iCount vs Rivhit: When Cloud Is Enough and When You Need Full Bookkeeping

iCount is a cloud business-management system with operational modules around documents, clearing, inventory and hours. Rivhit is a wider product family - bookkeeping, payroll, a till, card terminals, iCredit clearing, Masav, and dedicated products for law firms and colleges - with licensing, versions and practitioner tools.

What each presents

The row on how it runs is what changes the working day. A system with versions and a licence needs maintenance - updates, renewal, sometimes remote support - and that is also what allows functional depth hard to deliver in cloud alone. There is no right side here, only fit.

Which business needs payroll and Masav in one family?

A business with employees and with regular collection from bank mandates. There, separating systems costs money: employee data in two places, manual transaction entry, and duplicate reconciliation at month end.

The signs you are in that category:

• You have four or more employees, and payslips are produced outside and keyed back in.
• You collect from bank mandates, not only from cards.
• Your accountant asks for files in a specific structure, not just system access.
• You import bank statements by hand every month.

If two of those are true, a synchronised product family is worth more than a comfortable interface. If none are, the opposite.

What to ask Rivhit, and what to ask iCount

Ask Rivhit: which modules are included and which are paid; whether Rivhit Online covers what you need or an installation is also required; who maintains versions; what licence renewal requires from you; and what Masav looks like in practice, from mandate to return file.

Ask iCount: how payroll is handled given there is no module; what tax authority representation includes exactly; how inventory behaves with multiple warehouses; and what happens with allocation numbers - as with any Israeli system, a question that needs a demo rather than a statement.

Ask both: what can be exported, in what format, and how far back.

When neither is the answer

There is a forgotten third case: both systems are too small for the need. The signs are clear when they appear together:

• Inventory with bills of materials, stock counts and warehouse locations.
• Manufacturing, even simple assembly from components.
• Several branches with separate price lists and permissions.
• Costing reports comparing budget against actual per project.

When three of those are true, the question is not iCount versus Rivhit but whether you need an ERP - a different decision, discussed in the system-fit method across Priority, Hashavshevet and Rivhit.

What actually decides it: who works in the system

Before the functional comparison, answer one question: who will work in this every day. The answer moves the decision more than any table:

• The owner, between meetings. A comfortable cloud interface beats functional depth nobody will switch on.
• An administrative employee. You can afford a deeper system, but it needs training and documentation.
• An in-house or outsourced bookkeeper. Then their opinion is the first consideration, not the second - they are the one working in it for eight hours.
• An external accountant only. Check what they work with today, because a familiar interface saves you in fees.

That is why two businesses of identical size choose differently. Automating bookkeeping across these systems is documented in automating Hashavshevet and Rivhit, and the technical side of the connections is in the Rivhit API guide and the iCount API guide.

What a paid module means for your planning

Rivhit presents some capabilities as paid modules - among them Masav, digital signature, bank statement import and a cheque scanner. That is not a drawback, but it changes how you plan: instead of asking "what does the system do", you ask "what will I switch on in year one".

The practical way to do that:

1. Write down the three manual jobs that take the most time each month.
2. Check which module solves each one, in both systems.
3. Ask for a quote on that combination only - not on the full bundle.
4. Add one module you will need in a year, and ask what it adds.

Step four is what prevents a surprise: a module that looks cheap as a future add-on can turn out to be a whole plan upgrade.

Note that this situation usually surfaces in year two rather than year one, which is why export is the insurance: a system you can leave with your data is not a final decision.

Sources

• Rivhit - business management solutions, company site
• iCount - online bookkeeping and invoicing
• Israel Tax Authority - Israeli invoices