We are delighted to announce that the Association of Optometrists, as part of their special services to members, will be offering Arithmo as a white labelled online bookkeeping system.

Keeping control of financial records is important for any business. With Optometrists it is perhaps more so as the treatment of VAT is different depending on the service they are providing. AOP looked at the way Arithmo deals with VAT  and VAT reporting, and have seen that it has the flexibility to deal with this.

I know, the headline’s a  bit strained. But the thing is Sage is coming under real threat from software houses, in particular from providers of web based accounting software.

If  Sage don’t have a de facto monopoly on accounting software, they very nearly have, and must be the biggest provider. For years they have been trying to come up with a satisfactory online system. Sage online was in beta last year, but was very soon abandoned because of security problems.

And now rivals are beginning to really stick the boot in. These two articles http://www.accountancyage.com/accountancyage/news/2237780/sage-customers-targeted and http://www.accountancyage.com/accountancyage/news/2238258/kashflow-burn-rivals-products show just how much.

Of course, the stunt being pulled by Kashflow probably won’t get them anything more than some publicity, but Sage have to take it seriously, especially coming a week after the offer from NetSuite. It shows a genuine change of attitude, with online software providers starting to really gun for offline providers.  They are our rivals too of course, but we’re a bit like a band of intrepid explorers, uniting and striving to help each other reach the same destination. 

The fact is, Sage products are becoming outdated, being based on old fashioned architecture. However, people do not like change. Sage will rely on this, presumably thinking they can retain customers until they launch their own product.

At Arithmo we firmly believe the future is in online systems, especially for accounting software. We hope Sage get it right, and that Online is with us soon. They’ll get the message across to accountants, and that will give a massive stimulus to our fledgling industry. Which is a good thing.

• The new, simpler sign-up process means new users are up and running even faster. 
• At the end of the trial period, it’s easy to delete any data entered. Or you can carry on with it.

While we were working on it, we have also tweaked the security measures, putting in more complex data encryption on passwords and a new password re-set facility.

We’ve also implemented McAfee Secure (https://www.mcafeesecure.com/RatingVerify?ref=www.arithmosolutions.co.uk)  This checks Arithmo daily, and if we pass security checks then we can show the McAfee logo.

We hope these new processes will help users get into the system more quickly.