Getting accounting right

Like a lot of people running small businesses or who are self employed, I've always struggled with accounting software. Frankly it's too complicated. By far. It's designed for accountants, not human beings.

When I first set up my own business I did look at the accounting software on offer, but it had two big problems. Not only would I have to get a finance degree to understand it, frankly it was from the dark ages. I have always provided invoices electronically, first to computing magazines, who not surprisingly were early adopters, and more recently to pretty well everyone. Yet the accounting packages I looked at insisted on working on paper. Groan.

So I wrote my own system in Microsoft's Access database. It did the job, and was very much tailored to my business, but it got creaky over the years, not helped by the fact that I never successfully managed to update it for more recent versions of Access, so I had to keep a copy of a circa 1997 version around to make my accounts work.

Somewhat over a year ago I decided enough was enough and hoped against hope that accounting software had moved on. The good news was all the packages now handled electronic invoices... but all the computer-based packages still required membership of the Freemasons and a certificate in accounting terminology to be able to use them. To make matters worse, I knew I was going to cut my main computer over to a Mac fairly soon, and not all the packages ran on that.

My saviour, bizarrely, was one of the crustiest of the old guard, Sage. I did take a look at their PC-based software, but it is still a mega dinosaur. However they had just brought out Sage One, which is a web-based package, and I confess I love it. I've been using it about 18 months. It does all I need, but in an accessible way (if your accounts are even simpler than mine, they have a really basic 'cashbook' version too). I can access it wherever I am - and my accountant can dig into it direct and furkle around with all those accountanty things they do with one trouser leg rolled up. It even does VAT returns if you suffer those.

Like anything doing a biggish job it takes a little while to get into, but I am now on top of my accounts in a way I never was before and it takes very little time. I pay £10+VAT a month for it, but the accountant assures me that their bill for doing my annual return will drop by more than £120 as a result of them having access to it - so it pays for itself.

It's not perfect. There could be a much wider range of reports, for instance, and as yet the VAT side needs a bit of manual assistance of you do anything complicated like buy something from outside the UK. But it really has made doing the accounts, dare I say it, almost fun. Now that is worrying.

You can find out more about Sage One at this website - and there's a month's free trial, which is what I did, to see if it works for you...

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

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