hi guys i'm rita and i am digital accountant in today's episode i will share my personal review of coconut accounting software this review is not influenced by any other opinions or feedbacks or reviews it's purely my personal review of this accounting software so coconut accounting software will suit best to i would say small business owners so if you are a freelancer sole trader or even if limited company but very small you can actually use coconut accounting software to run your business operations finance side so if you do not need advanced features this will be best fit for you if you have not seen it yet then i have shared the link in description section below to my complete coconut accounting software tutorial so check it out so talking about this review this review will consist of multiple points what i think you need to know or you should consider if you decide to start using it to manage your business operations so let's start with my review mobile app happy days for those business owners or freelancers who use their mobile phone a lot coconut accounting software has been developed for mobile phone users in mind it is a mobile phone based accounting software [Music] coconut accounting software has got web browser based version as well called coconut web but it has limited usefulness for example you can issue sales invoices from your mobile app but you cannot issue invoices from coconut web also you can split transactions on mobile app so for example if you have 100 pounds and you need to split between personal and business you can do it on mobile app but you cannot split transactions on coconut web so it is a mobile phone based accounting software self-assessment you can submit your self-assessment directly to hmrc from your coconut accounting software and considering making tax digital initiative by government subtle comments from 2024 that is a great feature to have or function to have on an accounting software however talking about actual tax calculation summary that coconut accounting software provides i have some concerns and concerns is because you need to estimate and make a provision of your profit so not sales not revenue but profit from your self-employed business towards um towards to decide what tax rate you will need to use for particular tax year so there is a field called set aside tax rate sorry i noted down because i couldn't remember that phil's name and you need to decide how much profit you will make from this self-employed business in this particular tax year so you can apply a correct tax rate and that's where my concerns come in because i'm not sure if those tax rates actually includes both income tax and national insurance contributions because not only income tax what you need to pay you also need to pay national insurance contributions when you reach a certain profit threshold even you will need to pay based on set amount flat amount per week or as a percentage if you go above certain higher level of profit threshold and this is not explained on coconut accounting software on that tax summary and it's why i'm saying that i have concerns that i'm not sure if that profit bracket will include whole tax what you might need to pay so actual estimate of a tax might be different from the tax what you will be getting or calculated when once you will submit your self-assessment on hmrc however coconut provides a custom guide where you can read through about what what other points you need to take into consideration like as an income if you have rental income or maybe you have also student loans then those will change your tax liability or tax what you will need to pay for particular tax year if you are self-employed but you have all these around opportunities or things happening that might impact your tax liability to awards to government bank connections you can connect up to five bank accounts or five instances to your coconut accounting software each bank account will have separate section with all transactions being pulled automatically through from that bank account all transactions will be defaulted to personal so nothing will be going through your business transactions automatically you will need to review and filter out and sort which transactions relate to your business self-employed business alongside deciding if that particular transaction is personal expense for example as expense or business related expense you can actually split those transactions and decide maybe that half of that amount relates to business and half of amount should stay in personal then you have an option to actually choose and add an amount what you want to take off from this amount and allocate to your self-employed business or apply a percentage if you use a percentages to allocate part of costs to your self-employed business you can do it on coconut accounting software and i should not forget to mention about one another great feature and that is that if you connect your bank in the middle of your tax year so you would need to review couple of months or some months or part of a year so six months maybe of transactions from your bank account if you select a transaction and there is similar transactions to this particular transaction then system will automatically filter them and like recognize or find them for you so you can click on it and text them all and say all these expenses or transactions are my business self-employed business related transactions that would save a time and it's a very great feature what coconut accounting software provides to make your life easier and you do need to go and review every single transaction on your statements cost categorization for every transaction when you select a cost category you can actually find out more details by clicking what can i claim that section will provide you more information if you can actually claim this expense as part of your business transactions for your self-employed business also when you click on actually all the expense category to select or change to different cost category next to each of these categories you will have an eye letter on the right hand side when you click on those eye letters there is more details provided to that particular expense category or cost category or income category that you are looking at and it will give more details about what you can claim and maybe why you cannot claim this one as a business expense save receipt for later coconut accounting software allows you to save receipts so take a picture on your phone and attach to your accounting software receipt by providing date amount and short description about this receipt so you can allocate later it to one of your transactions as you know if you pay this credit card your transactions will not appear straight away in your bank feed and it might take a couple days for these transactions to come through so once transaction will come through you will be able to allocate state for later receipt and pose this transaction for example as part of your self-employed business but there is one but what you need to be mindful if you delete a transaction with a support file this attached support file or receipt will not go back to cloud it will be deleted forever to view your saved receipt you will need to go to transactions section and at the top you will see that little camera icon and from here you will be able to select view saved receipts you will see all receipts which have been not allocated to your transactions maybe you have paid in cash for some expenses for your business related expenses then you need to maybe post a manual transaction and attach um this receipt as part of your cash expenses privacy and security well originally coconut had a current account so it was operating in banking sector and you know if you operate in banking sector you need certain security and privacy criteria standards map so having coconut accounting software it has the same banking secure level standard so when you register on coconut accounting software it's a lot allocated to your mobile phone number and your email address any changes you will be immediately notified through message and or through email if you want to change your email address you will be notified about that one and if you have changed your email address you will be notified about that one as well so all informations about changes and amendments on account will go through immediately also you will need to set up a five digit pin code which you will need to enter every time when you open coconut accounting software mobile app mainly every time if you have closed it you will open it you will need to enter again so it's like a similar way when you logging on in your bank account and you need to enter pin codes it's the same way coconut accounting software works if you don't feel secure with these old features you can enable also face recognition if that is available on your mobile phone you can enable face recognition feature on coconut accounting software as well yeah so i think so you do not need to worry about privacy and security and coconut other considerations so in other considerations i have three points what i want to mention and first point is about pricing second is about how transactions are separate from invoices and third point is about if you decide to cancel your subscription so firstly about pricing so coconut accounting software got only one package there is no free package available unless you take 30 days trial and package is 7 pounds 50 per month and here is my speculation that's my thinking form process they have announced coconut have announced that they have closed a current account because i want to fully concentrate on coconut accounting software development so i've got worries that price of 750 might increase in near future or maybe there might be different pricing packages because based on business types for example sole traders with different pricing package and limited companies got different pricing packages or maybe on size of the business like if your turnover is higher you will need to pay higher that's just my speculation second point was about transactions and invoices so transactions are separate function and invoices are separate on mobile app so if you receive an income then you will need to record that income as business transaction but you cannot actually automatically allocate a particular customer invoice you will need to go manually mark that invoice as paid and third point is about cancellation process it's really simple and straightforward you do not need to go on web and try to find information how to cancel from your mobile app accounting software when you go to more section you can cancel your subscription service provided link where you can click and fill in form or reach out in different ways if you wish to so these are three points what are under other considerations what i think so is important for you to know coconut accounting software is small and simple accounting software for freelancers and small business owners who actually do not need advanced features like maybe stock management or credit control i hope you found my coconut review useful but if you have any questions or require any personal advice feel free to reach out to me i have shared a link in description section below to my complete coconut accounting software tutorial where i am taking role as a freelancer blogger and i'm writing articles about travel food people culture and etc if you have not seen it yet check it out thank you for watching and i will see you next episode