Hello,
Is solar good for taxi self employment do anyone else use solar

Hi Stephen,

Solar Accounts is designed for general small businesses, but it could probably accomodate a self-employed taxi service. Record income as described here:
http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk/help/how-to-record-a-cash-sale.php

And outgoings as described here:
http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk/help/how-to-record-an-expense.php

Regards,

Dear Stephen and Mark:

My last accounts program (a very very old version of Quicken) was stolen on my laptop in a burglary and with it my entire computerised accounts records going back sixteen years of self employment and the back up copies. Each of the last three years, I've used a different accounts program and junked them at the end of the year after doing my tax return, for various reasons.

This year, I have been using Solar, chosen from among those suggested by the local business link organisation, in their newsletter, which I've found an incredibly useful source of information for my small business.

I have a self employed taxi business and also a few other (smaller, service based freelance work) projects. My taxi business is my main source of income.

I've customised the preset accounts and account groups fairly extensively now and can report that initial findings after a month of usage are that this appears to be the best program thus far.

Of course, with any new program, the real test is how they perform when things go wrong and the support thus far - I'm still on the free trial - has been same day response and very simple to understand, unlike the other programs I have used, where they put you onto the developer in India who clearly doesn't understand The Queen's English properly and one of which is complete rubbish, in my view. I'm writing a full review of all these for my web site, when I get around to it.

In respect of the taxi business, the only thing which in my view would improve Solar would be the ability to have repeating payments on a daily basis, as well as weekly or monthly, as I have daily and weekly cash accounting procedures, given that it is a cash based business - and he has promised to look at this for a future release. However, I've worked around this without too much trouble.

The real test will come at the end of the year, when it comes to filling out the Self Assessment tax return, but I've run the preset reports for one month and thus far, my opinion is that this program is easy to use and as good as any other (and way better than Excel based spreadsheets) option out there for the taxi industry.

Regards,
Colin

Hi Colin,

Thanks for your feedback - I'm glad to hear you like the Solar Accounts software and support. We'll try to add a daily frequency for repeating payments in future, but a workaround for now would be to create 7 weekly repeating payments - one om each day of the week.

Regards,