ClearBooks is a fairly recent accounting software for charity organizations and businesses. There are, of course, a number of strong contenders in the accounting software arena but ClearBooks holds its own against them surprisingly well. It’s a simple productivity application; easy-to-use but quite competent. It cuts through the core of accounting problems to provide a very effective solution. It has some really fantastic features that give this accounting newbie an edge over the other, longstanding ones of its kind.
Dashboard – ClearBooks has a user-friendly dashboard that can be customized to fit the requirements of the organization it’s being used for. It’s got a handful of tools that are really helpful in keeping a check on the sales and cashflow. This is helpful since volunteers at charity normally don’t have experience for such things and an easy-to-use console makes their lives easier.
Monthly Transaction Imports – ClearBooks makes creating monthly statements a dream. It retains the information about the regular transactions and others made in the month, so the process of assigning information to most transactions is reduces to just a few clicks. It even allows the user to create an active link with the bank that will automate this process. So it makes transaction imports pretty hassle-free for the charity organization.
Value Added Tax – ClearBooks is capable of handling fixed-rate VAT, so all one has to do is feed it the information about the VAT and it takes care of the rest.
HMRC and Payroll – A very attractive functionality of ClearBooks is that it sends VAT reports to the HMRC without human interference and if a direct debit account is set up, then the process is completely automated. PAYE is also made easy using the Payroll feature, so much so that there only need to be two clicks for an employee and that’s it.
Users Privilges and Email – ClearBooks allows the organizations to create as many users as they want and every user can have different privileges of access. It allows the accountants to see all the monetary aspects of the business while other employees do whatever they’re supposed to do. It was also a prudent decision to integrate email into the system. This permits the users to create invoices on emails. Since Payroll generates payslips automatically, email integration makes the process of sending these payslips to their respective employees a breeze, without any user prompt. This becomes automatic, too.
Extra Features – ClearBooks also has some added features that make it quite a slick application. The drafts account is one such feature which outputs brief draft accounts when required. ClearBooks also deals with dividends proficiently and simplifies them. It also helps you keep all the assets and depreciation costs in line through the fixed asset register.
Is it any good for charities?
ClearBooks is a suitable accounting software for charity organizations, because it’s extremely easy to use. It really simplifies keeping track of daily expenses and makes payroll automatic. While other software programs like QuickBook could also be employed for this, ClearBooks is better as it helps charities handle their financial records without having to make things too complex. It may have a few drawbacks like the fact that for the yearend report, the charity organization will have to put in some effort to make it in compliance with SORP, but rest assured, it’s an excellent choice for charities.