One Up
One Up
One Up stands out from other online accounting services for several reasons, both positive and negative. On the plus side, it has exceptionally sophisticated inventory management and product-pricing tools for small businesses. It’s one of the least expensive services (starts at $9 per month for solo use with no support)and one of the most expensive ($169 per month for unlimited everything). Inventory prowess aside, it can’t compete with QuickBooks Online (the Editors’ Choice for online accounting software) and Xero in terms of usability, extensibility (integrated add-ons), or user-access restrictions.
One Up’s most-distinguishing characteristic is that it was developed for Android devices and then moved to the desktop, which makes it an unusually full-featured Android smartphone app (there’s no iPhone version yet). The mobile-first design approach is good for smartphone users, which is why the company went this direction. Businesspeople need access to as much of their financial data as they can get on the go. Unfortunately, the user interface of the browser-based version is uncomfortably large and sprawling. Add to this that user access levels are not as detailed as they should be, and the fact that One Up lacks time-tracking and payroll and add-ons of any kind, and the end result is a strong offering that feels like it hasn’t quite finished the jump from mobile to the desktop.
Company, User Settings
One Up lets you start with a blank template, but if you have existing data—customers, vendors, products, and services—you can import it in .CSV format. Formatted templates are available, too. You link to your financial institutions the same way you do in any other online accounting site: by entering the sign-in credentials that you use when you visit their sites. Later, you can perform account reconciliations using a process similar to that found in other cloud-based accounting services.
The site doesn’t offer a thorough, step-by-step wizard for setting up your company like Sage One Accounting Premium does, but you can establish your One Up preferences by clicking the Settings link on the home page. One Up doesn’t include as many options in settings as some other sites do, but some of these are found elsewhere on the site, such in the area where you perform customer record entry. You can’t customize forms, though you can add a logo. Other settings here include accounting basis and currency, auto-numbering of forms, and period start/end dates.
User settings are easy to set up—too easy. You enter a name, email, and password for each user, and that’s basically it. Unless an individual is the administrator, you can only select which “modules” they can access (Sales, Products, Purchases, etc.). One Up doesn’t allow the kind of detailed, activity-based permissions that a site with such considerable financial processing capabilities should offer—especially one that is available for unlimited users. You can’t restrict users from specific activities throughout the site (creating invoices, paying bills, viewing reports, and so on). Xero handles this much better.
Getting Around
One Up’s user interface and navigation tools are slightly different from the competition’s. It does share a common convention for site-wide navigation: a vertical pane on the left contains links to the site’s primary work areas (Sales, Projects, Expenses, Accounting, Inventory, Purchasing, and Settings). One Up also lacks a dashboard, which is commonplace in software of this type.
Those section dividers are duplicated in the site’s central working area; they appear in large, colorful rectangles. Click on Sales, for example, and the site displays another series of rectangles, each labeled with that area’s activities: Customers, Sales Orders, Invoices, Payments, Receipts, Credit Memos, Products, and Services (the list in the left vertical pane also contains links for Sales Price Lists and Discount Catalogs). Click on one of them, and you can follow links to forms or records, some in list view and some in rectangle view. You can also create new entries from here. If there is a list of transactions, you’ll see totals representing their status at the top (All, Unpaid, Paid, and so on).
There’s nothing overly difficult about navigating One Up’s interface, or in entering and finding information in the service. It uses standard Windows conventions for data entry: blank fields, drop-down lists, pop-out windows for details, and icons. Data is organized a little differently than in most competing accounting servi es, though, and navigation occasionally requires an extra mouse click.
Data Entry, Display
One Up is very capable in terms of what it allows small businesses to do. Customer and vendor records are thorough enough, though they don’t include any history, as some competitors do. The site supports as many transaction forms as anyone does, and more than most (including sales orders). While they contain the necessary fields, they lack Xero’s transaction history entries. You can attach documents to transactions, but there’s no automated tool for recurring invoices, for example (you can delete them if they’re not in a period that’s been closed). One Up does, however, offer exceptional conversion capabilities (sales order to invoice, for example), which speeds up workflow and reduces the chances of data entry errors.
One Up’s inventory-management tools are far superior to anything offered by its competitors. It goes above and beyond what Xero and QuickBooks Online do, offering support for units of measure, two costing methods, stock location, and item weight and dimension. When stock goes below the minimum you require, you can automatically generate a purchase order, and you can authorize negative stock or not. Pricing options are more flexible than the competition’s, too. You can create multiple sales price lists for customers or price families, or based on quantity.
Reports are another story. Since One Up is built on a double-entry accounting framework, it includes the standard financial report templates needed. But for most other reports, you’ll have to go to specific screens and set up the drop-down menus to display the data you want (though you can find aged payable and receivable reports in their respective areas of the site). Most competing services have built-in frameworks for such information, all in one central place.
The competition also offers a way to implement an integrated payroll solution. You can pay employees using the site’s accounting features, but the average non-accountant would need a lot of direction. There’s no prebuilt application.
Last Word
One Up is a very capable cloud-based accounting solution. Its standout features are its Android app, its inventory management and pricing options, and its basic project management tools. It’s easy enough to use. But it drops the ball in reporting and payroll, iOS support, user access permissions, and direct online payment of invoices keep it from joining the top tier of sites reviewed here. QuickBooks Online excels in these areas, while One Up still needs work.
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