SBA * Consulting LTD

Every company needs an accounting system. It's a necessary part of business, just like payroll and taxes. However, what type of accounting system depends on the degree of functionality and robustness that is required. There are large multi-million dollar companies running their businesses on such low-end products as Quickbooks. Small companies have been convinced to run their businesses on SAP. Picking the right accounting system can in some cases make or break the firm!

Which system to buy is not only a budgetary decision, but a planning decision. Whichever package you choose, it must try to make it fit your company today and tomorrow. For the last twenty years, there have been two subsets to the Accounting System marketplace; low-end and high-end. Every so often, a manufacturer has published what they have labeled a mid-range accounting system. Invariably, these systems have failed.

Why have all these mid-ranged systems failed? It's not that difficult to figure out, Companies out grow low-end systems when they exceed the abilities of the software. Either the robustness of the package is compromised, or they need more functionality.

Robustness: This means if the Company was doing 10 invoices a day and now has to do 100, their low-end accounting system just can't keep up. The back-end database is not made to handle the volume of transactions encountered.

Functionality: The Company now requires more detailed information, or specialized applications, which are not available in the low-end software. They require the ability to drill down and seek out information from the accounting system, in effect, data mining.

So what happens? The Company buys a mid-range package. They spend less money for the mid-range package then they would for the high-end system, but spend an equivalent amount of time implementing the package. Lo and behold, in a short span of time they find that they have outgrown their new mid-range package.

It is the short life span of the mid-range accounting system that has traditionally been its own downfall. This is why most of the mid-range packages have gone the way of the dinosaur. Not that these packages are inherently bad, its just businesses grow thru them at a much faster rate than low-end systems.

Peachtree2000

Peachtree Software, Inc. has introduced a "brand" new accounting system, call Peachtree2000. We installed this new software on our Pentium 233 Windows95 box in the VAR Business lab and started testing it. We found the installation to be a breeze, but so is the Peachtree for Windows package, so we weren't all to impressed by that issue. Unfortunately, we were sent diskettes instead of a CD-ROM, and the stand-a-lone version.

We like to see what's under the hood of an accounting system. Therefore, We started to poke around in the Peachtree2000 sub-directory. While poking, we found some interesting facts. Peachtree is still using Btrieve as their database. It's the local version, not the server version. We wondered what was the difference between this version of the software and Peachtree for Windows, which also uses a local version of Btrieve. Already we can foresee performance as an ongoing issue with Peachtree2000. Just wait until a Company starts entering enormous amounts of data from multiple users - arghhhh!

You may have noticed our incredulous quote marks around the word "brand " when introducing this product. This product is not new, just re-hashed from an old MICA IV program. This was made evident by its having a branded splash screen when we executed a program located in the Peachtree2000 sub-directory.

When we fired up this new product, we found a very fancy splash screen on a 640 x 480-sized screen. Our monitor was set at a very comfortable 800 x 600. Peachtree200 was somewhat smallish in size. So we tried to maximize the screen. You can't! Your stuck with this small work area, end of story! Most, most annoying. In addition, to add insult to injury, all the other screens are crowded and jammed together, making continual use of the product difficult, tedious and hard on the eyes.

Add this to our litany of dislikes, the screen is for the most part not written as a Windows Graphical Users Interface, but as a DOS GUI! This is supposed to be a Windows product, but the setup of the system makes changes to your Config.sys file. It requires 140 files, 32 Buffers and FCBS of 60,60. When was the last time you installed a Windows95 product that even looked at your Config.sys file? I looked at the manual and could not find the Windows95 seal of approval…. Interesting.

So much for initial impressions - which as they say are the most important! Now lets take a look at how this "new" accounting system performs. Where appropriate, we are going to compare it to Peachtree for Windows, which happens to be quite a good low-end package (despite a flaw in its adherence to GAAP - Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

We found a very interesting and useful report called the Financial Snap Shot, something not found in their Peachtree for Windows product. With a fast Alt+S, you were able to get a quick look at every piece of financial information of note in the system, based on the modules you are using. Further inquires could be made on some of the information contained within the report by clicking on a command button or hitting a function key.

Other items of note was the poor quality of the on-line help and the fact that Peachtree2000 actually created a new calculator for their product. The ability to place notes through the system was a nice touch, as was the ability to enter Freight rates for the Invoicing module. This permits the Shipping department to recoup either exact shipping costs, based on the charts provided by Shippers, such as UPS and Fed Express, without constantly looking up these values.

General Ledger

Moving around the screens in Peachtree2000 is not as easy as Peachtree for Windows. They have, as mentioned before crammed each small screen with more buttons and drop down windows that you can handle. To perform look-ups, you need to be in the exact field. If you not careful and you try to do a lookup on an Account Number, but only know the description, you have to exit out of the lookup and click on the description field. It took us a few minutes to catch on to this little ditty.

We tried to enter a General Ledger Journal transaction. The system provided us with a batch and sequence number. It also provided pre-defined and user defined Journal Codes. All very nicely done. We were able to find our account numbers after figuring out which field to be on, and set to enter a simple transaction. On the screen, Peachtree2000 asks you to enter the Account Number, a Description (automatic) whether the transaction is a Debit or Credit and then to put the amount into either Debit or Credit column. By answering Debit, you were not allowed in the Credit column, nor were you allowed to enter a negative (credit) number in the debit column. Why did they need a Debit/Credit switch? Seems like a totally unnecessary step.

We then wanted to view a report on this transaction, and found routing a report to the screen, for a majority of this accounting system not to be an option! Come on guys, in our environmentally conscience society, we all don't need to kill a tree, just to view an edit report. This sounds like MICA IV rearing its ugly little head.

Some other tidbits in the G/L include No Detail trial Balance and No Adjusting Period, with the former being required for auditing and the later for end of period adjustments.

Inventory

The Inventory system compared to Peachtree for Windows has added some functionality. Multiple warehouses, units of measure, vendors with vendor part numbers, and price levels. It supports five different methods of Inventory valuation (but only one can be used). However, in implementing this feature, they only provide three costing buckets. We're told Peachtree for DOS has 12 buckets. Even without this knowledge, three buckets just aren't enough to properly account for FIFO or LIFO or for that matter Average costing. A major problem in our opinion!

An interesting feature, sure to be miss-used by many Companies, is the Write-up and Write-down option. This feature, used to adjust inventories so their carrying costs can mimic current market conditions, is not found in many high-end accounting systems.

As we found in all the other modules, Peachtree2000 has an awkward posting routine, and requires multiple steps and interfacing from the G/L to each module for the accounting data to pass. Peachtree for Windows uses a direct posting routine, which is painless and accurate. We are unsure why Peachtree2000 would want to use this very DOS based approach to posting.

Backend

While looking at Sales Order and Purchase Order, we found it also somewhat awkward. After we entered in an order, we tried to find it in the system and edit it. After 15 minutes we finally figured out that you had to know the order number. There was no way to search for a given order. Most disappointing.

Playing with Purchase Orders, we couldn't figure out in the Receiving module how to enter the Invoice number associated with the PO. We finally gave up, and found out that the Invoice field is only 7 characters long. This amused us greatly, since Peachtree2000 had some an interesting Freight Charging system in Sales Order. We're amused because FedEx, one of the rates you can enter there, produces invoices with 14 characters! Is this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is up to? Or is it because they bought MICA IV and shoved it into a new framework?

Not all of Peachtree2000 is bad; we did find some redeeming qualities. The qualities that impressed us were good audit trails, and a very well defined commission structure in A/R. In addition, Peachtree2000's Job Costing system really tracks retainage. They also fixed (or this version of MICA IV never allowed), posted transactions to be edited, a major flaw with Peachtree for Windows.

In closing, Peachtree2000's slogan is "Powerful Accounting for the Next Century". Somehow, we just don't think so.