Thriday vs. Excel: Which is best for business owners?

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Excel has always been a popular choice for small business owners to track their spend, income and budget. Excel can be useful if you want to plan ahead and play around with different financial scenarios. Thriday combines some of the best aspects of Excel - forecasting, budget and planning - with the power of real transaction data and automation. Thriday is the perfect solution for small business owners who have grown out of using Excel because their business needs to accurately track profit and loss, cashflow and balance sheet data for end of financial year reporting.

STEP BY STEP GUIDE

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Business bank accounts

Being able to setup a business bank account* with Thriday means you can instantly track all your income and expenses with no effort. Thriday's unique bookkeeping function even categorises your transaction to the correct chart of accounts. Microsoft Excel does not allow you to create a business bank account and as a result, you can only manually important your transactions to track you income and expenses.

Unlimited invoices and quotes

Thriday allows you to create, customise and send invoices and quote with ease. You can even tailor your template down to the HEX code. Some business owners use Microsoft Excel to create and track their invoices but you can't track your income and see the status of your invoice in real-time. Thriday can monitor if your invoice has been viewed or not, and even if it has been paid. Thriday also allows you to setup automated payment reminders if the invoice is overdue.

Automated allocations

When you start raking in revenue, simplify your financial game. Activate automated allocations to seamlessly route a portion of your earnings to the bank account you prefer. Whether it's for streamlining Profit First distributions or allocating a percentage to your Super account, we've got your small business covered.

Expense reconciliation

Every business owner likes to keep their costs in check but it's hard to do without the right information at your finger tips. Unlike Microsoft Excel, Thriday can pull all your real-time transaction data and then track your costs by category, and GST. Seeing your spend by category can help you make informed decisions about when to cut back, and when to invest more.

Receipt scanning

For most expenses you need a receipt or similar document as evidence of your expenses. You will need to keep a copy of these for five years in the event you are audited. Thriday has an inbuilt receipt scanning feature which allows you to upload, take a photo, or forward via email any receipts you receive. Those transactions are then automatically reconciled to the corresponding bank expense and the GST is calculated. Microsoft Excel does not provide any receipt scanning functionality which means you will be forced to either track them manually (hopefully not in a shoe box), or use another product that will cost you money.

Cashflow forecasting

If you want to take out the guess work of knowing how your business will be positioned in the future , then Thriday's cashflow forecasting feature is going to be a game changer for your business. Unlike Microsoft Excel which has no integration into bank account data, as soon as a transaction hits your Thriday account, Thriday will update your current and predicted cashflow position. Having this information at your fingertips means you can make decisions today, knowing what implications it will have on tomorrow.

Bill payment tracker

Most business owners spend at least 2 hours a week paying their bills. You know the drill. Sit down at your computer, pull up all your invoices or email, and manually trawl through the details to confirm the exact amount, due date and payment details. Some business owners will even use Microsoft Excel to track all these bills and determine when they should be paid. The good news is that Thriday now removes this headache. With Thriday, you can simply upload, forward or scan your invoices and Thriday will take care of the rest. All the invoice details are retrieved, and you can confirm the details and make a payment. If life could be a dream sh-boom!

Automated bookkeeping

Getting a good grasp on your real-time financial position has never possible before Thriday. Bank feed data is messy, unstructured and days late. With Thriday, anytime you earn income or spend money, your current and projected financial position are instantly updated. You can see exactly where your money has gone, or how much you have left to spend. Microsoft Excel works similar to other solutions in that it can provide powerful 'rear view mirror' insights, but when it comes time to figuring out what is going to happen tomorrow, you are left scratching your head.

Budget tracking

Many small businesses use Microsoft Excel to track their budget and expenses. Excel has some great forecasting and trend analysis features that you can utilise. What is often forgotten however, is that Excel does not integrate into your business banking transaction account. So if you actually want to control your spend, there is nothing you can do. With Thriday, you can setup sub-accounts for different purposes, common examples would be Income, Expenses, GST, Wages, or Savings. You can then track your spend against these categories, and even freeze your debit card to put a temporary block on purchases to ensure you don't go over budget. Thriday is a great way to budget!

BAS lodgment

BAS lodgment is a requirement if you are registered for GST. Depending on your business size, you will need to lodge your BAS either monthly, quarterly or annually. Thriday calculates your BAS automatically and even notifies you when it's due. Thriday takes all your transaction activity and automatically calculates your net GST position. You can then lodge your BAS directly to the ATO for a fraction of the cost of using an accountant. Microsoft Excel does not provide any integration to the ATO, and you would have to import all your bank account data to calculate your position yourself. This could easily take you 4 to 5 hours to do on your own.

Management reports

Microsoft Excel does not provide any management reporting which means you need to import your bank transaction data and create them manually yourself. When doing things by hand, you run the risk of human error. Thriday on the other hand allows you to generate all your accounting reports, including income statement, cashflow statement and balance sheet with a press of a button. You can view the reports online, or download a copy.

Thriday - A fully digital alternative to Excel

Find out how much money you could save by switching to Thriday

Business bank accounts

Unlimited invoices and quotes

Automated allocations

Expense reconciliation

Receipt scanning

Cashflow forecasting

Bill payment tracker

Automated bookkeeping

Budget tracking

BAS lodgment

Management reports

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