When you think about accounting in general ‘beautiful and easy design’ is not the first thing that comes to mind. I hail from a Commerce background, so I’ve spent my fair share knee deep in Tally 9.0, working with an interface that’s neither beautiful to look at nor easy to operate. This makes me genuinely excited to talk about Gaurilla — the company that wants to make Accountancy awesome again.
Gaurilla is a web app
Once you log in, you are asked to create a Company and select a financial year. You can create multiple companies to manage according to your plan. When starting out, you might want to input the details of your Clients and Products/Services into Gaurilla. This will make the process of invoicing a lot easier.
The layout of the dashboard is incredibly simple and it provides you with a lot of important information at a glance. On the left sidebar, you have what the developer calls ‘Blocks’ which will be customizable in a future version. You can access your Slips, Transactions, People, Items, Reports and Settings from these handy shortcuts here. Right on the top bar, you will see number of your clients, your longest streak and your current streak (more on that later). Below that is a huge graph plotting your incomes and expenses on a weekly basis. This is a good way to know how you are doing financially without pulling out the ol’ Balance Sheet.
Income & Expenses
When making an invoice you get all the options on a singe page laid out in a logical order. The date is already set for you. You can pick a client from your list. Add the given items to your invoice and specify the quantity along with writing a description. You also get an ‘Others’ row where you can add costs like shipping charges or subtract costs like discounts at a given percentage or a flat rate before or after applying taxes. You can also specify primary and secondary taxes applicable according to your region. When you are done filling in the details click publish and you will be presented with a neat looking invoice all made up for you. If you choose so, you can directly mail the Invoice to your client as well.
Adding an expense is equally straight forward. From the sidebar, pick Transactions>Expenses. From there click on the ‘New’ button from the top right hand corner and a New Expense window will pop up. From here you can input the usual details, the Vendor and the mode of payment, the expense date and amount, the expense category and the account used for the payment. Click Save and the details will be updated to your transactions tab.
When you are on the Dashboard, Gaurilla will show you the number of your clients, your current streak and your longest streak in big bold numbers. I’ve seen Gamification added to a lot of things like Learning to code or losing weight but this is the first time I’m seeing this applied to accounting/business. It could be a guiding force to you, the same way my 6 day cycling streak pushes me to get out even on a Sunday.
Bananas for Mr Gaurilla
The Pricing of Gaurilla is also relatively cheap. Plans start from as little as $4/month with 1 business, unlimited invoices and 100 client support to $19/per month that offer unlimited everything, an API to automate data entry and collaborative features. If you are just starting out or are a freelancer looking to manage your accounts online, the $4 Bananas package might be more than enough for you. As an added bonus, if you sign up for Gaurilla in 2013 you get 3 months access completely free.
Gaurilla is a web app and runs completely in the cloud. Which means you never have to download any software, don’t have to go through a complicated installation process or install any updates. But you do need a constant and stable internet connection which might be a problem depending on where you live. Gaurilla has responsive design so it works great on your Computer, Tablet and even your Mobile Phone. I did not find any stability issues in my testing, although the notification bubbles which come up when you do something wrong could be a bit more informative.
Gaurilla does everything a small business owner needs and does it while looking good. It works as smoothly as advertised and in some ways its logical layout gives it an edge over its competitors. Gaurilla set out with the goal of making Accountancy awesome again and it surely is on the right path.
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