Cloud accounting trial offer hits a milestone

Stephen Withers
Monday, 04 July 2011 13:36

Business IT - Technology

10,000 of Netregistry's 250,000 customers have signed up for a free trial of the cloud based Reach Accounting service.

It generally isn't a big deal if a lot of people take up a free offer. But when it's for something as central to the operation of a business as accounting software, people tend to be more cautious.

After all, migrating to a different accounting program is no small matter even for a small business, unless all your customers pay cash on the nail and you treat your suppliers the same way. Even then, it's not as simple as trying a new word processor.

So Netregistry's announcement that 10,000 SMEs have accepted its offer of a free two-year subscription to the cloud-based Reach Accounting service can be seen as a significant milestone, even if not all of them end up actually using it - though the company does claim "high and rapidly growing activity rates. Metregistry's gamble is that sufficient users will convert to paying customers (at $25 per month) after the first two years to make the exercise worthwhile.

$25 per month is a competitive price. For example, MYOB Live Accounts costs the same, while Xero Accounting is a little more expensive with prices starting at $29 per month. The real questions are which service best suits a particular business's needs, and whether conventional desktop software (which in some cases is no more expensive than a cloud service) is more appropriate.

The Reach Accounting free trial was initially offered to customers of Netregistry-branded services, but will be extended to those of the group's other brands over the coming months.

CONTINUED