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Clearbooks

Score7 out of 10

1 Reviews and Ratings

What is Clearbooks?

Clear Books is an online accounting software designed specifically for small businesses. According to the vendor, this solution caters to the needs of small business owners, accountants, construction and trade professionals, self-employed individuals, and freelancers. With its user-friendly interface and a range of features, Clear Books aims to assist in managing finances and streamlining accounting processes across various industries.

Key Features

Invoices: Clear Books allows users to create customised and professional invoices, send automatic payment reminders to clients, and accept payments securely through partnered payment providers.

Instant Bank Payments: According to the vendor, customers can make quick and secure payments through the Instant Bank Payments feature.

Bill & receipt tracking: Clear Books enables easy tracking of bills and purchases, providing instant visibility of the amount owed to suppliers and VAT claimable. Additionally, the Auto Bills feature simplifies purchase entry.

Auto Bills - easy purchase entry NEW: The vendor claims that Clear Books offers a faster and more accurate alternative to manual entry by allowing users to capture bills and receipts easily and accurately.

Bank feeds & uploads: By linking Clear Books with bank accounts, users can automatically import transactions, facilitating the quick reconciliation of payments with invoices, bills, and expenses.

Payments: According to the vendor, Clear Books allows users to make payments to suppliers quickly and securely. The click-to-pay feature further expedites payments using a Revolut Business account.

Reporting: Clear Books provides users with the ability to generate a variety of basic and advanced management reports. These reports include a snapshot of business success with Profit & Loss and Cash Flow reports.

Self Assessment: Clear Books enables users to track income and expenses, simplifying the process of filing self-assessment tax returns.

VAT Online: Clear Books allows users to track VAT and submit MTD VAT returns to HMRC. According to the vendor, submitting VAT returns is a straightforward process that can be completed in just three steps.

Construction Industry Scheme: Clear Books offers features to easily manage CIS requirements. Users can list CIS deductions on invoices, verify subcontractors, and submit CIS returns to HMRC.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • Accounts payable

    This includes the automation and tracking of payment to vendors and suppliers, with features such as payment scheduling, check printing, open purchase order alerts, document management, direct ACH bill payment, and vendor records.

    Category average: 8.3

  • Accounts receivable

    This includes the management and automation of invoices and collections, with features like statements, invoices, receipts, payment reminders, customer records, auto billing, and refund checks.

    Category average: 8.3

  • Cash management

    The software provides a complete picture of a company’s cash flows, streamlines payment processing, and includes cash forecasting.

    Category average: 8.2

Areas for Improvement

  • Bank reconciliation

    The software connects to a company’s financial institutions in order to reconcile accounting records with checking, savings and credit card accounts. Often month and year closing capabilities are included.

    Category average: 8.4

  • Expense management

    The software can log and track business expenses and reimbursements, including travel-related expenses, with the ability to tie them to particular projects.

    Category average: 8.1

  • Fixed asset management

    This includes the ability to track fixed assets (e.g., laptops), including location, check-in and check-out, maintenance scheduling, audit history, specialized property tax period reports, cost and depreciation.

    Category average: 7.4

Clearbooks - competent, but not the best

Pros

  • SaaS, so accessible by anyone, anywhere in the world via a browser
  • Clear and straight forward navigation
  • Good choice of management reports

Cons

  • Like any SaaS product, Clearbooks is continuously evolving and being improved
  • Some of the reports still need some work

Return on Investment

  • I am not sure that ROI is an appropriate measure for an accounts package. The cost is around £250/year, which is a tiny fraction of the cost of a bookkeeper/finance controller/finance director/CFO.

Alternatives Considered

Xero, FreeAgent and Kashflow

Other Software Used

Xero, Sage One Accounting, FreeAgent