Sage Instant Accounts

There are no radical enhancements in the latest version of Sage Instant Accounts, just considered improvements focused around making the package easier to learn and use. Those include a new welcome page giving access to sources of help and support, and a practice mode that lets you experiment without affecting your own live data. Some of the interfaces have also been tidied and tools moved around. All of which is good, although we did still find it a little difficult in places.

The Sage Line software, on which Sage Instant Accounts is based, is popular with accountants and other professionals, but can be baffling for those unfamiliar with things such as control codes and ledger postings. Fortunately, jargon is kept to a minimum in the Instant version although, behind the scenes, you still get a full set of sales, purchase and nominal ledgers. Together these let you generate invoices for products and services, raise purchase orders, keep track of your cash flow, reconcile your bank account and so on, all the things small companies need to run smoothly.

Vat accounting is also provided for, with everything to do with Vat now collected into one area. As you might expect, small-business schemes are well catered for here plus there’s now full support for online reporting to HMRC.

Stock control isn’t included, but there is a Plus version with this as an option. Similarly, it’s possible to pay employees by adding Instant Payroll and to accept payments by credit/debit card by subscribing to Sage card payment services, support for which is now built into the Instant Accounts application.

Installation is straightforward, with an improved wizard to guide you through the process of entering information. You can also import existing customer and product details, although only in CSV format. Alternatively, you can choose to work on your own practice data, either starting afresh or returning to the point at which you left off. There’s no substitute for learning from your own mistakes and it’s reassuring to know you’re not working on live data.

There’s nothing fancy about the user interface, which is good and, for the most part, we found it very easy to follow with clearly defined task options plus links to lots of supporting help and advice. Most of these links are gathered together on the always-available welcome page, giving access to instructional videos and online e-learning workshops together with PDF guides and suggestions for both getting started and performing common tasks.

On the downside, the user-friendly lets help the novice approach isn’t followed across all the tools, and some jargon does creep in. We found the revamped report designer particularly heavy going, which could be an issue as it’s used to customize invoices and other forms as well as design reports. Likewise, we would have preferred to see error correction integrated throughout the application rather than implemented via a separate dedicated module.

The package comes with telephone support for the first 45 days as well as online support and optional health and safety advice for a year. Automatic updates and a Sage newsfeed are among other additions and, despite a few remaining rough edges, Instant Accounts now has just about everything a small company needs to keep on top of its finances.

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