We use Quickbooks-on-line (ie cloud-based) for a small training business (non-VAT), and very good it is too, especially the recent major update. It costs £22.80 per month.
But if your requirements are as simple as they seem, I would seriously think of keeping your life simple and just use Excel, saved to Dropbox or similar for safety and convenience.
It is exceptionally easy to use one sheet for income, another for outgoings, and combine the two into a third sheet with a report in whatever form you like, which calculates automatically as soon as you update sheets 1 and 2.
The great thing about that is that your system is then tailored to produce precisely what you want, no more and no less.
You can add other sheets that calculate things such as asset values and depreciation (linked to the report), how-goes-it charts developed from the other sheets, and so on. You might want to have a sheet for each tenants rental payments which links to the overall income sheet, or direct to the report. If you have to issue credit invoices (why would you?), then you can have a sheet "off-accounts" for those so you know who owes what at any time, but you would only show the amount as income when it lands in your bank account. Don't bother with an accounts payable sheet; simply pay invoices fairly soon after getting them and keep a folder of the unpaid ones.
If your accountant recommends buying accounts software, get a new accountant. If you pay anyone under PAYE, use a payroll bureau, not an accountant, to tell you what to pay to the employee and to HMRC, and to submit the returns using the required software etc.
The report would be what you send to your accountant, if you use one, to prepare your annual return. It's format and content should be what is needed for that.
If you are outside the UK, ignore all the above!
Last edited by Capot; 14th August 2014 at 11:19.