Great alternative to the big guys

Manager saved me from going crazy using one of the big, cloud-based accounting packages. I get much more flexibility, better performance and better support, all while paying NOTHING so far. I would strongly encourage any SMB to take a look at Manager for their accounting needs.

Pros

What's not to love about FREE accounting software?? Yes, that's right...the basic desktop version is free, forever. Now, that means you don't get fancy cloud backups (but you can save your files on OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive and such) nor do you get multiple user concurrent access. For those, you need to pay. But that's it! No other limitations. All features available to free users. Manager's strength is in the flexibility of setting up the chart of accounts. Unlike other similar software, there are virtually no restrictions on how you set up your accounts. The user interface is spartan, but easy to use. There are many modules which can be turned on or off to meet your needs. This helps keep your accounts and your software experience uncluttered. You can set up multiple business if desired, and each can be configured with unique sets of features as needed. Lastly, the authors update this program ALL THE TIME, like several times a month new features are added and bugs squashed. When using desktop or server versions, you can choose if and when to upgrade....the cloud version updates automatically.

Cons

The importing of transactions from banks is very fragile. You basically must decide to either enter ALL your transactions by hand, or NONE of them. If you try to enter most transactions and then import your bank file to catch any you missed, you are very likely to end up duplicating transactions. No Bueno! Reporting is quite limited and the custom reports feature is quite mysterious and not thoroughly documented.

The best value for price I have ever got

Never been happier to spend USD 39 a month, ever.

Pros

It's ease of use and it's strong core personality. There are no fancy gimmicks to draw attention to useless dashboards but the core functionality is among the strongest I have ever seen. The fault tolerance of this service is amazing, you can mess thing as much as you want, and any competent accountant could make quick work of fixing it. The custom reports, templates and easy API (which has no complete documentation as of now, but many are using it -- that's how easy it is) gives you the ability to integrate it and automate things that are not originally include.

Cons

Everything has some down sides, or I might just be nitpicking here. There is no way to lock your reference numbers. The billable expenses and manufacturing still need some work.

Manager Accounting Free Software

Easy to use and intuitive. Much simpler than others I've tried. Has the odd glitch but Lubos is onto it and willing to implement suggestions. give it a try.

Great tool, depending on your needs

Excellent. Happy enough that i'm taking some time to write a review

Pros

Proper accounting software, with debits and credits. Keeps getting better. Good reporting tools and export. Easy to use once you have the basic. No cost for desktop version.

Cons

Web version seems a bit expensive. Proper accounting functionality is not what everyone wants, especially in small business.(meaning debits and credits)

Great stable accounting software that offers everything you need for most companies

It is always a tricky thing to decide what to include in a software and at the same time to keep it simple. The Manager's team has done that perfectly. I started using the desktop version (free version with all functionalities except web access and user accounts) while testing the setup and usability of Manager before implementing it into my company. The simplicity and transparancy of the setup and the very easy path of learning the processes was very easy for us and if we had any questions we could get the answers immediately from the good support community and they authors of the software! Once we were convinced that this is the system for us, we simply set up the software on our own server (cloud version is also available but we decided to keep it in-house) and copied the data files from the desktop version and we were up and running in minutes! The software is very good, stable and super easy to use and it gets our recommendation.

Pros

The features we like the most are the simplicity and general ease of using the system. It covers all the aspects of our trading business, including purchasing and invoicing plus other needs. Manager comes with API connection possibility so it is easy to manage your own software or templates (for example Excel) to simply export data to and from Manager.

Cons

There is nothing that we can point out at this time...