Reckon One Archives - Digital First

Renewed Reckon One Hits the Street

June 3, 2015 by Sholto Macpherson Leave a Comment

Reckon on Monday released the rewrite of its online accounting program Reckon One. The software now uses a more flexible programming language (HTML5) which can be used on Apple as well as PC devices.

The first release, written in a language called Microsoft Silverlight, had to be replaced after Microsoft decided to abandon the code platform.

Reckon’s main point of difference is its modular pricing – it starts at A$5 per month – and the ability to freeze the subscription without losing the data when the application is not needed.

“Most small businesses don’t want to invest hundreds of hours trying to understand a very complex piece of software to do their accounts. They want to spend that time actually running their business,” said Sam Allert Reckon’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand in a press release.

“Reckon One is a game-changer in this respect because of its unique app-based system. This also makes the product incredibly affordable. The core app starts from just A$5 per month. It’s then only $2 to $3 dollars more to add the apps you need, scaling up the system as a business grows, possibly saving hundreds of dollars a year compared to other products,” Allert said.

During the rewrite Reckon improved the user interface based on feedback to the first release and includes several more features. These include a smoother workflow for bank reconciliation and an API service to which third-party developers can connect online business applications.

The revised application has been showcased to clients, accountants, bookkeepers and media over the last few weeks at 22 locations across the country, and has had a very positive reception, with very high retention rates to training, Reckon claimed in the press release.

Reckon Bets On Price for Reckon One Re-Launch

May 6, 2015 by Sholto Macpherson Leave a Comment

Accounting software company Reckon is hoping sharp pricing will propel its cloud accounting program at its re-launch on 31 May.

The refreshed Reckon One looks better than the old one and has some neat features such as a customisable and interactive dashboard. But it’s biggest drawcard will be the price. The base package is A$5 per month and extra modules start at A$3 each.

“A builder with basic payroll and bank feeds would pay just A$11 a month,” said Sam Allert, Reckon’s new managing director for Australia and New Zealand, at the Sydney roadshow.

Reckon One is the only program in the market which will pause a subscription until the business needs to use it. A seasonal business such as fruit-picking or tourism could turn off their subscription during the quiet months. Reckon will store Reckon One files for free for up to seven years.

The pricing is also favourable to users who turn on a module mid-month. There is no charge for the module in that month and the user only pays for it the following month. Modules can be switched on and off on any month, changing the pricing on the fly.

Cloud is Overpriced: Reckon CEO

Micro-businesses have paid $50 a month or more for cloud accounting software such as Xero because they haven’t had a cheaper alternative, Clive Rabie, CEO of Reckon, told Digital First.

“Reckon Accounts Hosted used to be $250 a seat. now it’s $450 a year – rich in functionality and unlimited data files. When I saw accounting software at $500 a year I didn’t think that it was equitable,” Rabie said. “I remember selling products to micro-businesses for $100 a perpetual licence, and that’s what people are used to paying.”

Reckon had a history of successfully developing software at a profit and could do so with Reckon One, despite the low price, Rabie said. “We produce APS, an enterprise grade program used by 70 percent of the top 1,000 accounting firms (in Australia). We have developed it within the budget we have,” Rabie said. “We don’t feel that Reckon One is such a development challenge except for a user experience challenge.”

Listen to the full interview with Reckon CEO Clive Rabie below.

Reckon One Details

Reckon had to rewrite Reckon One in another programming language, HTML5, after Microsoft pulled support for its Silverlight platform, Reckon’s first choice. The new version, codenamed Evolution, has picked up an improved user interface and is now hosted on Amazon Web Services’ Sydney data centre.

Reckon One users can choose to migrate their files to the new version on 31 May or keep using the Silverlight platform for several more months (no cut-off date was announced).

Allert also previewed the payroll app which he said would arrive sometime in the July to September quarter. Reckon is providing free conversion of balances to Reckon One and will do the same for payroll. Businesses can request up to 10 years of transactional history but this is a paid service with price by quote.

Reckon also launched Reckon Invoices, a free app for smaprthone for iOS (next week) and Android (avail today). Invoices is a basic app for businesses who currently type out invoices on Word documents. Users can create an invoice, select a customer from a drop-down menu, add a product to the invoice, preview and email it directly to the customer.

Reckon Invoices “is not for someone who’s using Reckon Accounts and creating all their invoices,” Allert said. “This is for clients who are keeping receipts, travelling around but they just want a nice way to create invoices and receipts on the fly.”

The mobile app is effectively a funnel for Reckon’s cloud accounting program. An accountant could share the app with a client who hadn’t used cloud software before. When they ask for more features the accountant can recommend Reckon One.

Will Reckon's Releases Bring it Back from the Brink?

April 16, 2015 by Margaret Carey 3 Comments

Last month Reckon let slip new delivery dates for its accounting software which it hopes will bring it back from the brink. In June last year the company said it would release a raft of improvements to its cloud, hosted and desktop programs within six months.

The revised delivery dates look to be fairly realistic and based on quantified effort rather than an optimistic guess.

Reckon Accounts – Desktop Update

The first release will be a 2015 version of the flagship desktop program Reckon Accounts which became available on 1 April.

There are three major enhancements in this version; compliance with the government mandated SuperStream, the ability to customise supplier remittance advices and the long awaited bank rules. Reckon Accounts has for some time been the only SME accounting software not to provide bank rules so this is a welcome addition.

Reckon Accounts can now create a rule directly from a transaction.

Reckon has repeatedly stated its commitment to its desktop product and early advice was given of the 2016 release. It may include multi-location inventory, a feature that has been requested year on year for as long as I can remember. It will be released first in the hosted product and then desktop.

Reckon One – Cloud Update

Reckon One was originally announced back in May 2013 when Reckon hosted a series of high profile roadshows. However, the announcement turned out to be distinctly premature, as we waited until February 2014 when there was a soft release of the product.

It has wallowed in the doldrums ever since due to limited functionality compared to other products in the marketplace. A major limiting factor is that it was built using the Microsoft Silverlight platform.

The new release of Reckon One is in HTML5 which will provide much needed flexibility. It will be shown at the 2015 national road show with availability before the new financial year. If not there will be some faces as red as the Reckon logo.

The migration to the new platform will be a significant technical leap forward.

Payroll has long been identified as a significant gap in Reckon One and has been on the radar for some time. It will not make the May release but is expected to be available soon after the new financial year. The goal is to deliver a reasonably robust module that manages awards.

Once payroll has been delivered, Reckon One should be competing directly with MYOB Essentials which has an optional Payroll module. Neither products have multi-currency, ABA files or inventory although Reckon is expecting to deliver both inventory and multi-currency in 2016.

Reckon One does have projects and also user roles – both not present in MYOB Essentials.

The future certainly looks rosier than it has for some time.

A version of this article was first published on Cloud Accounting Buzz.

Cloud Accounting Overview 2015: MYOB Essentials vs Xero vs Intuit QuickBooks Online vs Reckon One

March 4, 2015 by Margaret Carey 4 Comments

The world of online accounting software has already seen much activity in 2015. MYOB Essentials, Xero, Intuit QuickBooks Online, Reckon One, Saasu – the choice for small businesses is the best it’s ever been.

So how do the various cloud accounting software measure up at the start of 2015?

MYOB Essentials

I like the rebadged MYOB Essentials, it is a neat, concise and easy to use piece of software. Now that it has the BankLink service integrated into the program it makes it very easy to automate bank data. It is priced reasonably at A$29 per month without payroll and $40 per month with. However it lacks a number of key features that we see in Xero and QBO including:

No ABA files for either payroll or suppliers.
No user roles to specify function access.
No classes (QBO) or tracking categories (Xero).
Limited user control over posting payroll into the accounts.
No inventory (Xero’s inventory module is due in a few weeks).

So it is still positioned very much at the micro end of the market but is easy and intuitive for a first time user with no accounting experience.

Xero

Xero continues to delight. The company walks the talk of customer engagement and user experience. It has a great employee portal, and the auto-superannuation payments removes the greatest admin hassle of every small business employer.

(I recommend the premium option of Xero even to employers with just one employee – the extra $10 per month payment is worth its weight in gold).

It is packed with many added extras such as Xero Files, the online B2B customer/supplier invoicing and many other features that support business operations. The product is possibly less intuitive to the first-time user and reporting still has a way to go but I still admire the company’s visionary focus – it really does create the answer before the problem is articulated.

Intuit QuickBooks Online

QBO is about to lose its competitive edge over Xero when Xero releases its inventory module. QBO came fairly late to the Australian marketplace, Xero had already achieved incumbency and Intuit had to search out the second wave of accountants and customers that hadn’t climbed on the Xero bandwagon.

The exact figures for Australian customers is not known but in their latest press release Intuit announced out of 841,000 global paying customers for its cloud accounting software, 127,000 were outside the US. (In December Intuit revealed it had sold 7,000 subscriptions in total for New Zealand and Australia.)

Xero has said it is close to 200,000 paying customers in Australia alone so Intuit certainly some challenges to close this gap in here. During 2014 however, a lot of effort went into the Australian version of the product so that many annoying small glitches were ironed out, especially in the areas of bank feeds and GST.

The final icing on the cake came with the release of ABA files in December. With increased numbers of staff and improved functionality, Intuit is looking good for 2015 – we just need to see it notch up some runs.

Reckon One

Reckon One is somewhat mystifying. It lacks the key payroll module yet at the same time has a time and expense module which tracks billable and unbillable time and expenses against clients and projects, and it also has a full-blown budgets module. So it is a mix of in-depth features and omissions.

It does however have the most illuminating dashboard which is visually appealing, uncluttered and with widgets that are user definable and relevant. (This feature has been announced for Xero in 2015.)

From a pricing perspective it is competitive but a little difficult to compare as payments vary depending on specific functionality selected. It remains to be seen whether Reckon One will become a valid option in 2015.

The end game is of course to retain existing customers while also gaining new ones. There are three main sources of new customers:

Customers new to accounting software – either start-ups or moving off manual systems.
Customers migrating from desktop to cloud within the same supplier, largely MYOB and Reckon.
Customers converting from one supplier product to another.

Customer retention is something MYOB has grappled with over the past few years. Historically software suppliers such as Xero and Saasu have said that the source of new customers has been about 50 percent customers new to cloud accounting and 50 percent converting from another supplier’s product. More recently Xero has said about 60 percent of its new paying customers are conversions from another product (35 percent from MYOB).

So the marketplace for customers changing their accounting software is a lucrative source of business for the cloud-only players such as Xero and Intuit, both of which provide free data conversions from MYOB and Intuit also provides free data conversions from Reckon Accounts.

Converting and new customers come from a variety of sources and select the new software for a variety of reasons. The main sources are recommendations from accountants or other businesses, or from individual research. And the main reasons for converting to another software product are disenchantment with existing supplier or software, finding the current software too difficult or not responsive enough to the needs of the business.

All these factors mean that now more than ever software suppliers must be fully engaged with their customers, they must understand and meet (or even anticipate) their requirements. So 2015 is shaping up to be an interesting year. Expect a lot of moving and shaking.

This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on Cloud Accounting Buzz.

Reckon One adds Time and Expenses Module

September 16, 2014 by Sholto Macpherson 1 Comment

Reckon has added a module to its online accounting program Reckon One for tracking time and expenses. Reckon One users can track billable and unbillable time and expenses against clients and projects through the Reckon One web app or mobile app.

Time tracked through the module is added to Reckon One in real-time so a business can see the total number of hours billed to a client by several employees up to that minute. Timesheets can be viewed by day, week or month.

“As a time based professional there’s nothing worse than having to come back to your diary and remember ‘What did I do at 830am this morning’,” Pete Sanders, general manager for Reckon’s business division, told Digital First at Reckon’s recent national conference.

Reckon is the first online accounting program to add time and billing. Xero has added similar features to its roadmap, CEO Rod Drury announced at the Australian user conference Xerocon in August. When a Reckon One user prepares an invoice, the time and expenses module pulls the billable time onto a timesheet and the user can decide whether to include it in the total.

The invoice can display a summary of the time billed or a detailed breakdown, depending on what the business wants to show the customer.

Reckon One takes a modular approach to online accounting. Users pay A$5/month for a core set of accounting features such as general ledger and transactions and add other modules as required. The time and expenses module comes in two plans; the Lite plan costs A$3/month for daily and weekly timesheets and expense tracking while the Medium plan (A$5/month) adds time and expense billing per project and job, and an approvals process for expenses.

An upcoming advanced module will add an approvals process for timesheets. Other modules include plans for invoicing and projects. The release also added new reports and groupings such as aged debtors and aged creditors reports.