With only a few weeks left in the Australian financial year, it’s a good time to analyse how we maintain our accounts and whether our current procedures and processes are working for us. Here’s some cool technology to check out that you might find handy in the new financial year:

1. Freshbooks

Last year we discovered a fantastic online accounts system called Freshbooks and fell in love.

The average business owner in Australia will opt for MYOB or Quickbooks who have massive market shares. There’s no denying that these are good programs and tick most boxes, but if you’d like further features such as:

• The ability for your clients to log in and check their live statement at any one time saving you numerous phone and email inquiries
• The ability to set auto-reminders to clients who owe you money! This saves you hours in follow up and you have a written record of all communications – they go out automatically!
• The ability to program in any recurring invoices which will go out automatically without you having to manually enter them or send them.
• The ability for your clients to pay online via credit card via paypal (no online merchant facility required)
• The ability for staff or contractors to log their hours live in the system and then convert them into invoices so you know at any one time
• The ability to customise the look and feel of estimates and templates a lot easier than you can in MYOB to make your stuff pretty + much more, this is definitely worth checking out.
• Quick and easy reporting on a variety of levels

Check out Freshbooks now: https://www.freshbooks.com/?ref=5738b25382878-1

2. Shoeboxed

How good does this sound? Shoeboxed will transform your piles of paper receipts into professional-looking invoices in FreshBooks. Shoeboxed also Shoeboxed scans and turns your business cards into contact lists? They can digitize your contacts into Outlook, Apple Address Book, Gmail, Blackberry, Salesforce, Act, and many other programs! Cool huh?

Check out Shoeboxed now: https://www.shoeboxed.com.

3. Xpenser

Record expenses via whatever means are available to you quickly and painlessly. Send them in via Email, SMS, Twitter, IM, or voice (call a number and say your expense). From your Blackberry, email “Lunch 78.50 with BigClient” and it’s recorded. From your phone, SMS “exp groceries 27.13″. From your computer, IM “Equipment 889.19 backup server”. From your phone, call and say “taxi 39 office to airport”. Use the Web interface to edit and finalize them or export them to your favorite financial management software. No more forgetting your cash expenses, no more half-day expense entry sessions.

If you track expenses or do expense reports, give it a try. We’re pretty sure you’ll like it. It’s currently free which is even better.

Check out Xpenser now: https://www.xpenser.com.

Happy accounting!