Everyone wants the best deal, and if we ignore the times when we're too lazy to put efforts into researching, then sometimes we’re disappointed by not finding the right tool & having to settle for less, or at times overlook the trade-offs we need to make, & miss the most optimal solution. But don’t worry, we’ve done the hard part of reading between the lines, so that you can quickly find a solution that suits best for your accounting firm.
Cone has an unique offering that it’s hard to say no to, and it’s enticing for growing accounting & tax related firms.
In this blog, we’ll explore & review in detail how Senta, Accountancy Manager, & Cone can help streamline your accounting processes, & all the trade-offs that each tool comes with, for you to select the most optimal solution for your accounting firm.
TL;DR - Senta Vs. Accountancy Manager Vs. Cone
Senta - What Is It?
Senta is a famous practice management software in the UK, and serves all basic needs an accounting or bookkeeping firm would require. In the year 2021, it was acquired by IRIS, and since then its practice management module comes under the IRIS element brand.
How Does Senta Work?
Consisting of all the major building blocks that an account related firm finds useful, from project management, CRM to client portal, it suffices all the needs of them.
From creating proposals, onboarding clients, Senta is used by firms that provide full-servicing to their client base.
What Is The User-Friendliness Of Senta's Interface?
Having a minimal style layout, Senta’s interface can help users to directly jump into finishing their tasks, however, the visual appeal that a modern interface gives to users to remain engaged, explore the platform to become a power user of it can seem lacking in Senta.
A plain interface might be good for users coming from little to zero-technical understanding & going to use the software seldom to customize it for themselves, but a heavy user who wants to customize a platform a lot to fit it according to their need might not be fully satisfied with Senta’s current interface.
How Is Senta's Pricing Structured?
Following a sliding scale model, Senta starts for a single user at cost $30.2 or $37.8 per month when paid annually or monthly respectively. And there's an inverse relation between users & costs, as the number of users increase, the price decreases slightly.
To give you an idea, the price for licenses between 5-9 is placed at $26.80 or $33.5 per user/month when paid annually or monthly respectively.
Cone - What Is It?
Cone presents an all-in-one practice management software that fits for most of your accounting everyday operations. It aims to replace the use of multiple software, by integrating features like managing your Proposals, generating invoices & billing, with all the primary level features like CRM, project management, client portal, & more.
How Does Cone Work?
Cone is an end-to-end practice management software for accounting & tax firms. It ensures that right from the start of the idea of pitching the client, you can send Proposals from inside it, then do all the heavy-lifting of workflow, automations, project management, collaboration & communication, to finish the project, & finally with client portal keep the client engaged & active.
What Is The User-Friendliness Of Cone's Interface?
Cone being a new-age software, has the latest design & style to make its platform as intuitive as possible for all types of users. With the benefit of hindsight, it bridges the gaps present in many of the existing software, it unites its offering in a systematic manner.
The user interface compactly packs everything while making sure it nudges you to explore the platform, and display its features & tools such that all of them feel handy. Being a complete customizable software, users can curate it according to their own needs to enhance their workflow.
How Is Cone's Pricing Structured?
At its core, Cone is committed to reaching every team that requires it, can benefit from it, & expand its firms. Hence, it's priced at a disruptive market cost of only $10 per user/month. In a market, where the average cost of an accounting software is $50, Cone stands out as an attractive competitor tool that comes with no compromises.
BrightManager(formerly AccountancyManager)- What Is It?
BrightManager is again an UK focused practice management tool like Senta, targeting the area specific users to boost their productivity and its applications in their daily work of accountancy & the like. It was earlier known as AccountancyManager, & it was acquired in the year 2022 by Bright.
How Does Accountancy Manager Work?
BrightManager focuses on making the process of onboarding clients easy. With reminders, client portal, templates, it brings all needed information to one place, saving one’s time & increasing productivity.
It’s a full-service platform like Cone, where you can manage proposals, client communication, & tasks.
What Is The User-Friendliness Of Accountancy Manager's Interface?
BrightManager with a horizontal display of features, allows users to get a good overview of the platform, & keep everything within one’s arm reach. Its interface is clean, & easy to adapt, & not miss any important notification.
How Is The Accountancy Manager's Pricing Structured?
BrightManager(AccountancyManager) costs $36.3 or $45.3 +VAT per user/month. If one wants more than 12 licenses then they can subscribe to their Enterprise plan and get a quote depending on the number of users.
Senta Vs. Cone Vs. Accountancy Manager
Comparing Senta Vs. Cone Vs. Accountancy Manager, What Are The Advantages?
Senta & BrightManager(AccountancyManager), both are made for the UK users, and their features & tools list are area specific in that sense.
Cone on the other end, can be seen as a universal product, catering to the needs & wants of accountants & others globally. Meaning if one has a unique requirement that doesn’t fit in the conventional UK market, for them Cone can be more useful.
Cone is the only product which is not acquired, and hence the product innovation and more is faster. For example, billing & payments. Its contemporary design & user experience enhances the interaction with the platform. Workflow automations is another area where Cone beats them by margin.
With Cone or BrightManager you can easily manage your proposals & won’t have to use any other software to do it.
Senta Vs. Cone Vs. Accountancy Manager: What Should You Consider Before You Choose It?
Half work is done when you’ve spotted the gaps that you want to close by opting for an accounting software. Daily list of tasks, replacing as many software as you can without affecting your workflow, automating recurring tasks & reminders, can be few such things.
Cone ticks out all of these needs & demands, and makes an appealing case for firms that are growing & needs a set of tools & features that are both multi-functional and industry standard. All of it at a disrupting price of $10 only.
Include your team in the decision-making process as it can improve their acceptance to the practice management software that you’ll finalize.
Senta, Cone, And Accountancy Manager All Have Limitations. What Are They?
A major limitation in Senta is the lack of customization that’s possible for you to do. In the case of BrightManager(AccountancyManager) the workflow automations can be an underwhelming experience for most accounting related firms.
Cone can have a slight learning curve.
Bottom Line - Which One Is The Best Tool?
Cone can serve you better as it’s a comprehensive tool, filling the gaps present in many practice management software. Being a versatile tool, you can customize it to a greater extent & run your complete firm through it. The level of automation it comes with, you’ll no longer need to do little admin stuffs, as it takes care of kickstarting the project as soon as client signs document, sends payment auto-reminders, & streamlining your work as you can manage your proposals inside it, without having to use a different software.
Senta & BrightManager being the player in the UK market uses the power of being price-setter or adhering to it. However, with disrupting pricing plans Cone offers a better platform at a better deal. In an industry where the average price is $50, it comes at a heavily discounted price, that both the others can’t match at all.
Frequently Asked Questions (Faqs)
How Do The Integration Capabilities Of Senta, Accountancy Manager, And Cone Differ?
Senta offers a traditional range of integration that covers all basic & more needs. All the industry old & popular software like QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks.
BrightManager(Accountancy Manager) also follows the same path & integrates with many well-renowned software like QuickBooks Online, & the like. And smoothly integrated with all the major file & document management software like Dropbox, Google Drive, & more.
Cone not only natively integrates with top software in the accounting industry like Xero, QuickBooks Online, but also seamlessly integrates with the new-age & contemporary softwares in the market.
You can also expect to integrate any productivity tools like Office 365, G-Suite, or any other tools that you use.
What Types Of Support Can Users Expect From Senta, Accountancy Manager, And Cone?
All the 3 softwares have multiple support channels through which users can reach out to them.
Senta comes with a dedicated knowledge for users to refer to, & other two have a repository of blogs for the users to fall back on.
Apart from that Senta & BrightManager users can call on the customer support number to get their queries solved.
How Do Senta, Accountancy Manager, And Cone Handle Data Migration And Backup?
Broadly all the 3 softwares use the industry standard when it comes to data migration & backup.
Providing tools to migrate your data from your previous accounting software to Senta, it also ensures an automatic data backup of your work.
BrightManager(Accountancy Manager) again supports migration of data, & even manual backup for all your work inside it.
Cone as well taking the cloud-based approach automatically saves all your data & gives restore options on the backup side, while giving plenty of data migration from different tools & formats like CSV, & spreadsheet, or your last accounting software, & more.
How Do Senta, Accountancy Manager, And Cone Cater To Different Business Sizes?
Both Senta & BrightManager(Accountancy Manager) are niche products for the UK market. Hence, in order to cater to them the features are suited on how businesses operate in that part of the world.
Keeping its practice & tasks management tools on the focus. And, therefore it lacks an ample advantage that a versatile product like Cone would’ve to offer. Overall, making them only suitable for small firms & independent/freelance accountants. Mid-&-big size firms require a lot more to get done with their practice management software, & hence for them using one of these could be a restrictive & underwhelming experience.
With a strong set of communication & collaboration tools with automations & other high functionalities, Cone being an versatile product, can fit in all sizes of firms and be useful in micro & macro areas of the work. Even after overlapping in the list of features, a powerful user experience uplifts the level of interaction & utility of the Cone platform.