Twinfield online accounting overview

In 2000, when André Kwakernaat and Maurice Tijhuis launched Twinfield, it was one of the first online accounting services in the world, and the first in its home country of the Netherlands, so the company has been something of a pioneer. Twinfield has since grown into an internationally used product with more than 40,000 subscribers in 22 countries, and it is available in a number of languages.

Twinfield offers a lot of bookkeeping and accounting functionality to businesses and their external accountants. As well as accounts payable and receivable and the general ledger, features include: invoice management, credit management, expense claims, project management, budgeting, consolidation, time sheets, the ability to handle multiple accounts and users, work with multiple currencies (the system allows up to two reporting currencies in each company), and access to a wide range of reports. Payroll, stock management, CRM, commitment accounting and purchase-to-pay authorisation are among the add-ons provided by more than 50 third party ‘Twinapps’ partners.

Data entry feels intuitive, and it gets easier with time, as the system ‘learns’: posting rules are stored automatically against bank statements, customers, and suppliers for ‘auto-completion’ the next time they are processed. As all transactions in Twinfield are ‘provisional’ or ‘final’, they can be entered into the system by one user (and be available for account queries and reports), before they are checked, edited (if necessary) and then ‘finalised’ by somebody else, such as a supervisor or accountant. Automation improves efficiency in other areas too: an eBank Statement module automates the reconciliation of bank statements with accounts, whilst document scanning automates the capture of paper invoices.

Twinfield offers a number of pre-defined role-based access controls, limiting the availability and visibility of features, depending on how much bookkeeping and accounting work will be done by the business and how much is being handed over to an external accountant. The pre-defined chart of accounts templates have been designed to meet the needs of a broad range (in terms of size and type) of business, but accountant partners can also create their own bespoke templates. This flexibility extends to product functionality too.

For example, the transaction date is held separately from the period, and if this is closed, invoices can still be entered with their true date for the purposes of VAT and ageing. In addition, there are multiple steps in credit management, so that it is easy to tweak the approach taken if a business begins by handling this internally and then decides that it needs outside help. All of the reports in this online accounting system can be customised (very easily) using a drag and drop interface, and Twinfield Analysis provides the facility to create cubes (pivot table exports) for more detailed and complex management accounts.

Accountants get plenty of tools to help them to manage their multiple Twinfield clients, and information is presented to them in a way that simplifies this too. When the accountant logs on they see service monitoring and uptime statistics as well as a list of their clients, and it is easy to spot activity, to see which client has the most outstanding ‘provisional’ transactions, and so on. Twinfield users get access to an online document store, so accountants can create and upload reports and other documents for clients and/or simply send them via email.

CONCLUSION

Twinfield is a mature, feature-rich accounting system. It offers a lot of functionality for businesses and has the potential to grow along with them, whilst their accountants are given the flexible range of tools they need to support this efficiently and effectively. Twinfield is among a small number of providers of online accounting systems to take their offerings beyond the ‘traditional’ product boundaries of accounting systems.

As well as exporting trial balances and other details into final accounts production software, Twinfield has integrated the iXBRL (the Inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language) reporting, soon to be required by HMRC, which means that accountants can create the necessary filings directly from the source data, and file them (with the relevant body) online from within Twinfield.

Other Twinfield innovations (currently available in the Netherlands) will soon be available in the UK too. These include: an ‘accountant finder’ (to help businesses searching for an online practitioner), dashboards and KPIs, and facilities for accountants to set up their own portal (MyTwinfield), to support the development of online branding and marketing.

So, firms that are looking for a partner to help them streamline bookkeeping and compliance, and develop the value-add side of their business, will want to look closely at Twinfield.

Source: Report: Online Accounting Software, Chartech software product guide 2010 edition. This report will be available soon at the website of ICAEW.