Done the Sage bit. If you want an excellant package that we have used since 2000 for both companies we manage, use Quick Books Pro. You can prepare estimates from it, track job costs, invoice, send letters, easy financial reports and can be multi user across a network. Some Accountants are re sellers so picking up a copy need not be expensive.
We use quickbooks (for 5 yrs) also and can totally recommend it. It's straight forward to set up and very intuitive to use. This software was recommended to us by our accountant, although as our affairs are pretty simple we went for the regular programme (not pro) , its was cheaper as well. :)
I use Quickbooks as well. Have used both Sage and Quickbooks for many business'es over the last 5 years, with turnovers in excess of £1m per month and never had any problems with quickbooks at all.
Its a lot simpler than Sage, but still full featured.
I still use an old dosh program. I think you can still download it free too. Perfectly adequate for everything I need. I find Sage a bit too complex for my needs.
Stuart, I've been using Quickbooks for two different businesses for 14 years. I agree with all the positive comments about it above. There will always be advocates of either QB or Sage depending on what users grew up with (a bit like the PC vs Mac comparison). Having said that, If you had been persuaded to use Sage some years ago, you would probably have migrated away from it as soon as QB became available and I suspect that some of Sage's old shortcomings still lurk below the surface even now that it has been "Windowised". For what it's worth, there are obviously several ways to approach your book keeping. The paper way (using day books etc) and submitting these to an accountant. However much or little an accountant charges for book keeping (as opposed to end of year accounts), you will soon have paid them more than the initial cost of of QB. In my opinion, it would be short sighted to make initial cost of software your priority. Regarding the amount of effort required, it depends on how many book keeping transactions you need to post. I would have thought that landscapers may only be raising a few invoices a week (depending on size of jobs) and bills for materials etc which could easily be entered in a few minutes each evening or say an hour at the weekend. If tou're getting into VAT I'd definitely get into QB as it makes the whole thing completely painless. To be continued....
I've continued this as the text pane starts jumping around when it gets full so you can't see what you're typing. Anyway, the only other things I wanted to say were that if you have any detailed questions about QB or how to approach your book keeping, please feel free to ask here or by PM or by direct email (or even Skype if you have it.). I'm quite happy to share my experiences of book keeping or QB with any member as I feel that you obviously will want to concentrate your time on the landscaping and minimise the effort put into overheads even though it's very important to keep accurate records as not doing so will eventually creep up behind you and bite you in the nether regions. I'm also willing to answer detailed questions about using QB providing I know the answer.