Product Reviews

It's not often we get to play with a brand new accounts package. Let's face it, Sage has most of the small business market sewn up, and QuickBooks grabs pretty much anything that's left over. But Omni Accounts looks like it could make quite a splash - not just with its well-designed software, but with a unique modular pricing system that'll appeal to growing businesses.

Why? Well, let's say you buy a product such as Sage Instant Accounting, priced at around £100. Sage offers plenty of features for small business users. But what if you need something a little more heavyweight? Say, for instance, four users need to access the system at once? In that case, you can say goodbye to a couple of grand, and hello to Sage Financial Controller. And you'll end up buying loads of features you don't even need, just

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to get the ones you do.

This is the way accounting software has traditionally been sold. But Omni has a different idea. Omni reckons you should be able to buy just the bits you need, and then add more components as your business grows. By components, we don't mean whole ledgers, but smaller add-ons such as customer discounts, supplier categories or representative analysis.

The brilliant thing about these 'components' is that some of them can be had for as little as £2.50 - a one-off fee, with no upgrade costs and no annual subscriptions. More than 100 features can be added or ignored, as you wish. In the end, you could be using an all-singing, all-dancing, multi-module, multi-company, multi-user mid-range accounting suite - all for less than £395.

Day to day, Omni Accounts is simple to operate. You get a basic transaction entry form that's pretty much the same for most tasks. The software actually feels a bit like Microsoft Outlook, with a sidebar containing shortcuts, and screen views that you can customise to suit. Like Outlook, you can also drag columns to the header of a screen to make a grouped display, then sort by clicking the header button. For sheer flexibility, Omni Accounts comes up trumps.

Its innovative, modular approach will ease the headache of upgrading as your business grows. With prices like these, let's hope it's an idea that will catch on.