Sage One Accounts review

The learning curve involved in setting up and running a limited company can be steep and intimidating for those who’ve never done it before. Accounting software has never been particularly helpful in this regard, bombarding the hapless entrepreneur with questions about charts of accounts and year ends before they’ve even raised their first invoice.

Cloud-based accounting has some real advantages, like giving your accountant direct access

Fortunately, Sage has come up with a big improvement in Sage One Accounts; an online accounts package aimed at business owners who just want to get on with doing business. It’s part of a small suite of products that also include Cashbook, a cheaper service designed for the self-employed, and Payroll, which integrates with either Cashbook or Accounts and supports payments for up to 15 staff members. A free version allows accountants to access their clients’ data directly.

The signup process for Sage One Accounts involves nothing more taxing than providing basic company details and accepting the terms and conditions, although you can enter a year-end date if you already know it. With this done, the service is ready to use. Its web-based interface is pleasingly sparse. The initial screen displays a summary of the business’s current position, including the primary bank balance, the sales, expenses and profit to date and the ‘top’ unpaid invoices. Other details are accessed via tabs that cover incoming and outgoing funds, banking and the contact details of customers and suppliers.

Raising an invoice is as easy as it could be

There’s a welcome minimum of distracting text, with short, useful help provided throughout. The overall feel is one of the friendliest we’ve encountered. There’s also a lack of jargon that makes this far more intuitive than most accounts packages we’ve used. Raising an invoice, for example, is done via the Sales tab where there’s a big Create Invoice button to start the process. It couldn’t be simpler.

Sadly, the same isn’t quite true when it comes to filling in the details, as Sage One Accounts is a little stricter about data entry than rival service Xero. While the latter simply lets you type a name when raising an invoice so you can define the other contact details later or not at all, Accounts asks you to select an existing contact or enter a new one in full. It’s easy to do this, but we skipped entering a contact’s email address, and when we later entered the email and sent the invoice the invoice, a duplicate contact was created.

This is a deliberately simple service, and as such it isn’t suitable for more advanced or experienced users. Only five reports are available, for example, and these can’t be customised. It’s also not possible for users to access or modify their chart of accounts (the detailed ledgers that keep track of how money moves in, within and out of the business), but accountants can do this. Bearing the target market in mind, both are sensible simplifications.

Other omissions are less welcome. While we like Sage One’s clear presentation, data is presented almost entirely as text. There’s no use of charts or other elements to provide insight on key business indicators such as aged debtors or cashflow. Sage One also lacks the e-banking support found in many other Sage products, such as importing bank data and can helping reduce the tedium of reconciliation.

Overall, Sage One Accounts does a commendable job of simplifying bookkeeping without skipping vital items. Demanding or accounts-literate users would be better served by Xero‘s £23 per month Medium service, but Sage One is a cheaper and better choice for the inexperienced.