Business Accountz Basic

Business Accountz Basic is a smart bookkeeping program for small businesses. Despite the silly z in its name, it actually favours layman's English over accounting jargon, which makes it accessible. Home users can read our review of the Personal version on our website.

The program allows input and tracking of all the usual transactions carried out by a business – sales, purchases and transfers – employing a simplified version of the standard double-entry accountancy system so that figures have to be entered only once for the books to balance.

A downloadable 'accountant's language' option also means that the Accountz system can be converted back to the traditional double-entry format, which is good for passing the year's bookkeeping to an accountant.

As well as its quick bookkeeping facility, this basic version of Business Accountz allows users to generate instant Vat returns, do budgeting and forecasting, keep track of stock and export to spreadsheets using the widely recognised CSV file format.

Professional and Enterprise versions of the program are also available, offering a wider variety of accounting and customer relationship management options.

Help for Accountz users comes in the form of online forums, email, the quick-start guide booklet and in-program help, all of which were very clear. Telephone support is also available, though only for those businesses that opt to take a paid service contract with Accountz.

The option of a training day might be useful if the program’s stripped-down terminology still proves a headache.

The program's record-keeping books were well laid out, intuitive and easily identifiable. For instance, the icons are blue for sales records, red for suppliers and green for transfers.

A nice touch when entering dates in ledgers is the calendar that appears so that a transaction's date can be set with a single click. This is a theme consistent throughout the program, making data entry as painless as possible.

The program can be used for only one business, so if you run more than one a paid-for add-on is required. Another optional extra is multi-currency capability, though we would have preferred to have had this as part of the standard program.

It is hard to fault Business Accountz Basic as a bookkeeping tool: it removes jargon and makes complex data entry simple. First-time bookkeepers still face a learning curve, though less of one than having to learn the traditional double-entry system.

If you don't need a box or CD, the downloadable version of Business Accountz is cheaper at £70.