Frequently asked questions

Because renting never ends. A cloud subscription charges you every month for as long as you want to open your own books. REX Accounts costs US$149, paid one time, and the program and your data file are yours for good. Over five years a mid-level New Zealand cloud plan costs more than NZ$5,000; REX costs US$149, plus whatever you choose to spend on a newer version after the first 12 months of updates.

Access ends, usually after a short read-only period. Yet New Zealand and Australian businesses must keep their records for seven years, so many people keep paying for a package they no longer use just to open old invoices, or pay again to reactivate it when the IRD or ATO asks a question. With REX the software stays installed and the data file stays on your disk; you can open it in ten years without paying anyone, including after the business has been closed or sold.

Cloud providers hold the books of thousands of businesses behind their login system, which makes them a target, and your access depends on your password, their uptime and your internet connection. REX keeps your books in a single file on your own computer that is not reachable from the internet, with no online account to be phished. The risk you carry instead is a failed disk or a stolen laptop, which is why REX Accounts takes automatic backups and lets you save dated copies wherever you like (a USB drive, your own cloud folder, your accountant). You can also protect sign-in with two-factor authentication.

Live bank feeds (REX imports a statement file instead), electronic filing of GST or BAS returns (REX gives you the figures to copy into myIR or the ATO portal), wage calculation (REX records the figures from your payroll provider), live exchange rates, and access from a phone or from any computer in the world. If you need those every day, a cloud package may suit you better; we would rather tell you than sell you the wrong thing.

Small and medium businesses that want to own their accounting: sole traders, tradespeople who price jobs and carry stock, consultancies, companies with a few staff, family trusts and rental owners, and people managing their own finances in retirement who want proper books without a monthly bill. It was built by Energy Conscious Design Limited to run its own business and is sold as the software we use ourselves.

Yes. REX Accounts is built for New Zealand (15% GST, GST101A figures) and Australia (10% GST). Anywhere else, choose "Other" under Settings, type the name of your tax (VAT, sales tax, GST) and its rate, and invoices, screens, reports and the tax summary use that name and rate. A return layout is provided for New Zealand only; elsewhere you copy the summary figures (tax on sales, tax on purchases, net) into your own return. Dates are day/month/year and the home currency label is yours to set. REX Paperworks and REX Visio2DXF have no country settings.

You pay once; there is no account, no monthly fee, no renewal and nothing that phones home. There are two kinds of licence. REX Accounts is licensed to your company or trading name: we email a key for that name, and on first launch (or under Settings if you are in the trial) you enter the name and the key. REX Paperworks and REX Visio2DXF are licensed to one named user: we email a key for your name, and the program shows "Licensed to" your name (and your company, if you enter one) at the bottom of its window and on its About page. See the next questions.

Yes. The licence is issued to one company name and covers all of that company's computers, not one machine. Install it on your office PC, your laptop and your Mac and enter the same name and key on each. What it does not cover is a second, separate business: that needs its own licence.

The licence is for one named user, and the key works for that person's name. It is not tied to a computer, so you can install it on the computers you use yourself, for example an office PC and a laptop. It must not be shared: each person who uses it needs their own licence, and the licensed name is shown at the bottom of the program's window.

Your key is emailed to you at once when you pay (check the junk folder). Install the program, enter your name exactly as it appears in that email, your company if you want it shown (optional), paste the key, tick the licence agreement and click Activate. No order number or computer code is needed.

No. Install the program on the new computer and enter the same name and key. There is nothing to approve. If you have stopped using the old computer, uninstall the program from it.

No. Only REX Accounts has a free trial (60 days, by trial key). The manuals describe every function of Paperworks and Visio2DXF, and the 14-day refund policy covers a product that does not do what its page says on a supported computer.

REX Accounts: yes, one key for the company on either platform or both. Paperworks and Visio2DXF: yes, the same key works on Windows and on a Mac.

Yes. Each separate legal entity (a company, a trust, a partnership) needs its own REX Accounts licence, and a separate data file. A licence covers one named business and all of that business's computers. Paperworks and Visio2DXF are licensed per user.

The key is tied to the name you bought under, and REX Accounts locks that name because it appears on your invoices. If the business itself changes, for example a new limited company, or you change your own name, email us with your order number and we will tell you what we can do.

Search your email for "REX licence" or "licence key". If it is gone, email [email protected] from the address you bought with and we will resend it (for Paperworks and Visio2DXF, include your name and, if you have it, your order number).

Updates in the 12 months after purchase are included. After that your version keeps working, with full access to your books, for as long as you like. Installing a version released after those 12 months is a new purchase; there is never an obligation to buy one.

By card through Lemon Squeezy, our merchant of record, in US dollars. Lemon Squeezy adds GST or local sales tax at checkout and remits it. Until the card checkout is live the Buy button opens an email order and we send a payment link.

Within 14 days of purchase, if the product does not do what its page says on a supported computer and we cannot fix it. Your rights under the Consumer Guarantees Act (New Zealand) and the Australian Consumer Law are not affected. See privacy and refunds.

Go to the trial page, give your name, company or trading name and email, and a 60-day trial key arrives by email within a minute. Download REX Accounts, tick the licence agreement on the first screen, enter the company name and key. All the features are on, no card details are taken, and the days remaining show in the corner of the window. Documents printed during the trial carry a small "REX Accounts trial version" mark.

The program locks until a purchased key is entered. Nothing is deleted and nothing is charged. Buy a licence, enter the key under Settings, Licence, and everything is exactly where you left it.

One trial per company name and per email address. If you genuinely need more time to evaluate, email us and say so.

Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), and macOS 11 or later on Apple silicon (M1 or newer). No phone or tablet versions.

On the old computer: Settings, Backups, "Save a copy as…" and put the file on a USB drive or your own cloud folder. On the new computer: install REX Accounts, activate with your name and key, then Settings, Backups, restore from that file. Your users, passwords and attached invoices come across with it.

Yes, at no cost to them. Send a copy of your data file, use the year-end export (every ledger, journal, report and register as PDF and a multi-tab spreadsheet), or let them use REX Accounts on your computer. Details for practices are on the support page.

REX Accounts has user logins with roles (administrator or user) and optional two-factor sign-in, and the books live in one data file. Keep one master file on one computer (or a shared drive) and take turns; copying the file around and editing both copies is not supported.

In a single file on your computer, shown under Settings, together with the supplier invoices and receipts you attach, which are also filed in a folder per financial year. REX Accounts keeps automatic backups in a folder next to it: one each time you close the app and one an hour while it is open. You can also save a named, dated copy at any time and roll back to it.

No. The apps do not connect to the internet at all, apart from optional emailing of invoices and statements through your own email account. Your files and drawings never leave your computer. The website sets no tracking cookies and has no accounts.

It calculates the GST101A figures (New Zealand) or 10% GST figures (Australia) from your ledger and lays them out box by box. You copy them into myIR or the ATO portal, or hand them to your accountant. Electronic filing needs IRD or ATO accreditation, which is not something a small vendor can obtain quickly, so we are honest about that boundary.

Contacts and the chart of accounts, yes, from their CSV exports (Settings, Import from Xero / MYOB). Bank transactions come in from your bank's CSV or QIF export. Historic invoices and journals are not imported; most people start REX at the beginning of a GST period with opening balances.

Every list and every report has an Export CSV button, the year-end export writes a multi-tab spreadsheet, and the Report Writer lets you build your own lists and summaries, group and total them, save them and export them.

Yes. List the currency and today's rate under Settings, give the customer that currency, and their invoices are raised in it with the rate suggested on each one. When they pay, enter the rate on the day and REX posts the bank at that rate, clears the invoice at the rate it was raised, and books the difference as an exchange gain or loss. Your reports stay in your home currency throughout.

Yes, with no limit on the number of jobs. Build costing templates with labour and material lines, cost a job from a template or from scratch, turn the costing into a quote or an invoice, assign invoices and bills to the job, record time against it, and see hours, costs and profit per job.

Yes. Stock levels update as you buy and sell, with valuation and movement reports. Each item carries a sale price plus retail, trade and discount price levels (you can rename them or add more), and a customer's price level is applied automatically on their invoices.

It records pay runs: gross, PAYE or PAYG, KiwiSaver or superannuation, the ACC earners' levy and other deductions, taken from your payroll provider's figures, so wages post to the right accounts and show in the payroll report. It does not calculate wages or tax and is not a payroll system.

Yes. Tick any number of customers, choose the period, and save, print or email a statement for each showing every invoice and payment with a running balance and what is owing as at the statement date.

Yes. Attach a PDF, or import a photo which is converted to PDF; the supplier, number, date and total are read from it where possible and can be corrected. Files are stored inside REX and in a searchable folder for the financial year, named by supplier and date.

Yes. Create a project, tag invoice lines, bills, expense claims and bank transactions to it, record time against it, and invoice the unbilled time in one click. The project screen shows hours, invoiced, costs and profit.

Yes. Set a monthly budget per income and expense account (or type an annual figure and spread it), copy last year's actuals as a starting point, and compare under Reports, Budget vs Actual.

Yes. List the currencies you deal in under Settings with today's rate against your home currency. Give a customer or supplier a currency and their invoices and bills are raised in it, with the rate suggested and editable on each document. Payments are entered in the document's currency at the rate on the day, and the difference from the rate the invoice was raised at is posted to Foreign Exchange Gain/Loss automatically. Bank accounts can be held in a foreign currency too. Reports are in your home currency; lists show the document currency. Rates are typed by you (there is no live feed) and there is no month-end revaluation of unpaid foreign invoices.

Yes. Every invoice, bill, payment, pay run and bank transaction posts to a proper general ledger, so you get a Balance Sheet, Trial Balance and audit log as well as Profit and Loss.

No. Rendering and OCR are built in on Windows. On the Mac, OCR uses the free Tesseract engine if you install it.

Yes. Open the first, click Merge, pick the others together, name the file, and the combined document opens in its own tab where you can drag pages into order, delete pages and save it under any name.

No. Modern .vsdx files are read directly. Legacy .vsd files are converted with the free LibreOffice, which the Windows installer sets up for you.

It writes DXF, which AutoCAD and every other CAD package opens and can save as DWG.