Anyone here run a small business?

P

ph001

Veteran
 N. Yorkshire.
Hi chaps, I know it's a bit of strange topic for a car forum but generally find the members on here quite professional and knowledgeable about most things!

So, I've been running a small electronics engineering company for around 15 years. Main activities being AC-DC power supply repair / refurbishment and also a bit of electronics design work.

As typical with most small companies, we started off with a very basic administration system using Microsoft Office suite. Than as time went on and things got more complex we moved onto a Sage ACT! system which is a fairly basic database / CRM back end which has functionality to do quotes / invoicing, customer reports etc and also interfaces with Outlook to provide email history to enquiries.

Our fundamental needs are booking repair jobs in to our lab, creating job sheets, quoting, invoicing and dispatching items back out via courier. The invoices are then manually input into our accounts / financial package which is Xero. We employ 12 staff and turnover between £500k - £1m

The accounts / financial side works OK but the Sage ACT system feels clunky and is slow and cumbersome. I'm really struggling to find any commercial off the shelf software that fits with what we do in our organisation. Everything either seems far too complex (and usually expensive) or just doesn't have the right feature set.

Can anybody give any insight on what companies typically do at this stage? Should we bite the bullet and invest in custom software, if so what programming language and who to do it? What sort of budget would we be looking at? Alternatively, what commercial stuff is out there that is suitable for a business our size and doesn't cost the Earth?
 
following.... im a startup currently... business is doing OK.... If i get to your position i will be very happy... only been trading for 5 months and woozer.... its no joke i cant lie sometimes i really struggle and feel quite lonely! Anyway on topic , following because im interested in anything business related. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
 
I'm a Xero fan, moved our business to Xero from Sage about 5 years ago

You can do quite a bit natively in Xero, obviously quotes, invoices, cash management, payable accounting etc in Xero. Adding Projects to your subscription would let to add tasks and expenses, log time, and track the progress and profitability of your projects. You can try it out in the Xero Demo company.

Otherwise. have you looked at the third party integrations Xero supports?
https://www.xero.com/uk/marketplace/
 
I had a business for 18 years which involved driver training for LGV (Lorry) and PCV (Bus) drivers. We had contracts with bus operators and trained their staff on a regular basis for various courses. I also employed up to 15 Trainers at one point.
Due to the high cost of online database design (£12,000 10 years ago) I designed and developed our own databases to suit our needs. I learned basic ‘Visual Basic’ and used Microsoft Access and we were able to keep track of which courses we booked people on, dates, licence numbers and any other information we required. It was a completely bespoke system that I adapted to suit our needs. The only problem with Access though is that it is not an online system but various people can access the databases using ‘Team Viewer’ or GoToMyPC. A local site backend would allow limitless users on the same network to access the databases. Microsoft Access is quite a powerful programme.

For our accounts we used Quickbooks online plus, which allowed unlimited invoices on the go and connects to your bank account, calculates VAT and files it. You can connect to HMRC within Quickbooks. It also has a free mobile app up to 5 users and loads more.
Have a look here: quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/accounting-software

I am unsure of your exact requirements, but if you were interested in a bespoke Access database and felt that it might suit you, let me know. I am now retired and looking for things to fill my time. After speaking to you I would happily put something together to see if it meets your needs. I am not a trained Developer so I do have limitations, but happy to help.
 
Not sure about the costs but when I worked for Newcastle Audi we used ADP Autoline Kerridge. I imagine there’s better stuff out there now but a lot of dealers are still using it. Just my two cents worth
 
How big do you think your company could be. I have written several bespoke ms access databases over the years. They are quick to develope by database standards and both powerful and flexible, if done correctly. There are limits though. A typical Access data base works well with up to a few dozen concurrent users, but try logging 50+ people in at once and it is not up to it. They don't do internet connectivity that well either, though this much better with msAccess 2016. We are currently looking to replace my data bases with more robust ones, as we are passing those limits. We have SAP, IFS and have been looking at LEO. My preference would have been LEO.
https://www.microlease.com/uk/info/press?key=microlease%20launches%20leo%20asset%20management%20solution
But we are a large organisation, so may be more than you need right now.
 
Thanks for the replies - all really helpful comments.

Xero and Quickbooks are pretty similar and they both seem a bit too accounts focused to do Enterprise Resource Planning very well. They don't really help with information flow through our business process such as:

Customer enquiry>Quotation>RMA>Booking in>Job sheet creation>Invoice>Despatch note>Booking out.

The CRM aspects also seem quite limited (although we don't need anything too complex here). The main drawback would be keeping track of enquires i.e. who has responded to who, lead management etc.

We don't currently really need remote access and we don't have vans on the road etc so our requirements are comparatively simple. A custom Microsoft Access / Visual basic system would almost certainly be sufficient for now, but maybe not in 3-5yrs time - and that's perhaps the biggest dilemma here.

Inevitably, porting data over to any new system is fraught with difficultly. Then you have a ton of de-bugging, dry running and finally staff training to contend with. My advice to anyone starting up would be to get something flexible and scalable as early on as possible. But finding the right solution is hard.

Speaking to a few other business owners yesterday, a couple of packages came up:

1) Odoo
2) Dolibarr

I have no experience of either but the marketing blurb sounds good (doesn't it always!).
 
ph001 said:
Hi chaps, I know it's a bit of strange topic for a car forum but generally find the members on here quite professional and knowledgeable about most things!

So, I've been running a small electronics engineering company for around 15 years. Main activities being AC-DC power supply repair / refurbishment and also a bit of electronics design work.

As typical with most small companies, we started off with a very basic administration system using Microsoft Office suite. Than as time went on and things got more complex we moved onto a Sage ACT! system which is a fairly basic database / CRM back end which has functionality to do quotes / invoicing, customer reports etc and also interfaces with Outlook to provide email history to enquiries.

Our fundamental needs are booking repair jobs in to our lab, creating job sheets, quoting, invoicing and dispatching items back out via courier. The invoices are then manually input into our accounts / financial package which is Xero. We employ 12 staff and turnover between £500k - £1m

The accounts / financial side works OK but the Sage ACT system feels clunky and is slow and cumbersome. I'm really struggling to find any commercial off the shelf software that fits with what we do in our organisation. Everything either seems far too complex (and usually expensive) or just doesn't have the right feature set.

Can anybody give any insight on what companies typically do at this stage? Should we bite the bullet and invest in custom software, if so what programming language and who to do it? What sort of budget would we be looking at? Alternatively, what commercial stuff is out there that is suitable for a business our size and doesn't cost the Earth?


One thing that has helped us manage tasks and ensure nothing slips through the cracks is using integrate todoist from LateNode. It allows us to connect job lists, quotes, and follow-ups into a single task management workflow, which keeps our team coordinated without adding extra administrative overhead.
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At your size (12 staff, £500k–£1m turnover), most companies usually end up in one of three paths:

The first is staying with off-the-shelf tools but splitting responsibilities more cleanly. Instead of one system doing everything, they use a dedicated job management / workshop system alongside their accounting platform, and connect them through integrations or lightweight automation. This often removes a lot of the “clunkiness” you’re feeling because each tool does one job properly.

The second is adopting a more modern modular stack rather than a monolithic CRM like ACT!. A lot of newer systems are designed around APIs and workflows rather than trying to be an all-in-one database, which tends to scale much more comfortably for small engineering or repair businesses.

The third route—custom software—is usually only worth it if your workflows are genuinely unique and give you a competitive advantage. Otherwise, it’s easy to underestimate cost and maintenance overhead. Even relatively simple internal systems can end up being expensive once you factor in ongoing updates, hosting, and support.
 
Hey, let's not be naive here, do you think that it's just a Labour government issue, SME's are the backbone of the corporation tax system. Once you get past that threshold you can afford those devious tax consultants and find all the ways of avoidance, I mean just look at Amazon. And don't get me started on Drax, under the previous government they received between £800m to £1b PER YEAR in subsidies to burn wood imported from another country, what a waste of OUR taxes.
 
Oh and we have a Green party led city council, who want to charge us £20 per week per parking space for employee parking, and we own the land. And if you want a Tory example, just go back to Brexit and the fool saying live on camera, F*&k business, and this has been the single most impactful decision for most SME's in the UK, it probably cost us >£1m in the first few years.
 
Yep, Brexit cost us almost all EU sales and particularly Ireland sales fell off a cliff with the import duty which added 25% to each sale. But agreed on the later Tory years who did some terrible damage on SME with the Corp tax from 19 to 25% hike and dividend tax increases.

Labour "only" killed employment with the NI hike
 
pvr said:
Labour "only" killed employment with the NI hike
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The new shower of shite has also brought in MTD for almost everyone as from April. As a micro business it costs me more money and time to do the Government's work for them. Again. There is so much intrusion by the Gov these days into my business, I am seriously thinking about jacking it all in and retiring.

Starmer said he wanted them to be the party of the 'working man'. That is not true. They just want the 'working man' to pay more and more to fund their lazy benefit receivers and the public sector workers who are all 'their type of people'.

The disparity in advantages the public sector workers receive over the private sector is unbelievable. My wife is a 'public sector' worker (school). The things she is entitled to free, the massive pension contributions (15% of salary employer's), the sickness allowances (12 months full pay) is outrageous compared to the rest of the workforce. All because public sector workers are valued much more by the Gov than the rest of us. Because they ARE them! And it comes out of the public purse, so doesn't matter.

And Labour are killing the 'entry level' job sector for young people with the NI increase, keep raising the minimum wage (which they don't have to pay). Then wonder why so many younger people are on benefits, which costs us billions. This Government are utterly stupid, with no clue how to run a bath let alone a Country.
 
The double whammy of NI insurance increase from 13.8 to 15% and the reduction in threshold was not conducive to lowering employment and agree something really needs to be done to help the young find meaningful employment. But they tied their own hands with the stipulation that they were not going to raise employee taxes, and they did that because they feared that they would be unelectable if they didn't and why?

Because we as a people are stupid, we want services that we don't have to pay tax for and the reality is that, if we want a fairer and better society, we have to pay more appropriate taxes. I would wholeheartedly pay more tax if I believed it was going to be that all the rich payment schemes (bonuses paid in shares etcetera) were fairly taxed. The whole tax system needs an utter cleanout.

And before you start thinking that increasing tax is a Labour phenomenon, history will slap you in the face, tax as a percentage of GDP has increased from 33% at the end of the last Labour government to 35.3% at the end of the last tory government.
 
Pondy said:
Starmer said he wanted them to be the party of the 'working man'. That is not true. They just want the 'working man' to pay more and more to fund their lazy benefit receivers and the public sector workers who are all 'their type of people'.
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At your age, you still haven't grasped political speech is poles apart from political actions...

I'm a benefit receiver. A carer. I get £83.45 a week. And in 2019, I was saving the tax payer about £21k so you can probably double it with their currency devaluation in 2020. Sincerely, I'd love to be working (change of scenery for a start), but I cannot work more than 15.5 hours cos of caps, and they'll take 55% back through universal credit (affecting those I'm charged with looking after)

Keef and friends don't care about anyone in the UK. He's already said Davos over Westminster. All they care about is increasing debt and taking your (our) assets.
 
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CuppaTea said:
At your age, you still haven't grasped political speech is poles apart from political actions...

I'm a benefit receiver. A carer. I get £83.45 a week. And in 2019, I was saving the tax payer about £21k so you can probably double it with their currency devaluation in 2020. Sincerely, I'd love to be working (change of scenery for a start), but I cannot work more than 15.5 hours cos of caps, and they'll take 55% back through universal credit (affecting those I'm charged with looking after)

Keef and friends don't care about anyone in the UK. He's already said Davis over Westminster. All they care about is increasing debt and taking your (our) assets.
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I feel for you, I really do. It is exactly YOU (and people like you) who should benefit from 'benefits'. The care sector is a scandal. Pay and conditions are disgraceful, yet if you sit on your arse all your life you can make a much better living.
My wife sees the unfairness in her school. Parents who works 50 or 60 hours a week in low paid jobs to just make ends meet get absolutely nothing. Yet the ones who have never worked, their kids get everything free (and I mean EVERYTHING).

The school runs a 'food bank'. Those that don't work are prioritised over those that do. The employed get whatever is left!
On a side note: it is absolutely AMAZING the sheer amount of food which is going free to people. No wonder the supermarkets charge so much to the people who do pay. It's not all out of date, or short dated stuff anymore, either.

The low paid employed end up much worse off financially than those who don't work. And the Labour Government encourage this, even though they say they are trying to stop it. They lie in an attempt to fool the public. Then wonder why the British public don't trust ANY politicians and have become disinterested in anything politics.
 
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