We recently received a very kind note from a long term client. It shows just how we are helping people build great businesses and simplify life.

In 35 years of Accounting I have never come across a programme that is so simple yet comprehensive… I started with one client using Saasu.com Netaccounts and now have 25 clients having their paper work prepared every month… I have also put into place a system which will be starting this month with the potential to do many hundreds more clients. I have no hesitation in recommending Saasu.com Netaccounts and it is the ONLY programme that I use for book keeping.

Owner, Regional Bookkeeping Business
Mar 08

You can understand why we were so pleased. The full letter is below with explanatory notes for our international customers our comments are in [brackets].

18 Mar 2008

Dear Marc,

I am taking this opportunity to do a testimonial for your company and your staff and I apologise for the delay but I have been so busy with all the new business that I have been getting.

Firstly let me say that in 35 years of Accounting I have never come across a programme that is so simple yet comprehensive as Saasu Netaccounts.

I have been practising as an Accountant for over 30 years and have completed in excess of 50,000 returns from Individual to Company returns in that time.

Several years ago I decided to concentrate on Book Keeping work as I had more and more clients present who were in a mess and many who could have failed in their business because of outstanding Tax Returns.

I accidentally found your programme on the net whilst searching for a pure book keeping system as opposed to the “one fits all businesses” as most businesses tended to buy.

I found many businesses with a computer being used by their teenager with the accounting package still in its shrink wrap package up to 4 years after being purchased.

One business had never lodged a BAS [Australian sales tax return is called a Business Activity Statement] and only contacted me on recommendation from a friend after the ATO [Australian Tax Office] issued a “lodge or else” type notice with very little time to comply.

Saasu.com Netaccounts enables me to get the shoebox or semi-trailer of papers and enter them into a situation where the BAS can be prepared accurately and the figures then given to the Accountant for the other Accounting work including the BAS to be completed.

I started with one client using Saasu.com Netaccounts and now have 25 clients having their paper work prepared every month.

I have also put into place a system which will be starting this month with the potential to do many hundreds more clients.

This would have been impossible using any other system.

The support staff and Marc Lehmann in particular have always been available to help and have also been prepared to change things in the system if suggested and worthwhile.

I have some clients who just require the basic book keeping to get information to their accountant for Tax Returns through to those that need information for Payroll preparation and other reports for their financiers and banks.

Some of my clients are very basic skilled on computers but the ease of access makes record keeping simple for them and access to reports also very easy.

I have clients in Wollongong, Sydney and Newcastle and have no trouble communicating with them how to retrieve reports or information.

I very rarely have to see my clients face to face which means much less travelling and no lost work time for them.

I have no hesitation in recommending Saasu.com Netaccounts and it is the ONLY programme that I use for book keeping.

Yours sincerely

Tony Cunningham,
Nationwide Bookkeeping

Too often we all get caught up with business and forget to make time for the important things. Spontaneously spending time out on the water recently (see nifty professional looking video that anyone can make) was a worthwhile endeavour and prompted some of the big questions in life -

• Why did it take so long for Captain Cook in his ship ‘The Endeavour; so long to find the world’s best harbour in Sydney?
• Why are yachts always ladies?
• Why don’t we do this more often ?
• Why is it so hot?
• How does animoto let you make such great videos in under 10 minutes? Why don’t we use it more often? Why doesn’t every small business use it on their website when it is sooo easy?

In all the excitement last month, we forgot to put a blog posting up for our recent CeBIT award which we received at the end of the show. This was a big deal for us. It is a Platinum award which is the highest level and one of only two Platinum awards they hand out.

We beat about 700 companies to get it so not a bad effort. Read the buzz if you like detail.

Cheers, Peter.

We don’t think of ourselves as a Web 2.0 company but somehow we keep getting tagged as one and I suppose a lot of our thinking tries to be contemporary so we consider it a compliment to be named on a ‘Leading Web 2.0 Companies List‘ issued recently on Read/Write Web by Ross Dawson and Richard McManus along with some other fairly cool companies. It might not be as global as the Platinum Excellence in Innovation Award we also won recently but it makes us just as proud! We would have liked to see a bunch of others on the list too (like Campaign Monitor for example which we use here at Saasu). The comments on that list are closed for now so feel free to make some comments on the other links above or comment here and we will pass them on. Cheers, Peter.

Saasu has been getting great acceptance outside our home market of Australasia for some time even though we don’t officially provide all the local settings people need they have been using it anyway!

As a result we are formalising our international rollout program and are looking for local partners in a range of countries so if you are interested in representing us in your area please contact us. We already have 5 countries lined up and would like more. Pass it on…

We were pleased to have Saasu featured at a course on entrepreneurship last week held by trendy education group FRANK TEAM, around 40 students were there to hear about how to develop their ideas and of course how Saasu can make the journey easier. We thought we’d help the best ones get off the group by sponsoring the event with prizes. We’ll try and profile the best ideas here too. Cheers, Peter.

The Australian federal treasurer gave all Aussies a tax reduction recently which was very kind of him. As you would expect, we upgraded all our Australian client’s tax tables to support the new ones overnight without any fuss or bother for them all. Of course it was free too.

Ed: Our condolences to those poor souls that haven’t seen the Saasu light yet and are still wasting time and money buying and installing upgrades to old style software. Or even worse sending off for CDs or downloading new versions of their existing old style software when they could be working online with us in minutes. If you have friends suffering from this terrible modern day affliction tell them to call the Saasu service line and one of their kind counsellors will be pleased to help (it only takes minutes which is a lot less time than the twelve steps

We’ll be at CeBit for the next few days. Come down and say hi - we’re in Hall 4

There are many methods for reducing input errors in your online accounting file. Accountants use many tricks and work processes to ensure 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 Categorised Summary report

This is a good report for checking you have used correct tax codes and ensuring you have chosen the correct transaction category for you transactions. You might scan the report to ensure that (for example) all your sales appearing in a transaction category for “Income: light fittings” would have the same tax code. You might also check that there aren’t any stray transactions in this category 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 transaction categories, tax codes, summary information and so on as you are duplicating the information not entering it.

Use the Categorised Summary report 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 Categorised Summary report for the previous month (or period) and click on the transaction you want to duplicate in the new month.
2. When the transactions loads you can then click on the duplicate button and the new transaction will load.
3. Then you can include the date for this new transaction and amend any other differences (eg. Summary..”Jul02 rent” to “Aug02 Rent”) and then save the transaction.
4. You will then be viewing the Categorised Summary report again where you can then repeat the process until all your regular payments have been entered.

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!

Online banking systems provide template technology that allows you to store a list of payments that you make on a regular basis (e.g. payroll or payment to suppliers). Each time you need to make payment you load the template, amend any amounts to be paid and process the payments with a few clicks.

You can use templates to quickly process:

• cost of sales items such as materials, inventory, services
• contractors
• employee pays
• Internet connection fees
• mobile phone, telephone and facsimile charges
• yellow pages directory listing
• insurance premiums
• couriers
• stationary account
• postage account
• etc…

You can set-up templates to have majority of your payments processed in one online banking transaction.

It may be possible to pay all or most of your bills at once, depending on your business size and whether or not your suppliers accept Direct Crediting to their bank account. If you are able to use a feature often called ‘pay others’ or ‘pay third parties’ in your Internet banking system then you should be able to do this. It is very rare these days that a vendor will only accept a cheque or cash, so it is possible that the majority of your payment processing could be achieved in one online template transaction.

There may be other positive flow-on effects.

More predictable cashflow, not having to wait on vendors to bank the cheques you write them are examples pf how using templates can help you in ways other than saving time. Many of the Internet banking systems have a particularly handy feature that allows you to print out your list of payments on one sheet of paper, which is great if you don’t like too much paper about the office.

There are costs too.

Like all technology there is the investment of your time upfront to understand the system, however, that cost should pay be repaid quickly. Template charges may also apply.