I’ve been managing all of my expenses in a spreadsheet up to this point. Now that it’s time to upgrade to a proper tracking system, I never anticipated the pain of choosing an accounting software. I just thought that I would automatically choose Xero because it was taunted as an easy cloud based software. I’d say false advertising.

Between my two business degrees, I’ve taken six accounting classes. As such, I’d say that I’m way above average when it comes to understanding accounting and financial statements. I’ve even been a Treasurer for two not-for-profits. Nevertheless, I didn’t find Xero to be intuitive at all.

In fact, it took me most of the morning to really understand that I would not be able to track my Cost of Goods Sold properly in their system because it can only manage inventory that is bought to resale. Therefore, it lacks the functionality to track direct costs if you are a maker like me i.e. how much does it cost to make one product?

Xero doesn’t have the built in capability. Instead, you have to consider adding an app which may be significantly more expensive than Xero itself, and even then I’m not completely convinced how easy that integration is between the two.

So, I’ve also signed-up to trial MYOB as my accounting software too. I have heartburn about this because we used MYOB at my last job, and customer service was painful. The software was also built as a server based solution rather than cloud, and so it limits my ability to review my financial statements on my multi-devices.

I did a quick search of other software options like Netsuite, but they are way outside of my budget.

The good thing about MYOB is that it does already have a proper inventory management functionality available for makers like me. To really understand it though, I need to spend more time on it as I had a Finance Manager keeping everything on track before, and I only had to review the reports.

If I can afford it, I’d prefer to find an accountant that can quickly get me set up and transfer all of my spreadsheet data into the system. Then, I only have to keep it up to date rather than spending so many hours just trying to figure out how to do this.

Ugh! The pain of choosing an accounting software when I really don’t have time! Still, I’m glad that I waited this long before choosing because I’d likely be stuck on Xero if I considered my earlier needs only.