Running a small business in the UK comes with many administrative burdens, especially on the accounting side. It can be frustrating and time-consuming to keep up with invoices, expenses, taxes, and financial reporting.
Luckily, solutions like Clear Books aim to alleviate these pains by providing an easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting platform tailored to small UK companies.
In this review, we'll take an in-depth look at Clear Books' features, pricing, implementation support, and how it compares to competitors like QuickBooks, Xero, and Sage in meeting the needs of micro and early stage businesses in the UK.
Introduction to Clear Books
Clear Books is an easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting software designed for small businesses in the UK.
Overview of Clear Books' Capabilities
Clear Books offers a complete set of accounting features tailored to the needs of small businesses, including:
- Invoicing - Create, send and track invoices and get paid faster
- Expense tracking - Capture receipts and track business expenses
- Reporting - Real-time reporting provides insights into cash flow, profitability and more
- Banking integrations - Seamlessly connect to major UK banks
With an intuitive interface, Clear Books aims to simplify accounting so small business owners can focus on running their companies.
Key Benefits for Small Businesses
Clear Books offers several key benefits, including:
- Easy to use - The software is designed for non-accountants to save on accounting costs
- Understanding finances - Provides real-time insights into cash flow and profitability
- Scaling with growth - Flexible plans allow businesses to upgrade as they grow
- Affordable pricing - Monthly subscriptions start under £20 per month
By leveraging Clear Books, small businesses can streamline their finances and reduce the cost and headache of accounting.
Details on Pricing Plans
Clear Books offers monthly subscription plans based on the number of companies and users supported. Basic plans start from £19.50 per month. Additional features lead to increased per user costs.
Key Accounting Features in Clear Books
Clear Books provides a robust set of accounting features tailored to meet the needs of small UK businesses.
Invoicing and Billing Capabilities
Clear Books makes it easy for small businesses to create, customize, and send professional invoices. Key features include:
- Customizable invoice templates
- Ability to add your logo and brand colors
- Online payment processing to get paid faster
- Recurring invoices to automate billing
With Clear Books, you can quickly generate estimates and invoices, accept online payments, and set up recurring billing for regular customers. This helps small businesses get paid on time while appearing professional.
Managing Banking and Expenses
Clear Books syncs directly with your business bank accounts. This makes it easy to:
- Automatically import bank transactions
- Match transactions to customers for faster reconciliation
- Log and process expenses by uploading receipt photos
- Better understand cash flow
By centralizing banking and expenses, Clear Books provides increased visibility into cash flow. Small businesses can better track expenses and make insights based on banking transaction data.
Financial Reporting Insights
Make better business decisions with Clear Books' customizable financial reports, including:
- Interactive profit and loss statements
- Accounts balance summaries
- Aged debtors reports to see who owes money
- Cash flow forecasts
The reporting provides real-time visibility into the financial health of your small businesses. Rather than waiting until month-end, you can access the metrics you need, when you need them.
Overall, Clear Books equips small UK businesses with robust accounting tools tailored to their needs. The platform can help business owners save time, get paid faster, manage expenses better, and have visibility into key financial metrics.
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Implementation and Support
Clear Books aims to make the onboarding and account management easy through dedicated support channels.
Onboarding Assistance
Clear Books provides free personalized onboarding sessions to ensure correct company setup and staff training. Their implementation specialists work with you to:
- Set up your company profile and chart of accounts based on your business structure and accounting needs
- Import historical data from spreadsheets or other accounting systems
- Train staff on using Clear Books day-to-day features like invoicing, reporting, and reconciliation
This tailored assistance helps you hit the ground running with Clear Books instead of struggling through a generic setup process.
Ongoing Support Resources
Once live on the system, Clear Books offers several self-service and human support options:
- Knowledge Base: Searchable support site with setup guides, user manuals, troubleshooting articles, and FAQs.
- Email & Chat Support: Get answers to basic questions or issues through email and live chat during business hours.
- Priority Phone Support: For more complex support needs, access a dedicated account manager via phone for faster responses.
Relying on these resources helps you resolve account issues independently or get timely assistance when needed.
Account Management Capabilities
The centralized Clear Books admin dashboard provides control over:
- User Permissions: Add staff users and customize access levels and permissions.
- Invoice Approvals: Set up an approval workflow for creating/sending invoices.
- Account Customizations: Tailor invoice templates, sales tax rates, payment terms, currencies, and other settings.
Leveraging these features simplifies account administration tasks like managing staff, updating company details, or tweaking workflows to fit your business needs.
How Clear Books Compares to Other Options
Clear Books offers a streamlined cloud accounting solution tailored for small businesses in the UK. Here's how it stacks up to competitors:
Clear Books vs QuickBooks UK
Both Clear Books and QuickBooks UK provide the essential accounting tools like invoicing, expenses, banking, and reporting. However, Clear Books has simpler workflows that are optimized for micro businesses and early stage companies.
QuickBooks UK offers more extensive inventory, timesheets, and advanced reporting capabilities suited for larger or more complex businesses. But these added features can make the software feel cluttered and overwhelming for smaller users.
Clear Books skips the advanced extras to focus on an intuitive, easy-to-use system for essential financial management. The simple dashboards and workflows allow first-time accounting users to get up and running quickly.
Clear Books vs Xero
Xero is another popular cloud accounting platform with comprehensive features for growing a business. However, Xero targets a wider range of small-to-medium businesses, not just early stage startups.
As a result, Xero has more advanced capabilities that cater to established companies with 5-10+ employees. The platform offers multi-currency support, advanced reporting, an open API, and 500+ app integrations.
Clear Books specifically focuses its solution on micro businesses with 1-5 team members. By concentrating on this target user, Clear Books can optimize for simplicity and user-friendliness rather than robustness. Less complexity translates to faster onboarding.
So Xero has greater scalability, while Clear Books aims for the easiest learning curve. Clear Books is the better fit if you're just starting out and want accounting software that "just works".
Clear Books vs Sage Accounting
Sage is positioned for larger enterprises and has the most flexibility of these options for customization. This allows Sage to adapt to complex business processes and niche industry verticals.
However, with more configurability comes greater initial setup complexity. The platform's tailored solutions do not emphasize an intuitive user experience for non-accounting users. Sage also lacks some newer features common in modern cloud platforms.
Meanwhile, Clear Books focuses squarely on ease-of-use for the smallest businesses. The tradeoff is less flexibility to handle intricate accounting needs. But for basic financial workflows, Clear Books' simplicity speeds up everyday tasks like invoicing or reconciliation.
So Sage Accounting wins on capability breadth, while Clear Books prioritizes usability. Clear Books is likely the better choice if you don't need high customization.
Conclusion - Who Should Use Clear Books
Clear Books is best suited for micro and early stage companies who need an easy-to-use and affordable accounting solution.
Best for Micro and Early Stage Companies
With its simple interface and workflows, Clear Books is ideal for less complex small businesses that are just getting started with formal accounting practices. The software simplifies routine accounting tasks, making financial management accessible for founders and micro business owners without an accounting background.
Limitations for Larger SMEs
As companies scale beyond 50 employees, Clear Books may become limited in terms of customization and advanced features required for more complex financial reporting. While it covers the basics well, larger SMEs may need software that can handle intricate accounting needs and provide greater flexibility.
Key Takeaways on Fit
In summary, Clear Books is optimized for bootstrapped startups and micro businesses that want user-friendly, low-cost accounting software. The tool simplifies financial workflows for early stage companies still learning how to leverage accounting best practices for informed business decision making.
