10 Things You Should Try to Barter For Before Buying

In their blog post 10 Things You Should Try to Barter For Before Buying, Infomean recommends that you barter for your accounting software. It made the fourth position on their list. It sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Software is so expensive, so any way you can reduce the price is good, right?

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for with accounting software and focusing on the price alone ignores the cost and the quality of the implementation. Typically implementation costs are higher than the software and if the system is poorly implemented, the total cost of ownership can be several times the original cost of the software, as you scramble to fix data or work around software issues.

One place I worked used an accounting system because it came free with their minicomputer. Someone else's friend set himself up as an accounting system vendor then gave his not-for-resale copy of the software to my client. In both cases, while the software was free, guess how good the support was. In the first case, minimal and in the second, non existent (because it was an unlicensed copy).

Your accounting system is the back bone of your business. Beware of freebies!