Three years ago two sisters and their best friend saw an opportunity in the video and audio tape archiving industry and decided to take the plunge and start their own business.

The Tape Bank was born which addresses the niche market of storing video and audio tapes on behalf of advertising companies and video production houses.

The Tape Bank stores tapes in libraries, and then catalogues them on a computer database which can be easily accessed and retrieved at the request of the customer. Clients include Multichoice, Young & Rubican and Love Life.

The tapes are stored in a dust-free, fire proof environment and customers outsource the storage to The Tape Bank because it provides better tape management and security.

When we started, we used Excel to do our accounts,� says Puny Antoniadis, a director of the company. We then came across EconoAccounting and realised that it could cope adequately with our business without the need for prior accounting knowledge.

It is a logical system, inexpensive and the auto-allocate feature saves days of work each month. It has been a good investment and worth every cent. We work a lot with Internet banking and it made sense to move from a manual system. EconoAccounting has still given us control over our accounts without the need for an accountant, she says.

What concerned us with other accounting packages was that you pay for something but only use 20 percent of its functionality, as well as being difficult to use.

EconoAccounting provides all the functionality we need and does not include loads of functions that we cannot understand. Now, with the click of a button, we can produce a balance sheet, income statement and trial balance at any time.

Previously, it was a long procedure to produce financials and required the services of an accountant. We have now reduced our accounting bill, and print out our financials for our accountant who checks the figures, but with us doing the majority of the work.�

For more information on tape archiving contact The Tape Bank on 011 791 7944.