@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.
I should first mention that the pricing table further up, is incorrect. The initial proposals were reduced considerably before we launched Affinity back in 2013.
I don’t believe Affinity is expensive compared to other products on the market. You can license 10 Large accounts on Affinity for just £25.45 per month. I don’t believe this is matched by any other major cloud accounting provider.
I accept we do have a different model to some other providers in the sense that the we bill the accountant directly, rather than billing the client a higher amount and passing on a referral fee. Even if you took on an XL client, the £3.00 monthly fee to cover the cost of adding them to Affinity can be rolled into your offering. Ultimately the client will pay less and allow you to operate more competitively.
Affinity also allows you to white label all of your managed accounts, setup shared Workspaces and take advantage of the additional reporting and deadline tracking capabilities.
We do have some plans in the pipeline to offer referral and volume discounts for Affinity, it’s something we should be able to look at later this year.
Thanks for your response. I 100% agree that there is no software as good as QF at the moment which gives a lot of ease to work and facilities.
The only point I am struggling is there should be a more clear price plan for accountants and clients instead of working it out on the basis of usage.
I need more understanding towards pricing so I can layout a more clear draft to my clients and also fully take on Affinity.
Regards,
Kube
The bottom line is that the most you will pay is £2.97+VAT per client per month (for XL accounts). If they use it less you’ll pay less but that is the basic number you can use to set your own pricing.
From very early on we decided to adopt a pricing model that works on the basis of account size linked to transaction volumes. Typically this is the closest we can get to aligning our fees with our own internal overheads, larger accounts consume more resources and bandwidth. This model also allows us to offer better discounts on smaller accounts.
Our billing area in Affinity makes it really easy to see exactly what you’re spending, as costs are accrued and reported daily. Disconnecting accounts mid-month means you’ll only pay for the exact number of days the account was connected.
I would suggest setting up a trial account on Affinity and using the free £10 credit to see how the billing works. I don’t think you will see wild fluctuations in your monthly spend.
If a large client has paid an annual fee to use QF, and I add them sometime later to my Affinty account, I understand that I pay a monthly fee as long as they are attached to me, so we are paying twice for the same thing?
If I then add a new large client do we both still pay a fee or just me?
The Power User Subscription comes with it’s own features and is a separate product from Affinity. So if they’re added to Affinity after purchasing the Power User Subscription, they are paying for additional feature that you wouldn’t get without the subscription (such as advanced customisation, email history, invoice history etc.).
If you create a new QuickFile account from scratch and they grow to become L or XL, then they won’t need to pay for a Power User Subscription, but they can do if they wish to gain access to the additional features.
I am struggling to see the point of Affinity, if one of my small clients signs up he gets it for free, if I sign him up through affinity I pay a monthly fee
Since December 2015 all QuickFile accounts graded “Large” (1,000 nominal entries per year) or above require a subscription (£45 + vat per year). An equivalent account managed on Affinity would come out at around £30 + vat per year, there’s also additional volume discounts available once your Affinity spend exceeds £50 + vat per month.
The other benefits of using Affinity includes custom branding on all accounts, shared Workspace areas, Companies House tracking and zero promotions, i.e. your users will be interfacing with a branded version of the portal with no offers appearing from other accountants (QuickFile Connect).
