This week I came across an excellent roundup of cloud accounting products written by Margaret Carey of businessEEz. So good that I thought I’d do a special post with links to the topics that Margaret covers.

Each one of these cloud accounting reviews looks at MYOB LiveAccounts, QuickBooks Hosted, Xero and Saasu. Click any one of these links for the details:

Comparative review of customer management features

Comparative review of supplier management features

Comparative review of GST and BAS features

Comparative review of reporting features

Comparative review of account management and budgets

Comparative review of payroll

A final round up and overall review of the whole bunch

I found Margaret’s review to be thoughtful and detailed. To add to her comments, I’d say that when choosing software, it’s vital that you match the rider to the horse. For micro businesses, the most vital characteristics are surely excellent online support, simplicity of use and clear navigation. For the next step up, customer invoicing features, easy-to-understand payroll and jargon-free GST reporting come into play.

I’d even go so far to say that limited functionality can be an asset. A product that has a relatively small feature range such as Xero may be the perfect fit for a tradesperson who hates bookkeeping, doesn’t understand GST and wants to bill clients on the move.

In addition, I believe that bank feeds combined with bank rules are a deal-breaker for micro and small businesses (LiveAccounts, Xero and Saasu provide bank feeds; QuickBooks Hosted doesn’t), but are not nearly so consequential for larger businesses who tend to generate electronic batch files using their accounting software.

If any of the readers of this blog have direct experience with two or more cloud accounting products, please add your comments. I’d love to know how others feel the products compare.