Parnall Group is a family-run, multi-company enterprise based at the historic Trelonk farm and estate in Cornwall, UK. The group has chosen Aqilla cloud accounting software to replace Sage 50 as the expanding group’s needs changed, allowing the accounts team a better user experience when managing entries across multiple accounts.

Aqilla was implemented in early 2020 to replace Sage 50 as the expanding group’s needs changed, allowing the accounts team a better user experience when managing entries across multiple accounts on a daily basis. Standardised reporting for each entity has been set up using Sharperlight – a low maintenance and highly-flexible BI platform, fully-integrated with Aqilla – to streamline the management reporting process.

Finance manager Jonathon Powell explains, “As a group, Aqilla’s interface makes it dead easy for us to use. Once logged in, you can go from one company to another using a simple drop-down menu. With other packages, we would have had to keep logging in and out. Aqilla is a different-looking package to something like Sage, QuickBooks or even SAP, but once you get used to it, it is so easy to use. The more I use it, the more I like it.”

Jonathon and his team use Aqilla for all the usual transactional processes such as invoices, journals and bank transactions. When implementing Aqilla, Custom Attributes can be created as fields in documents such as sales and purchase orders. Multiple fields can be created to enable reporting on things like inventory, batches, serial numbers or indeed whole cost centres. For more complex reporting, a whole new database table can be configured in Aqilla for full Project Accounting, allowing users to include timesheets, expenses and purchases which relate to specific projects.

Summing up on his overall experience of working with Aqilla, Jonathon emphasizes two things, “One of the biggest benefits in working with Aqilla is the fact that you get a real person at the end of the line who can talk you through your problem. Secondly, it’s about how easy Aqilla is to use. Aqilla is a different-looking package to something like Sage, QuickBooks or even SAP but once you get used to it, it is so easy to use.”