A good place to start looking is at Small business accounting freeware best downloads which has much advice.
Most freeware accounts systems will include Sales, Purchase and Nominal Ledgers, and sometimes sales invoicing, with possibly an inventory control system.
I have spent several years in business working with all these types of systems, also known as a Supplier Ledger, Creditors Ledger, or a Bought Ledger.
I have been heavily involved in the work of several different types of small businesses in the UK including among others Gas Heating Installation and Maintenance, Garden Design and Grass Cutting, and Wooden Flooring Installation and Renovation.
In each case, I needed to install and use computer software to keep account of the contracts, money and debts outstanding, as well as all the other usual accounting functions.
For each business, I tried to keep their costs down by using free software; this so-called freeware is sometimes of a surprisingly good quality. It might well have been released as a free advertisement to stimulate the sales of other products or services. Other freeware that I use frequently include the famous Firefox browser and phpBB forum software; I believe in using freeware! Like almost every user of the internet, I indirectly use the “LAMP” software, Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, almost everytime that I browse and visit a website.
Free accounting software should, in my view, and in a perfectly free world, include various softwarecomponents:-
1. Job Costing file with numerous job records, so that each job can be followed through in the accounts, showing the job’s status, with profitability calculation as a bonus.
2. Customer File comprising all customer records, so that when you have repeat customers especially, each of these should have a record, which is practically essential when you sell on credit terms.
3. Sales invoice production, because it is useful to have properly printed invoices rather than hand-written ones, which counts heavily with customer perceptions (and reassures tax inspectors), with the option to email out invoices.
4. Quotation Software to produce accurate and professional quotes which will boost your sales, and the ability to turn accepted quotes into sales invoices saves time.
5. Stock file comprising Stock Keeping Unit records, because, if you buy and resell, it is important to keep track in real-time of your inventory in hand, and its value.
6. Products and/or services file to include such things such as “30 minutes work”, “standard call out charge” or “plant a tree” that have a standard price, although you can hardly be said to keep them “in stock”, and if this amalgamates seamlessly with your Stock Control, accounting matters are simplified.
7. Sales Ledger, with Customer Statements and a Debtors Schedule, because when you sell on credit, it helps you for all the software to be integrated together.
8. Timesheet entry, because workers will work more reliably if they have to fully account for their time, and if they know all the details will be entered into the computer.
9. Payroll, so that if you already have timesheets available, they can feed directly into a payroll system, and the payroll financial data can also feed into your Nominal Ledger.
10. Subcontractors Ledger, because, in the UK, you must keep track of your subcontractors’ IR35 tax certificates to satisfy the Inland Revenue authorities.
11. Purchase Ledger. because if you buy stock, it helps to computerise purchase invoices and what is owed to suppliers and taken into stock, and then you might as well include all your invoices for everything, including overheads as well as stock items, that are purchased.
12. Petty cash system, because petty cash will disappear less often, and will therefore cause you fewer potential tax problems, if a voucher must be filled in for the computer system.
13. Nominal or General Ledger, because this will give a summary or overview of everything in the financial side of your complete accounts system; this type of software is essential to the financial health of your business, although many small businesses do not realise the importance of cash control.
A purchase ledger is a new term for what has been traditionally known as a creditors ledger, which was the management system in accounting (otherwise accountancy) by which a firm or business records and monitors its creditors (suppliers with an account balance owing).
The purchase ledger contains details of suppliers to the business, and each supplier will have its own individual and unique account. A supplier is defined as another firm or business from which this business has made purchases, and this was historically for your purchases on credit, although modern purchase analysis systems now record cash sales too. Information about invoices (and credit notes, which are really invoices in reverse) received, and payments made, are recorded on the supplier’s account. This was traditionally using the debits and credits balancing system, although nowadays computerisation means that this checking is redundant; today the balance of each account at a given moment represents the amount currently owed to that supplier, and the total owed to suppliers will become the purchase ledger total posted as an item in the Nominal or General Ledger.
Historically, the purchase ledger was maintained in a book form, hence the term “ledger”, as in the books kept on a ledge or shelf, but in modern times it is much more likely to be held on a computer using an integrated accounts system written as computer software.
I will gradually add much more information about my experiences testing out the various freeware accounts systems that are available for download, and I also intend to compile and add a table of features, which has not yet been published anywhere on the internet.