Twinfield's answers to frequently asked questions

Twinfield users are, typically, small and medium enterprises (SME) or small and medium businesses (SMB), often using the product in conjunction with their accountant. They can be in any industry. The product is designed to be easy enough for a small start up company with couple of staff, yet powerful, and flexible enough to be a good solution for larger companies. Twinfield users include sole traders, as well as companies with 500 or more staff.

No. Twinfield was founded in 2000 to offer bookkeeping software in an exciting new way. Six years later, Twinfield is still the most successful provider of online services in Europe.

Twinfield is used by many large accountancy firms across Europe. See the pages Accountants en Connected accountants. Twinfield interfaces with several statutory accounts preparation packages such as AuditAgent, Audition, Sage Apex, Viztopia and others.

Yes, in most cases through a connected accountant. For further information, see Entrepreneurs.

Yes, Twinfield has excellent references in this regard. For further information see middle to large organisations and the Case Studies on the home page.

Yes, it covers all of the standard accounting functions as well as sales invoicing, time and expense billing, project accounting, budgeting, credit management and salary input. The product is intended to be a general commercial accounting solution for all types of business, although it is particularly strong for business to business services companies who need time and expense billing and project accounting.

Twinfield has functions to hold salary and wage data and integrate with other payroll systems, but it does not do payroll calculation. We have integrated with a number of different payroll solutions in various countries. In the UK we partner with MyPaye.co.uk who provide a very cost effective Software as a Service payroll designed for small and medium businesses (SMB's). In Ireland we interface with Collsoft who also offer easy to use and reasonably priced payroll software for SMB's.

The delivery of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions represents a dramatic shift that is taking place in the IT World today. In the traditional approach a company licences software and starts a project to install, implement and support it on their own hardware. With SaaS they buy access to the software from an Internet connected PC on a “pay as you go” basis, with no capital outlay, and with somebody else taking on the headache of managing and supporting the software and hardware infrastructure. This idea isn't that new. In 1961 the respected Computer Scientist John McCarthy was the first to publicly suggest (in a speech given to celebrate MIT's centennial) that computer time-sharing technology might lead to a future in which computing power and even specific applications could be sold through the utility business model (like water or electricity). Now that we have the Internet, and with broadband access widely available, the concept has become a reality.

No. Software as a Service (SaaS), Application Service Provider (ASP, On-Demand applications, are all variants of hosted or managed services. What they all have in common is that the end user has access to applications through a web browser and an Internet connection, and somebody else is taking on the headache of IT management. However, ASP generally refers to the company managing the software – they could be providing managed applications, or they could take over the management of existing traditional software. They often use an extra layer of software (such as CITRIX) to “web enable” traditional Windows or Client/Server software. The key difference with SaaS is that the better providers have architected their solutions from scratch for Internet access, and so they are easier to use, more scalable, and provide better performance.

addition, the technology and cost approach means that company’s can start with a small pilot, prove the software works, and then roll out the solution to a larger audience only when it is successful. SaaS providers have a very different business model to traditional software authors as there are no upfront fees and licences. The SaaS company’s focus is on support

Twinfield is charged on a “pay as you go” monthly subscriptions with a range of prices based on the specific functions and processes a particular user requires. A full function user that can do everything costs €75/£52 per month, and then there are several different price levels down to €10/£7 per month. Click here for full details of the price matrix.

Since there is no software to be delivered or installed, you can have access to your working Twinfield environment as soon as you've completed the contractual formalities of signing our terms and service level agreement. You will have your user ID and password access within 24 hours of signing up with the service.

Firstly, Twinfield has a very strong customer base which includes very large organisations and top accountancy firms. We certainly do not expect to be going out of business! However for our clients' peace of mind, we have an Escrow agreement which would allow clients access to source code and documentation so that they could continue to operate the service should Twinfield not be in a position to do so. And of course you can always download and store your own data. This is, and always remains, your property.

Software as a Service applications like Twinfield are designed to be easy and intuitive to use in the way that services from Google, Yahoo or Amazon are easy to use. Most organisations will only need a day or a few days training and some of their users may only need some initial guidance and access to the documentation.

No. Software as a Service applications like Twinfield already include helpdesk support, and the software maintenance service of defect correction, and new releases within their monthly subscription fee.

Unlike traditional software, Twinfield is updated on a regular basis, with no intervention required by the user. Most of the time new releases containing corrections or new functions are added on Wednesdays in the middle of the night to minimise any disruption to the users. If this means that the service is going to be unavailable for any significant time, then an announcement is made in advance, and any users that happen to be logged on to the system at the planned time are notified online to give warning of the interruption. Major releases of new functions will be announced and explained in our regular customer newsletters.

Yes. The system is only shut down when an extensive upgrade needs to take place - this is only done during the night to minimise inconvenience to clients and a check always takes place to see if any users are online at the time of the shut down. The guaranteed availability per month is 99.6% and this target is continually measured from six different locations in the world.

Yes, you can do this in two ways. 1. There are Twinfield functions that allow you to select and browse the detail of all of the data in the system. As well as viewing these records on the screen, you can export them as a CSV file, an Excel spreadsheet or as a file of XML. You can then analyse the data with Excel, or any other reporting or analysis tool - most products on the market will accept one of these formats as input. 2. There is an optional extra module called Twinfield Analysis. This is a special plug-in for Excel which you can download and install (from the support area of the system). It adds a function to Excel where you can log in to your Twinfield database with your normal user ID and password. It provides you with access to all of your company data, and gives you a number of predefined data cube formats for downloading and analysing (balance sheet, p & l, assets, sales, debtors, etc.) in as comprehensive a way as you care to set up with the power of Excel. Once you have created an appropriate Excel report, you simply log in to the live database and refresh the report for the latest results.

Yes. Each Twinfield accounting company has a base currency, and one additional reporting currency. Individual transactions can be input with one of these currencies, or with any other currency.

Twinfield is a multi-company, multi-currency system, designed for International companies like yours. You will be able to set up a company structure, chart of accounts, consolidation and reporting approach that matches the way you do business. Everyone will have access to the same data and all of the functions of Twinfield from any location. We specialize in remote support and training, and we have direct operations and partners to provide local support and country specific requirements in a growing number of territories.

Yes it’s easy. We provide conversion from many existing accounting solutions, such as Sage Line 50, Exact, QuickBooks and Access Accounts. In general, if you can provide us with the data (balance sheet, p & l, sales invoices, purchase invoices, assets, etc.) in an Excel, CSV or XML format, then we will be able to import that data and set up your initial Twinfield database.

With the Twinfield service, your data is much safer than the conventional computing environment found in most companies. Your data can only be accessed from a secure HTTP connection with 128-bit data encryption. As well as your user ID and password, you can opt for an additional security level where a 6 digit pass coded is sent as an SMS message to your mobile to be entered as part of the sign on process. Our hosting partner backs up your data every 6 hours, and in addition, all of your data is mirrored to servers in the New York once every 24 hours. This gives the kind of disaster recovery approach that is only deployed by the largest of corporations. In addition, the service is monitored 24 hours a day 7 days a week by a team based at The Hague to check for and resolve any unauthorised access attempts.

Your business information is your most important asset, so we safeguard your privacy with care and vigilance. Our privacy policy is extremely thorough. Under no circumstances will we, or anyone else, ever access your data without your expressed permission. Simply stated, we do not share your data with anyone, ever (legal obligations excepted). Because it's your data, you always have the ability to download it at any time. You can view our complete privacy policy here.

Although the first version of the product used a particular proprietary client/server product as its accounting engine, we soon realised that the best approach to give the scalability, performance and ease of use that we required was to design and develop a web architected solution from scratch. Twinfield is a unified ledger product, designed for online accounting with multi-company and multi-currency facilities.

Twinfield is developed by Twinfield NV of The Netherlands, with a dedicated team based at Hoevelaken, 30 minutes from Amsterdam.

Contact your local Twinfield representative by clicking here.

Yes, in combination with the internet browser Firefox.

Twinfield is a web service that can be accessed from any PC with an Internet connection and a web browser. There is absolutely no software to be downloaded and installed on your PC for normal use, and you don't need any special setting or configuration of your web browser to make Twinfield work. Although the service can work on any available connection speed, we recommend a broadband connection, and we support Internet Explorer version 5.5 or above on a Windows based PC.

No. Assuming that you have an appropriate PC and a broadband connection, you will find that the Twinfield service performs extremely well because it has been designed from scratch for web access, rather than being older software that has been web enabled by an additional level of software (such as CITRIX or Windows Terminal Server). Most of the time you won't notice the response time, because it falls well below the 2-3 second level. Where a function would take longer (such as printing a report, or importing a data file) then these processes always happen in the background once they have been initiated. You are notified when the process has finished, and then you are directed where to view the results.

We own the server hardware which supports Twinfield, but it is managed for us by our hosting partner Easynet at their secure data bunker near Schipol airport. Read more on the security page.

Unlike some Software as a Service providers, we provide specific guarantees within our service level agreement. We guarantee that the service will be available 99.6% of the time, except for scheduled downtime for upgrades, which is always announced in advance and carried out at times to minimise operational disruption. As you log on to the system a monitor shows you what the availability has been for today, last week and last month.

Firstly, all of our systems and disks are mirrored, to provide continuity of service. However, your data is backed up once every 6 hours and stored in a secure, fire proof safe at our security controlled data centre at Schipol Airport. Once every 24 hours, your data is encrypted and sent to another secure data centre in New York. In addition, you have 24/7 access to copy and download your data yourself. Daily backups are stored for 14 days. Backups of Saturday nights are stored for one month while the backup from the last day of the month is stored for one year. Finally, the year end backup is stored for seven years.

You don't have to. Keeping the software up to date on the latest version is a standard part of the Twinfield service.

This will depend on the particular applications you have installed, but Twinfield has been designed to make it as easy as possible to integrate with other systems. There are published formats for importing or exchanging records and transactions for all of the system's files and inputs. These include the balance sheet, p & l, customers, suppliers, assets, purchases, sales, invoices, cash book, and bank data. The interface can be either an Excel file, or XML. Depending on your particular application, there may be standard facilities you can use, or additional development may be required. Please contact us to discuss your circumstances in more detail.