IT/Lap top help required please

Hi. My wife is a self employed Pilates Instructor. Today we saw our accountant who said in future all records of Clients accounts/attendance/payments need to be shown electronically. Currently she has a clipboard/ring binder with blank forms which she records lesson attendance and coarse payments. She then records money in on an Excel spreadsheet. I’d have thought our basic accounting would suffice but it seems not.

It seems we need to get high tech, so is there a tablet/lap top and software you’d recommend which will allow very quick and easy recording of attendance and payments. I thought having a touch screen and stylus pen type of thing might help. It wants to be compatible with Excel to make submitting to the accountant easy.

Also, it only has to perform these basic functions so we do not need the latest super-dooper Apple thingamajig and want to spend as little as possible.

Sorry we are so hopeless with technology so any tips or recommendations will be gratefully received.

TIA

Darren

Probably just to make his life easier.

Wonder if an app on your smartphone which can then export to Excel might be cheaper than buying a new laptop?

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Originally Posted by vortgern

Wonder if an app on your smartphone which can then export to Excel might be cheaper than buying a new laptop?

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I think this is quite a good option.

You could get a custom excel spreadsheet made which has a tab where you put in the names (say) of who attended and select how much they paid and then this automatically produces output for the accountant however he wants it. This is a simple example, but it's not hard (for someone who can use excel) to produce custom workbooks that do incredibly powerful things and appear like custom software.

You could use the 'front end' on a phone for the lessons and have it sync to a desktop where you can also edit it in and view more in-depth things in excel or send it to your accountant as required.

It's the kind of thing you'd probably find someone on fiverr.com would do for not much money.

The Excel app directly on an iPhone or (probably far easier to use for this) an iPad. Create a spreadsheet that covers everything she needs (or have a friend create one for her if necessary) and keep it in the Cloud (e.g. iCloud) so it's accessible and editable from anywhere. In order to do this she'll need WiFi/4G/3G access at her studio or to tether the iPad to a smartphone with access. I'm sure Android tablets/phones can do exactly the same.

The other, obvious, solution is to change accountants.

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Originally Posted by Kingstepper

Probably just to make his life easier.

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Half and half I bet - because of 'making tax digital' - they likely don't want the hassle of moving all their clients in one go to compliant platforms (I think it's 2020 for small businesses and self employed??). Now it might be OP's wife is below the VAT threshold but he doesn't want to run two systems... (Digital tax and random spreadsheets).

I honestly wouldn't bother at this stage messing around with custom spreadsheets and just shift to one of the approved accountancy programmes.

I use QuickBooks for my self-employed stuff and it's great only £6 a month and pays for itself.

Xero should work, plenty of plugins and will link to bank account as well and you can give the accountant access.