Kashflow

KashFlow is an online accounting software with limited features and meant for small businesses in service industry. Even though it looks simple and reports allow drill-down into numbers, KashFlow requires more commitment in  terms of time, since processes are redundant, certain terminologies went astray and also requires understanding the logic behind transactions. Without getting acquainted with help files you will easily be lost.  Besides, we found no accountant tools for account adjustments.


Getting Started
It’s a bit cliche, to start with “nice getting process” which KashFlow has. Once you are in there are few vital KPIs on the dashboard like most apps we have covered so far, but really not as appealing as other contenders.
Navigation in Kashflow is different, and easier for non-accountants. You can easily capture core functions within the system, which are  ”Customers”, “Quotes”, “Sales”, “Suppliers”, “Purchases” and “Bank”. However “Purchases” does not mean there is an inventory management feature. If you enable “inventory management” in KashFlow, you can only count quantity, thus no stock value report.
Contacts

In the meantime Gartner Research and myriads of other consulting companies claim that video presentation and less text improve conversion, Kashflow abides by old school “read” principle. When adding contacts, you are exposed to too much content.
Seemingly intuitive task suddenly puts you on alert. But we like reading, so gave a shot to find out the content was extended help files for dummies. Never minding, we proceeded with adding contacts to the system.
Kashflow, gives a set of options when adding a customer, such as “return to customer page”, “create new invoice”, “create quote”, which is a noble idea.
But with bulk upload, we had problems. Namely, importing contacts into Kashflow is viable only if you maintain MS Outlook to generate vCard for importing. Sadly, Kashflow did not jump on the industry bandwagon where CSV is the king. Also there is no way to add your customer or supplier with beginning balances.
Invoicing

If you recall our review of FreeAgent and Crunch, where invoicing was rated pretty low for their distinct processes, Kashflow combined them both, and added their own flavor on top.
First, like in FreeAgent, issuing an invoice is a two step process. Second, you need to add lines and populate per line data in a new window. Honestly, really weird, and wonder why it could not be done in one screen. Such redundant steps ruined our impression and if you ever saw “KashFlow Saves Time and Money”, really skip this ad.
Expenses

In KashFlow, a user can create a bill or register an expense with payment, somewhat like check writing. Instead of choosing  a bank account, however, you select a payment method. It is bizarre, unless you could choose a bank account. We were lost in reports trying to figure out which account was credited as a result of this transaction.
To understand what is behind the scenes, we delete all the data, and recreated the expense. Believe it or not, things were so unclear even Balance Sheet did not answer our question. (Download the balance after expense receipt and solve the puzzle).
Reports
KashFlow has a nice list of financial reports. But what  cools you off is hailed redundancy no matter what you do. In every report, Date is the first thing you select, which makes reporting a bit rigid.
No matter how drill-down you can do, you would hardly be in control, as we pointed out earlier, one transaction was enough to get wistful.
Conclusion
KashFlow is a small business accounting software, and really requires a user to understand the system. If you are old school accounting practitioner, you will hardly ever consider KashFlow for bookkeeping of your clients. But if you are a business owner, we strongly suggest you to contact your accountant or hire a consultant if you are really into opting this application for your entity.