Boox Online Accounting review

Other accounts packages update instantly to reflect the data you enter, but Boox is slightly different. After you’ve drafted and authorised an invoice you’re asked if you want to “Save this invoice for Accounting and Payroll processing”. Invoices are marked immediately as authorised, but you have to wait a further working day before they’re processed by a Boox accountant. We experienced a similar delay when adding a bank account. More significantly, there’s currently no option to mark an invoice as paid yourself; this must be done for you by an accountant working with your bank data. However, Boox told us that it was working on introducing the feature.

REDUCED WORKLOAD

The day-to-day involvement of accountants in your company bookkeeping means that Boox isn’t as instant as other software, but novices could find this reassuring. It certainly reduces your bank account-management workload. Data from supported accounts is imported automatically, while statements downloaded from other banks will be reconciled for users by the accountant, freeing up those who dread doing it themselves.

It’s great to have an accountant reconcile bank statements, but we’d prefer more autonomy elsewhere

We weren’t able to test Boox’s accounting performance over several months as we could with Crunch, but as the company’s accredited by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, we wouldn’t anticipate any problems. However, we worry we’d come to resent the day-to-day involvement of accountants. We’d also miss being able to generate common reports such as aged debtors, profit and loss or a balance sheet immediately and directly within the software. It’s worth keeping an eye on this promising service, but for the moment the software doesn’t feel as unrestricted or as polished as other packages. We prefer Crunch Complete.