Sage Instant Accounts 16 review

Sage produces the ultimate all-singing and dancing business accounts software. This is both good and bad. It’s good because it means you can do a lot with Sage programs - no matter how you need to record, analyse and manage your finances, there’s a very good chance that Sage Instant Accounts will do the job. It’s bad, because it make the program sometimes bafflingly complicated.

You can’t fault Instant Accounts on either the level of detail and control it offers. Set up your chart of accounts properly and thereafter all you need to do is regularly record your transactions. The program will automatically create a set of double-entry books for you. This sounds so easy. Like many finance programs, Instant Accounts uses a flowchart interface to make tracking transactions easy. To start a job simply open the Customers tab and create a quote. When the job is accepted, convert the quote into an invoice, then take payment against that invoice and so on. Instant Accounts busily beavers away in the background, updating your nominal accounts.

But hang on, what about transactions which aren’t associated with a new quote, for instance capital investments, bank charges or old transactions that you want to record when you first start using the program? Well, for that you need to flick over to the Company tab and enter the details into the Journal. You’ll need to enter the details of every transaction twice, debiting it to one nominal account and crediting to another. And if you make a mistake when you’re entering a transaction, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to edit or delete the error. Theoretically, Instant Accounts lets you make corrections; in fact this is one of the new features. However, you can’t change critical fields – for instance date or amount – on Journal entries. So if you make a mistake on your opening balances or on internal transfers, you need to reverse the transactions manually.

New features in this version include the ability to import Excel and CSV files; Pay Now buttons for your electronic invoices; the ability to set credit against an invoice that needs to be discounted and integration with barcode software. Support for Excel and CSV imports are handy and will save users time. The Pay Now button is great, but you’ll need to pay £20 a month for SagePay to get it.

In a way, at least some of this is a good thing. Transactions cannot be too easily altered or deleted as this would make it all too easy to get your accounts into a mess or for someone to fiddle the books. But that doesn’t excuse the complicated interface. Sage Instant Accounts feels too much like a professional program that’s been slimmed down a bit and repackaged for small businesses. If you’re an accounts wiz or you already know Sage, that’s just fine and dandy. Buy this program and you’ve got something that will pretty much run your business for you. If you weren’t born to bookkeep and you just want simple accounting software that will take some of the pain out of finances, then Sage Instant Accounts isn’t for you.