I'm no expert but based on personal experience of being involved in a
few small business / charity financial systems, yes, you're asking for
the moon on a stick :-)

There's no automated substitute for a real human running over the
accounts, mainly because so many other real humans are involved at
various stages.  Bits of what you want are supported by various bits
of software but they're all different and none of them will meet your
precise requirements.

My advice is you're applying a geek brain to a problem that doesn't
easily lend itself to systematisation.  Better to delegate, & employ
professionals to help out.  Get an accountant in for a quote.  Brief
them on the cashflow and P&L reports you want monthly, ask them to
manage your invoicing (get an accounting technician to keep e.g. Sage
up to date for you, chase invoices, maintain cashflow spreadsheet).
No need for it to cost more than £200 / month.  Review management
accounts monthly and have a quarterly meeting with the accountant to
review them.  This should save you valuable time and stress and
ultimately money (depending on the amount of invoicing you're doing,
of course).  It's well worth spending and definitely comes under the
heading of "organisational strengthening" so perhaps you'll have
budget for it..?

You can definitely do it all yourself but it's pretty time-consuming,
boring, and can make your brain explode.

Seb

On 11 August 2010 11:26, Tom Steinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> * If someone doesn't invoice for a month, I'd like to be able to
> select "Projected payment delayed by 1 month" and have it a) change
> the forecast b) keep a version history.
>
> * If people are paying tax under PAYE, I'd like to just be able to say
> "This person has a gross salary of X" and have the system tell me how
> much tax we need to save each month, regardless of how the tax system
> changes under our feet.
>
> * I'd like the system to nag me, by saying "You projected this payment
> would have been made by date Y. Has it been made? If not, when do you
> expect it?"
>
> * I'd like the system to understand VAT, and say "You just got paid
> £100 for X. Would it be correct to assume that 17.5% of this is VAT?"
>
> * And of course I'd like it to produce lovely reports for all of these things.
>
> Am I, perhaps, asking for moon on a stick? Or do things like Sage and
> Intuit just do this?
>
> thanks,
>
> Tom
>
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