Xero

An online accounting program that can be used for so many aspects of your businesses financial needs i.e. Preparing quotes, stock management, fixed asset register and depreciation etc.

Clients either subscribe for this themselves and give us access, or they ask us to subscribe and we charge them a monthly fee as part of the retainer. Xero is very helpful because it can do everything you need and it has a mobile app functionality. The financial reporting is also very good, and we use it in our company ourselves.

Quickbooks online

This is an online accounting program and the monthly subscription is less than Xero but still a very good program to use. It is mobile friendly and easy to understand.

FreeAgent

This is a free online accounting software developed in Scotland and works well for quick preparation of accounts. It doesn’t allow for ZAR currency at the moment but the Anlo team is working on this but can still be used for smaller account preparation because it doesn’t publish the currency.

WAVE

Best for: Sole proprietors and small businesses.

Wave offers a full accounting program for free. Wave allows you to manage accounts receivable, generate financial statements, and connect an unlimited number of credit cards and bank accounts. The only downside is that it doesn’t allow you to track accounts payable - the money a business owes to its suppliers or creditors.

ZOHO Books

Best for: Everyone with less than 5000 transactions a month.

Zoho books is a great accounting program and can do everything you expect of your accounting program. The extra bit we love is that it has a time-tracking functionality that is included in your subscription. The pricing is reasonable as well and in general ZOHO is easy to understand. With the professional plan you have inventory tracking tools available and the accounting program integrates with other ZOHO programs. There isn’t a payroll service add-on at the moment and it also doesn’t allow you to do fixed asset management features like depreciation etc.

Sage Online

Online accounting program that is developed in South Africa. It is less expensive that Xero and works well with Consulting companies, in our opinion.

Sage Pastel

This is a desktop accounting package and is a more traditional accounting software that we also use for clients’ accounts preparation. We have a company licence and use this to prepare accounts for small businesses that want their accounts done, once a year and don’t want to sign up for a retainer with us because their business is too small or not VAT registered.

We have used Sage Pastel at Anlo since we started the company and we are still paying the yearly subscription fee because it is a very good package to use and it has its place.

Sage Evolution

Traditional desktop accounting package and is ideal for larger companies with multiple users, multiple warehouse and multiple connections. Not a lot of our clients use Evolution, and we don’t suggest this for smaller companies.

Intercode

This is a desktop payroll program that we use in Anlo ourselves. We have used this since 2010 and we find the support to be outstanding. The program is also easy to understand and the payroll reports are informative and descriptive.

It is also easy to prepare the EMP501 submissions and IRP5 generation. You can also maintain Leave balances and keep track of certain HR requirements.

Sage One Payroll

This is a lovely online payroll program that is used by SME’s. It is user friendly and very accurate and the reports are amazing.  Doing EMP501 and IRP5 generation is also very easy.

Sage Pastel Payroll

This is a traditional desktop payroll program and works well with Sage Pastel Accounting program. It is more expensive, but the facilities and support are worth it.

It is ideal for companies with higher volume employees but works best installed on a PC.

Datamolino

This is an online program that helps business owners and accountants not have to process every expense manually. Invoices, statements from suppliers and customers can be emails to Datamolino and then Datamolino used ‘fingerprinting’ to extract information from the documents to determine things like supplier name, date, amount, VAT amount. It also uses AI to remember suppliers so that you don’t have to allocate this every time and it remembers.