I really rate this cloud software for its simplicity. I’ve been singing it praises to all that will listen.
Understand you need to monetise the service but to charge £94.50 a client (before the 10% discount) is too rich a price to pay. Did you think to consult the users about your price point, have you looked at the price the competition charge?
For a small accountancy firm competing with very low cost outsource firms QF gives me a USP that tips the tenders my way. I’ll lose that and won’t be able to compete.
We did look at the pricing and concluded that £7.80 per month was a competitive figure given what other cloud vendors are currently charging. I’ve referenced a few examples here, most come in at over £15 per month.
It’s early days for Affinity, I’m definitely not saying we’ve got the initial pricing right. We’re keen to listen to feedback and we will likely revise the pricing before it becomes effective in January 2014. Bear in mind that we’re at the very first iteration of this product and we are very keen to build out more functionality here in the coming months. In fact white labeling is something we are working on right now.
Getting the pricing out there as early as possible was important to us, so that we can have these sorts of conversation well in advance, no nasty surprises!
I concurr with Mr O’Driscoll’s remark for similar reasons. I too am concerned about intended pricing. I was absolutely astounded by this software when I first come across it and spoke highly of it on my blog not least of which because it was free.
There was alot of interest locally. A local accountancy firm immediately started offering it as part of their bookkeeping service much to my annoyance. So… a couple of points if I may.
Not going to be pushing this unless there is a white label version. Not falling for that again.
The product outperforms SageOne Cash and SageOne Accounts in terms of functionality but Sage is a recognised and trusted brand and alot of the functionality simply isn’t required by most small sole traders.
You could do what other providers do and create different buy-ins.
I think if you offered a product similar to SageOne Cash but will all your invoicing/estimating included for £3.50 per month + vat then you’ll have something that can be pushed to market that is largely untapped. The tradepersons, self-employed window cleaners etc. I would prefer to see trade payables included as well but that’s just me.
What would absolutely seal the deal for this entry level product would be to deliver support for self-assessment. At present I’m dragging transactions into VT to do that. That self-assessment option could be used to differentiate between a ‘retail’ Quickfile version and Affinity. Charge affinity users per return filed online? Not an option available to Quickfile customers? Sorry, abit of brainstorming leaking out.
The rest of the current functionality could be transferred to higher buy-in levels. You don’t for instance get the multi-currency option on Xero unless you buy the ‘large’ package at £24 per month.
I think at present you’re trying to do a one size fits all approach which is understandable given the way software is written but you’re in danger of shooting yourself in the foot with that pricing. Only Kashflow has managed to pull that off so far.
Quickfile can challenge the rest, Imho, if the price and functionality offers better value for money that it’s better know rivals.
Thanks for your comments @Adrian_Maudsley, some good points raised! Ultimately we want people to use the software, so finding the right price point is a top priority. I’m also not keen on making every user pay the same price irrespective of what features they use and to what degree they consume our resources (bandwidth, disk space etc). Some users create thousands of invoices a month, others maybe 10! So in an ideal world we’d try to align licensing fees with our own operating costs as closely as we can. The technical difficulties of achieving this however is another challenge… what we don’t want is an overly complicated and unpredictable pricing model.
We’re certainly thinking through these problems. We wanted to have some indicative pricing there from launch, but this will be subject to further scrutiny over the next few months.
Oh, we’re very close to completing the white labeling module… With any luck we should have this ready next week!
I too have just been having a good look at Quickfile and have recommend it to a few clients, most of whom would have used spreadsheets rather than software for their record keeping. Price is vital. I have also been looking at Clearbooks amongst others and and I cannot see how £94.90 p.a.is affordable for many small clients. Many larger clients who buy SAGE and Quickbooks are fed up with constnats prices increases with hardly any improved performance.
I understand Clearbooks is £97.20 per year, per company and this is only for the most basic functionality. When we looked at the pricing for Quick File we undercut all the major cloud based providers. Also our proposition is a little different from other suppliers in the sense the Affinity product is aimed squarely at Accounting professionals, whereas with many other vendors the end-user would be expected to pickup the bill.
Within 2 weeks we will have a white label system within Affinity, so you will essentially be in a position to provide a fully branded platform for your clients. The rationale behind our pricing was based on a few things that aren’t actually there yet but will be come January.
I do however hear what people are saying and we will revisit this shortly.
The price that a business can purchase Clearbooks direct is £97.20 for the micro package. However if you join as an accountant you can then get the expansion package for £90 per year per client and is up to you what you charge. So you need to compare the expansion package to your offer. I presume you have done this compaision, and if so can you provide a quick summary? As if we were to use affinity we would need to recover the cost of it and I cannot yet see why a client would want to be part of affinity if they can access Quickfile for free and we can access using their login? What are we then going to be adding to what they already have for free, really what is in it for them? I want to be able to take a cloud based solution and promote it and I do understand the need for you to recovery costs.
The advent of the white label system is good to hear.
I take note of Andreproberts remarks and I’m alittle confused. I thought the charge for Quickfile would be across the board not just for quickfile delivered through Affinity?
I’d also be interested in hearing what you see to be the value add of Quickfile as it currently stands against Wave or Brightbooks.
@Aspyre_Accountancy no, we have not extensively reviewed every accounting application and offer on the market. We did look at some of the larger providers in the UK and came up with our “provisional” pricing based on these findings. I’m not keen to make comparisons based purely on features, because I don’t believe having a ton of features makes for a good accounting platform, there’s a lot more to it than this.
They can ofcourse access Quick File for free but in 9/10 cases they will eventually need some sort of expert advice and the purpose of Affinity was to bridge the gap between accounting professionals and business owners. Also under Affinity you will only be billed based on the number of profiles you manage on a daily cycle. If you have clients who are happy to use Quick File for free they can do so most of the year and you only need to get involved to complete any accounts prep and tax return filing, so effectively you are only being billed for the days you have the account attached to your Affinity dashboard.
In the long term Quick File will withdraw from offering any sort of accounting consultancy services. Affinity will eventually double up as a platform for reaching the 1000s of active users we have on the system. We’re still some way off achieving this but it is a priority. We actually have no problem at the moment with accountants assisting general users who post on this forum for help and guidance, this indeed can be used as a way to generate new leads.
These figures are for using Affinity, but Affinity is not just a paid version of Quick File, it’s a whole set of tools for managing multiple accounts, applying custom branding and delivering an end-to-end service for your clients. Furthermore it will eventually become a way to generate new leads (see the post above).
Try to complete a few months of bookkeeping on any of these platforms and compare this with Quick File. We don’t want to necessarily be the accounting software with the most features, but we do work very hard to make Quick File as fast and intuitive as possible.
Thanks @NiallO_Driscoll, it’s a good article, I just wanted to respond on a couple of points.
I really like Quickfile for its simplicity but have a problem with
their pricing module, why charge the accountant for passing business
their way.
You’re not actually passing any business our way…We strip out all the advertising and give you a fully branded system for your clients to collaborate with you on their bookkeeping. You would effectively be leveraging the full toolset of Quick File to streamline your practice, that’s what our proposition is centered around.
When a user comes to Quick File directly they will see various offers relating to consultancy based services from 3rd party accountants. This will not happen for Affinity based accounts.
Also eventually we will be opening up Affinity so that account holders can promote their own consultancy services directly to our end-users.
Purchase Orders
We do fully support purchase orders, it was introduced a few weeks back.
Pricing
Discounts are from 10%-40% based on our provisional pricing.
@Adrian_Maudsley, @NiallO_Driscoll, @Aspyre_Accountancy thank you for taking the time to offer up your feedback on the Affinity pricing proposals. We’ve thought long and hard over the last few weeks on how we can come up with something that works on all levels. Today we have updated our pricing calculator to reflect the changes, you can access it here:
Essentially what we’ve done is split the accounts (that’s individual QF accounts) into 5 categories based on the size (XS, S, M, L and XL). We have then significantly reduced the cost across all account sizes. You can now manage an XS account for £15 per year, with each bracket going up by £5 per year.
The size is calculated on a daily basis, so all new accounts will start as XS and each day we will reassess based on the number of nominal transaction over the rolling 12 month period. Charges will accrue daily and be collected at the 1st of every calendar month, this means that if you detach a profile mid-month you only pay for the days within which it was linked to your account.
The account sizes are now visible within your Affinity dashboard and you can see the rolling 12 month nominal ledger count by clicking the link to view the company details.
When we launched Affinity in September we talked about the ability to white label accounts, this has now been implemented. We are continuing to work on Affinity to deliver improved analytics and export options. We will keep you notified as and when new features become available.
Glenn
Have to say this looks eminently a more sensible pricing model. The two features that get my thumbs up are the white labeling and the Companies House tracking.
There are a couple of areas that could placate us accountants who would recommend clients to QF.
The first that comes to mind is a recommendation section on your website for accountants. The other cloud software companies pay commission for recommendations.
I use a dummy QF account to demonstrate features to clients and prospective clients, are there any plans to include a demo model as part of the dashboard?
Are there any plans to run a webinar on the functionality?
Thanks @NiallO_Driscoll We just recently launched Findanaccountant.co.uk, this is a free directory for accountants and bookkeepers. We also plan to allow Affinity users to advertise their services to stand-alone Quick File users, although the details are still a little sketchy here. We’ve not really given a great deal of thought to setting up a referral scheme but this is something we’re happy to consider.
We’d love to run some webinars and engage more with users but unfortunately right now it’s not something that we can achieve with our current resources. That may change next year though.
I’ve started to migrate my clients to Affinity noticed the default pricing is for a large company. I have no way of knowing how many transactions these clients will use but my guess is xs - s so the price should be set accordingly. How do I change the default cost?
We would automatically recalculate the size of each account every 24 hours and bill the Affinity account holder at the end of the month for the usage. There’s nothing to change on your side.
If you have an account that is showing as large, this means that over a rolling 12 month period there are between 1001 and 4000 ledger entries, this is recalculated every 24 hours.
Just to clarify right now you will not incur any costs as we are still in Beta with Affinity, this will change mid January.
Hi Glenn, I think QF a top software on the market. Pricing is great when it comes to Clients signing on. As an accountant with an Affinity account, it seems to be pricey.
Any thoughts on that. As I cant work out the maths.
When you say that you can’t work out the maths, what part would you like clarification on?
With Affinity, accounts are calculated on a daily basis and then billed monthly. There’s more information on account sizes and how they’re calculated here.
To calculate the rate of an account per day, take a look at the Affinity Price Calculator here
I hope that helps, but please let me know if you have any further queries. You’re also welcome to send me a private message (click my name and then ‘Message’) should you wish to discuss account specific queries.
Thanks for your clear and quick response. I checked the pricing and in fact they are far more expensive then what others are offering. As for accountants there should be a price sharing mechanism in which the client bears the brunt when we can charge the client.
Still I am very happy with QuickFile over all of all the pricing matter as it’s the most sensible piece of software in the market.
Thank you.
