BeanCounter App Reviews

I’m the owner of a small company and I use BeanCounter to keep track of all financial activities. I wanted a software with double-entry bookkeeping and no monthly fee, and this discarded a lot of saas alternatives. It is simple to use yet very powerful. I especially enjoy the muliptle currencies support since I deal with 3 different ones.

If you need an accounting system that allows you to set up a file for each customer or account, this is a useful program. However the efficiency is laughable. There is no ability to sort the list of clients alphabetically with a simple click of the button. So you have to drag each client into alphabetical position. If you are adding new clients frequently it is a nightmare of wasted time. Custom reporting is extremely limited and does not let you choose items to display. The support system is also pretty weak. This is a great program if you need something on a zero budget, but for any heavy work, invest in something with the capabilities to do your work. Have not been inspired to buy the $70 app, so would hope they have improved the functions on that.

Some more in depth instructions/tutorials would be helpful. It seems to be capable, but Im not a "bean counter". It would be nice to be able to create simple invoices for sales with tax calculations without linking everything to projects, then creating expenses, then creating invoices. Perhaps if I had a different business it would be more useful - or perhaps there is a way to easily do it, and I havent figured it out yet. In addition, Ive yet to figure out how to add mileage as an expense for a project so that it transfers over to the "travel" section of my expenses. The product description summary says it supports starting and ending mileages etc. No idea where to find it, how to input them, or how to link them to a project. I have an E-Mail in to the company for better instructions on how to do that. Im currently using the FREE version, so maybe capabilities are limited.

This is the most confusing accounting/invoicing app! I wasted an hour trying to figure out how to send an invoice and still didnt get it. To make it worse, I understood that the basic version was free. I was charged $2.79.

Got this to help me with some accounting activities, but I couldnt even figure out how to input any numbers. I went to the developers website for tutorials, instructions, anything; not much help there either. In short, if you are looking for software for bookkeeping and you dont want to spend hours trying to figure out how to do the simplest things,this is probably not what you want…move on.

Ive been using BeanCounter for my business and its worked well for me, covering my work for about a half dozen clients. I recently ran into a little bug and contacted the developers support team by email. They got right back to me and were able to look at my control panel and see what was going on. They gave me a simple fix and promised to get rid of the bug in the future. I was pleasantly surprised by how resposnive they were and happy to have everything working properly. I dont mind running into a small bug when you get service like that.

I think if you understand the principles of double-entry accounting, youll find this application really powerful and quite a bit more stable than Quickbooks. It does time tracking and client expensing, and keeps track of projects. However, it seems to have very few options for customizing the fonts or layout of reports and invoices.

Not user friendly. No instructions to do anything.

For the base part of creating and managing expenses, this app is ok. I have three main tasks I was looking for: - Income / Expenses (Rate 7/10) - Simple Invoicing (Rate 4/10) - Report Generation (Rate 2/10) I dont care about automatic bank transaction importing, real-time time tracking, or mileage. I would only use this for a small set of side work I do. I would not recommend this for your full featured accounting software if you are a full-time freelancer. PROS - Multiple businesses (One per file) - Custom Accounts based on their types (For categorizing and reporting purposes, this is basically just renaming a category) - Importing works quite well (provided you setup before hand and test) - UI is super simple - Wide range of currencies with up-to-date exchange rates - Transactions: Repeater, Split, Mark as Paid/Unpaid, Attachments - Time Tracking menubar app CONS - No docs to get you started, although I figured it out in about a half hour - No alternate design or templates for Invoices (My main reason for not purchasing yet) - Genearting new reports only allows you to change date range for criteria (No other filtering available, AKA useless) - Reports arent pretty at all (expect them for information only) - You can only attach to two accounts (This usually means one funding account, and one categorizing account. I could use custom fields, but I cant report on them!) - No Autosave of whole file (Save your work frequently!) - No way to Duplicate transaction, project, etc. Id like to see the following changes before I purchase: - Custom HTML / Themes for Invoices / Estimates - Reporting with filters on any field Then I would like to see the following added: - Custom HTML / Themes for Reports - Custom Field which allows selection of additional Account (Allow me to lump into as many accounts as possible, but this might be trumped by allowing custom reports which could basically act as filtered views) - Some sort of Syncing option (Dropbox or iCloud, etc) - Write Docs or Tutorials This app has potential. I hope the developer continues to deliver. In the mean time, Id pay half the asking price until its feature set is upped.

Really wish there was a way to manually add a task event and choose the duration. Sometimes i forget to start the counter and need to go back and manually add in the time spent.

I like the layout of the app. I hate the little issues that I have experienced with it. Some are probably user based. Save errors I doubt are my fault. Including an expense as income I doubt is my fault either. I got to 25 transactions and was advised that I had to buy the pro version, but I could not justify it with the issues at the price of 39.99.

I am a patient, methodical person. But this app is incredibly frustrating. It has some great features like the ability to get really detailed in estimate and invoices, the ability to convert estimates into invoices, and the ability to add tasks, billable hours, and expenses to an invoice yet keep track of all these things separately. It makes it possible to see what you estimated in terms of hours versus where you went over or under. But the problem is that it is incredibly difficult and frustrating to use. Plus the manual and developer website look like they were done in 2002 and left to rot. It is a very PC application but to date it comes closest to what I want to do. But the benefits do not outweight the effort needed to use it….

If you are not trained in Double Entry Accounting, this app will make no sense to you. Youll want something that uses everyday concepts and terminology, like Quickbooks. However, if you ARE trained in Double Entry Accounting, this is a great app for keeping ledgers and generating reports on the Mac. The app’s simplicity is its strong suit — debit and credits, very similar to how you’d do them on paper. The reports it generates are passable, but pretty basic. It’d be nice to have more options regarding the grouping and formatting of accounts. An in-app purchase of $40 is required to fully use the app. I didn’t realize this until I hit the limit and was invited to upgrade.

I am an experienced bookkeeper, but I find this app confusing. I cannot figure out how to do a simple double entry. I just want to debit the bank and credit a supplier. Can’t figure it out. What is account 1 and what is account 2? I’m sure there must be a simple way to do it, but how?

I was looking for something simple to keep track of a few assets & liabilities and didn’t want to invest in any of the major applications because I just don’t need their features. I generally use MS Excel through VMware Fusion to cover all my sheet work, so small is the key for my use here. This app does a great job and functions perfectly. It is powerful enough to let you create accounts and set them as needed for depreciation, interest, labor, etc. So you are in control! Remember, of course an accounting app is for accountants. If you have no training or experience, you will want to take a crash course or two in financial accounting as a subject first to get some hands-on and learn your terminology.

I got this ap and found it easy to use. Though I have not explored every feature yet, what I have explored seems to be working well. It looks good, is easy to use, and is pretty much all I need for my simple but lucrative small business. I hate accounting but this makes it kind of fun. Id give it a go!

At first glance this is a nice bookkeeping program that seems to include the multitude of tasks necessary for managing a small business without too much automation to goof up customization. Nothing in the program seems to be outside the box, but by the same token, nothing is offensively inadequate. The free version has some small bugs in the display & options to hide features would be nice, but neither of these problems are deal breakers. *I appreciate the try for free before buying the full version. Thanks!