplified for the average business to setup and use in minutes so it pays for itself today not next year in reduced time, hassles, training costs, errors and in so many other ways including a happy team that gets paid correctly and on time.

That is the hardest thing to do, the reason we are blogging about it is we have just released Saasu Advanced Payroll.

Top 12 Payroll Tips - Making The Right Decision

These are our tips - consider them a check list when deciding on your next system -they represent what a good scalable but simplified payroll service must cover at a minimum.

1. Standard Payments Should Take No Extra Time - Setting up standard payments each week, fortnight or month, additional staff one an existing scheme or in an existing group should add no extra time to the regular pay run.
2. One Off Exception Payments Should Be Easy - Handling all those exceptions from the standard pays with minimal fuss for just the next pay but not other pays
3. Entitlement Tracking Should Be Automatic - Tracking and accumulating holiday leave entitlements and other entitlements depending on where/when/how they are working
4. Time Based Pay - Tracking time and paying employees based on time worked as well as invoicing based on time
5. Groups (Also Called Batches or Runs) - Minimising effort for similar categories of employees by grouping them together for processing by type or location or grade or something else
6. Payslips & Tax - Distributing payslips or salary confirmation sheets to individual employees who are often geographically dispersed - email is best for payslips. At end of year the production of taxation certificates (also called group certificates in many countries) is also essential
7. Banking - Getting the instructions to the bank with the right employee account details (often at other banks) - an automated bulk transaction file is best.
8. Approvals & Controls - Making sure it all happens without errors - so you need some sort of draft approval process
9. Fast - Making sure it all happens in a timely way so the money hits employee accounts when they need or expect it - must be highly automated
10. Zones - Handling the vast variety of different conditions and calculations around the world in different jurisdictions (we call them zones) - must be configurable (we are just supporting Australia for now but other countries will be rolled out progressively based on demand).
11. Integrated - No duplicate information - it must share records with existing HR or employee tracking systems and timesheets and expense handling systems.
12. Self Service - Your team must be learn the system themselves without paying for training and be able to enter their own time or see their own payslips - online via the web when ever they want

We didn’t add ‘Make sure it is software-as-a-service not old-style-on-premise-software’ because it goes without saying

The Best Bit

• Get It Now - You can have efficient payroll in your business in just minutes with Saasu Advanced Payroll
• Free - We are providing this service free to existing business subscribers and new clients who join before Christmas on our standard business plan - just tell us and we will turn it on for your business.
• Already Proven - we have already processed thousand of salaries this way (paying tens of millions of dollars) and it has been a very smooth experience.
• It Is Unique - There are a few other services like this out there but we believe there are no others at this price point and none as simple to use.

Update From Service Team - After One Week Of Free Offer…

Advanced Payroll Is A VERY Popular New Feature, we have had a rush from clients looking for access and using it in their business. Thanks. It is nice to know people like our stuff!

Just to repeat -as a reward for existing business clients (and new business clients who join before Xmas) we are offering this new module free.

The offer of free access will run until at least March 2008, thereafter advanced payroll will be part of a higher subscription plan (probably called business plus although we are still deciding plans and their names).

Pricing has not been determined but we expect the difference won’t be very large at all, it will depend amongst other things on the service/support costs we incur for an average client using the new module.

This price setting is part of a complete plan review to introduce lower plans with reduced price and functionality for entry level and higher plans for corporates - all of which is part our ongoing efforts to deliver great value software as a service to simplify your business life.

By using plans we can stage complexity (and hence simplify use for you) according to the scale of your business.

Payroll entries made via standard payroll and advanced payroll will be accessible for all payroll users (business or business plus if you will). So if you decide not to use advanced payroll later that is fine, you can still see all payroll the in the same consistent way, you just can not process them in bulk.

And of course we always ensure you are protected with the saasu.com satisfaction guarantee.

With around 2 million small businesses in Australasia it is no surprise that proven models are being sold as franchises. Nor is it a surprise that the franchise segment is a huge growth area for Saasu at the moment.

The key driver is flexibility and scalability- the ability to work across one or one thousand small businesses easily.

Franchise owners typically don’t want to waste time setting up financial systems that might be incompatible with the umbrella/parent franchisor network. Similarly the umbrella network managers don’t want hundreds of franchisees running their businesses on different systems so collating management information is difficult or nearly impossible.

This is where Saasu has found our sweet spot in Australia and increasingly in New Zealand and other countries.

There are no other systems on the market we are aware of that have the same level of multi-user, multi-business, single login, flexibility as we offer for franchise owners and franchisors to co-operate at different levels and get real-time business information across one or one thousand businesses.

One login can access multiple businesses and the business owner can set varying levels of access for different users. Each business can be configured differently for chart of accounts etc yet still roll up consistently formatted reports for the franchisor in PDFs or spreadsheets to email or even better with online login direct access.

Franchisees should just try it by logging in for the free version and if they like it sign up.

Franchisors should contact us or one of our partners to discuss strategies for migration, co-branding and lots more.

Franchise advisors and lenders (capital providers) can also benefit immensely from the ease with which they can monitor business performance remotely and even benchmark across businesses.

There are many methods for reducing input errors in your online accounting file. Accountants use workflow processes that they know will create more predictable accuracy. Learning about some of these and adopting them in your accounting routine is a good investment in time that will reward you for many years to come. Some of these methods are discussed below, however there are many more:

Basic review of your transaction listings

As you create transactions they will appear in your transaction list for the date period applicable. The process is usually to Add a new transaction to the List, Save and Close the transaction and then check the transaction for correctness. You cannot check all the detail for transaction but the main items such as Date, Amount and Contact can be verified. This is the most basic and quickest, but least thorough, of checks you can do.

Review of your Transactions by Account report

This is a good report for checking you have used correct tax codes and ensuring you have chosen the correct Account for you transactions. You might scan the report to ensure that (for example) all your sales appearing in an Account for Income: light fittings would have the same tax code. You might also check that there aren’t any stray transactions in this Account that shouldn’t be there.

Use the duplicate function for adding transactions

When you use the Duplicate button on any Add/Edit Transaction screen you are creating an exact copy of the transaction you are viewing with a few fields cleared like the Date for example. This helps produce consistency in your transaction adding over time as you will be using the same Account, Tax Codes and Summary as you are duplicating the information not entering it.

Use Transactions Lists to help in adding transactions

A good example of this is when you have regular periodical payments you make for things such as subscriptions, rent, bank fees that are often the same each month except for the transaction date.

1. Load the Transactions for a Contact and click the plus icon next to the transaction to load a duplicate.
2. Then you can include the date for this new transaction and amend any other differences (eg. Summary..”Jul08 rent” to “Aug08 Rent”) and then save the transaction.

Use the Transaction Lists to help in adding transactions

As in the above example you can create a list of transaction for the previous month (or period). Use the same process to create new transactions for the new month (or period).

Additional

Make sure you have paperwork, invoices, and bank statements to back up you data entry. Just assuming these things will happen each month (or period) doesn’t mean they actually do!

Here’s some ideas to help save some time -

• Group Pays for processing payroll - Speed up you payroll processing.
  Less data entry
• Fixed bank fee (annual) - Many banks will offer an annual bank fee as one payment instead of the usual monthly fees
  Less data entry and reconciliation entries
• Fixed bank fee (monthly) - those intra-month fees for ATM and Internet Banking usage can oftne be paid as a fixed monthly fee in some business accounts.
  Less data entry and reconciliation entries
• Pay multiple bills from one vendor all at once - This is possible with vendors who have longer payment terms. If you can get vendors to stretch their terms to 3 months from the usual 7 to 30 days then at least you reduce the payment processing work when you write one cheque, or process one payment, for a set of invoices.
  Less paperwork and data entry. In the USA this is paying on Bill/Statement rather than per Invoice
• Dealing with vendors who insist on onerous paperwork - If you receive an excessive number of documents from a vendor, which may include; statements, invoices, reminders and other forms of vendor communication.
  Consider this time cost they are imposing on your business. Some courier companies bill weekly while others are monthly
• Underestimating the cost of processing a transaction - If processing payment early saves you time, and that time value in dollars outweighs the funding cost of spending your cash early then it may pay to clear the payment paperwork earlier.
  A classic example is very small reseller/commission payments
• Buying multiple services/products from one vendor - If you can obtain a discount for buying more products from one source, receive less paperwork, reduce your payment processing work and obtain more lenient terms then this may work for you. Again there are many flow-on advantages like shorter bank statements and less reconciliation’s work results in time cost savings.
  A classic example is with stationary suppliers. Many businesses deal with 3 or more stationary companies. If this saves you lots of money then excellent! If not why put up with the extra paperwork?
• Generally employee expenses are time expensive - Setting up a Motor Vehicle fuel account may be easier than managing those payments as reimbursements through salary or organising lots of paper receipts every month.
  Some companies pay employees slightly more and have their employees account for and claim minor work expenses through personal tax

Many small business use the Just-In-Time approach to payment processing and invoice issuing. This means writing cheques, using a credit card or paying online when vendors start demanding payment or when a bill reminder comes in. This can work when your cashflow is tight. A method that may appeal to some small businesses or investors (but not all) is a Payment Centric method. In a nutshell you choose a frequency that you plan to make payments (or issue invoices), you then write your cheques or process your Bpays, and book the transactions in your accounting system, all on one day. Let’s call this the ‘accounts day’. Then you don’t touch the accounts until the next assigned ‘accounts day’.

With any business system or procedure it’s a case of what works best for your specific needs. Who are the experts at processing and doing accounts efficiently? Accountants must be on this list. They are not just there for tax advice.

We have a listed a few pro’s and con’s that you might like to consider.

Why does this work?

• Get all your cheques prepared and then signed in one session by the cheque writer or cheque signatory.
• Allows you to use Internet banking templates to process multiple payments on that day.
• It may help to manage you cashflow in a more predictable way. e.g. If you know that the 5th of each month is payment processing day and you have $X dollars to make your payments then cashflow becomes more predictable.
• Doing a task 20 times in one sitting is nearly always more efficient than doing 1 task over 20 sittings.
• When you do everything on one day, filing is a lot easier.
• Your vendors and customers will find your organisation more predictable and professional.
• Your work colleagues and employees will know that its the ‘accounts’ day. You can deal with it on that day rather than interrupting work.
• If you have a bookkeeper or a bookkeeping company to do this work, it will nearly always be cheaper to have them in for one full day, rather than have them in spasmodically over time.
• Your Profit and Loss and Cash Flow reports (and others), may end up cleaner and clearer.

When doesn’t it work?

• When the gaps between ‘accounting days’ are set too far apart your management information may get out of date, your vendors may get impatient and you might hate the idea of spending a whole day just doing ‘accounts’. Select a frequency that suits your business model from a holistic perspective.
• When your customer insists on invoices immediately or very regularly. Note that there are legislated requirements for invoices to be issued within a certain time after services have been provided.
• When vendors insist on getting cash on delivery
• When you forget to pay a vendor then they have to wait until your next ‘accounts day’. This can really upset vendors. Then they might charge you more. Ouch!