Reckon accounting: 5 products compared in a feature table

By Daniel James on Oct 9, 2013 12:21PM

A handy overview of five different Reckon accounting products for the Australian market and the different major features.

Reckon has a major new cloud version coming called Reckon One. It wasn’t officially available at the time this was written (note: we did show the table below to Reckon, but they didn’t ask that Reckon One be included).

One very interesting aspect of Reckon One is that you will pay for a core module, then you’ll be able to select inventory, payroll, time and billing, and other capabilities as you need them, without paying for those you don’t.

Meantime, Reckon has the desktop software Reckon Accounts (formerly called QuickBooks). There’s also Reckon Accounts Hosted, which is a “sort of” cloud product - you’re basically running a copy of the Accounts software on Reckon’s server.

As much as we like the Reckon user interface, unless you pick Accounts Hosted you have to select the pricey Accounts Pro version just to get support for quotes, a feature that’s required by smaller businesses such as tradespeople working alone or with a single employee.

That’s also the case with time tracking and billing, which can be important for solo consultants that divide their time between multiple clients each month.

	Accounts EasyStart 2013	Accounts Accounting 2013	Accounts Plus 2013	Accounts Pro 2013	Accounts Hosted
Price	$195	$445 or $199/year	$829 or $380/year	$1049 or $460/year	$435/user/year
Cloud / Desktop (OS)	Desktop (Windows)	Desktop (Windows)	Desktop (Windows)	Desktop (Windows)	Cloud
Maximum simultaneous users with basic licence	1	1	1	1	1
Restrict user access				•	•
Lists of items that you buy /sell	•	•	•	•	•
Lists of customers / suppliers	•	•	•	•	•
BAS report		•	•	•	•
Quotes				•	•
Jobs		•	•	•	•
Invoices with online payment options		•	•	•	•
Bank feeds
Inventory		•	•	•	•
Time tracking and billing				•	•
Payroll			•	•	•
Mobile device support					•
Multiple currencies				•	•

Want more info? The essential resource is the 44-page Australian small business accounting software guide. The guide compares MYOB, Xero and others, as well as payroll, bookkeepers and other software basics. Click here to register for free and download it.