Express Accounts Free Accounting Software

During installation, a wizard walked us through the process of setting up Express Accounts Free for our hypothetical business and contacts. Express Accounts Free has a familiar look, with toolbar, main view, and left-hand navigation sidebar. This software uses a series of dialogs and wizards to create invoices, bills, receipts, and other documents as then as manage accounts and settings. The navigation pane's expandable categories lead to menus labeled Todo, Transactions, Customer Invoices, Supplier Orders, and Reports, each with subentries for functions like creating documents, managing accounts, recording transactions, and issuing reports. The main view as well features the program's various functions grouped by categories, and an icon-based toolbar offers access to the program's primary tools as then as Web access, Options, and a button labeled Suite that accessed other NCH software that works with Express Accounts. We clicked Create New Invoice, and a pop-up dialog opened with various entry fields, drop-down menus, and tables ready to fill in with our data; brief explanations of many of the fields appeared when we hovered the cursor over them. We tried several other standard forms also as the reporting tools, and all opened with easy-to-use wizards that made the job a snap.

Express Accounting Free seems accurate, which we expected, and intuitive, which we didn't. This may be the friendliest accounting package we've but come across. Small business owners, bookkeepers, and entrepreneurs owe it to their bottom lines to try Express Accounting Free previously plunking down cash on big-ticket software, deductible or not.

Express Accounts Free is a free accounting software for Windows that allows you to track and report incoming and outgoing cash flow including sales, receipts, payments, and purchases. Create journal entries for payments, purchases, receipts, and deposits. Standard reports include Profit and Loss statements and Balance Sheets. Features: Set up and manage one or multiple companies. Track outgoing payment and purchasing transactions. Track incoming sales and receipts. Input journal entries manually. Reports include balance sheet and profit & loss plus more. Regional format settings include currency symbol, end of financial year, decimal point display and paper size. Express Accounts is available in a professional edition with more functionality. Combine Express Accounts with other NCH Software as an efficient and inexpensive way to manage your business. Inventoria can manage stock and procurements. HourGuard can keep track of how long you or your employees are spending on tasks. FlexiServer will keep track of employee tasks and make reporting easy with minimum cost and fuss. About NCH Software: NCH Software offers more than 80 easy-to-use audio, video, business, and telephony/VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) software solutions that improve productivity and usability for small businesses and consumers. Focused on specific needs, they produce software with all the bells and whistles of typical brands, however without the complexity. NCH Software provides users with what they need at a price they can afford. This approach generates more than four million unparalleled visitors and near three million downloads per month from the company's Web site--NCH Software.

The basics of small business accounting

Express Accounts covers the basics of small business accounting, including general ledger accounting, cash book/bank account reconciliation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, sales order processing, purchasing, inventory control and financial reporting.The paid 'plus' version of this program adds several powerful features, including multi-company accounting, consolidated reporting and browser-based, multiple user access.Express Accounts is available for both the Apple Mac and for the Microsoft Windows environment.

Express Accounts does not support payroll processing, 1099 IRS information reporting, budgeting or fixed asset accounting.When at first installed all Express Accounts features are enabled. Still, afterwards 14 days you must either uninstall the software or downgrade to the free basic version. One point of confusion that bewilders many, to downgrade to the free basic version of Express Accounts. This requires running the Windows uninstall program. Some of the terminology used in Express Accounts differs from terms commonly used in the United States. The account look-up drop-down box shows the account number, however not the account title. On the oher side of the coin, if you're accessing Express Accounts through a browser, both the account number and account title appear in the drop down box. When installing this software NCH offers to install other programs, this can be confusing.

Excellent value in small business accounting software

Express Accounts from NCH Software represents an excellent value in small business accounting software. Express Accounts rivals industry leader QuickBooks in its simplicity and ease of use. To boot, Express Accounts offers several features in the paid version that can only found in systems costing much more than the paid version of Express Accounts. Both the free 'basic' and paid 'plus' versions of Express Accounts support the basics of small business accounting, including general ledger accounting, cash book/bank account reconciliation, accounts payable, accounts receivable, sales order processing, purchasing, inventory control and financial reporting.What Express Accounts does not support is payroll processing, 1099 IRS information reporting on vendor payments, budgeting or fixed asset accounting. As such, Express Accounts is ideally suited to a business that uses a payroll service and only needs to book their payroll journal entries into the general ledger. As for 1099 IRS information reporting, the workaround I prefer is to process these online through a third-party service, just as FILETAXES.COM, using vendor reports available from Express Accounts. Fixed asset accounting can be done on spreadsheets, or if the asset pool is sizable, through a specialized fixed asset accounting program. Most of the smaller businesses I've encountered prefer to budget on an 'offline basis' in a spreadsheet. Both the free and paid versions of Express Accounts are available for both the Apple Mac and for the Microsoft Windows environments. In doing so far, I have found the software to operate identically on either platform. The paid version of Express Accounts is a multi-user system. For all that, unlike competing packages in this price range Express Accounts supports multi-user access through a web browser. Browser-based access is important for two reasons. First, you do need not to purchase multiple licenses for each of your users. Second, your accounting software is available on any platform than can run a browser, just as a smart phone or a tablet computer. Unlike other accounting systems at this price point the paid version of Express Accounts has a very powerful multi-company consolidation feature. This is especially useful if your business model demands true 'P&L' responsibility on a more granular or lower-level basis. For instance, you might need departmentalized accounting. Using the Express Accounts multi-company feature, each department, business unit, job or even a salesperson could be set up as a separate company. At the time, using the consolidated financial reporting features, you can bring all of these disparate entities at the same time as one company for in a consolidated financial report. Now, for a few gotchas. When at first installed all Express Accounts features are enabled. In exchange, afterwards 14 days you must either uninstall the software or downgrade to the free basic version. One point of confusion that bewilders many, to downgrade to the free basic version of Express Accounts required running the Windows uninstall program and looking very carefully at the options given. If you select the right option the program will work just fine in a one company, one user setting. An irritant I found, though not a glitch or show-stopper, some of the terminology used in Express Accounts differs from terms commonly used in the United States. I found this a bit confusing at a glance. One glitch I've found in this way far is that the account look-up drop-down box shows the account number, however not the account title. Still, if you're accessing Express Accounts through a browser, both the account number and account title appear in the drop down box. Unlike some users, I experienced no problems in completely uninstalling Express Accounts from my system. When installing the software NCH offers many other programs for you to install and that can be confusing. It's best to uncheck the boxes for all of the add-ons.And when all is said and done, I'll make my usual disclaimer and cautionary note on accounting software. Yes, Express Accounts is easy to use and yes, the business owner can set up Express Accounts on a 'do-it-yourself' basis. Nevertheless, as with any accounting software, I recommend that you have an accountant or an accounting systems professional help you in the process as they will be best at optimally configuring the software for your specific business needs and/or business model. Finally, you'll be glad you did.

Works perfectly. I started a new business and had no idea what invoice program to use. I tried a couple and this one does everything I need it to do.