Brightbook: The brighter side of accounting

Brightbook.com promotes itself as being perfect for the one-man band operation or small businesses employing 1-5 people and I can certainly see it hitting the spot in these areas.

Bright by name and bright by nature, the homepage even features donated artistic contributions underlining the fact that you don’t have to be a soul-less egghead to do a proper accounting job and enjoy it.

The multi-user, multi-currency system allows you to quote and invoice anywhere in the world and email professionally branded documents with ease. With a link to PayPal as well your customers can settle conveniently.

Bank statements can be imported to brightbook.com which will then show a list of ins and outs for you to categorize. A nice feature here is the save button where you can describe repeating transactions and the system will remember and automatically categorize them in the future.

For you the business owner, the go-to page will probably always be the dashboard. Here you can see at a glance what is owed, what you owe and how your cashflow looks on simple and clear pie charts and graphs. On the other hand your accountant will be more than happy with the reports generated from the system. Profit & loss accounts, balance sheets and tax reports will make his/her life a lot easier at year-end and make sure the taxman has all the correct details for your business.

For those of you who like pictures with your stories then the Bills & Expenses function will tick that box. Here you can upload images of bills and receipts in PDF, JPEG or PNG format for future reference or indeed attach with an invoice to a client for expense re-charge purposes.

Conclusion
I like the fact that the emphasis on fun bookkeeping doesn’t mask the real capability of the functions here which produce good meaningful financial reporting.