The overall focus of this release is to improve performance and simplify use. The developers attempted to answer three key questions which they believe need to be addressed by all businesses:

1. Is my business on track in terms of overall performance indicators?
2. Am I on schedule with overall financial indicators and with individual jobs/projects?
3. Am I within budget at both the company and the job/project levels?

Sage has taken a strong “dashboard” approach in addressing these key issues, expanding the dashboard functionality introduced in Peachtree 2010 for customer management to both the inventory/services management area and to job costing (for the Quantum version onl)y in the Peachtree 2011 edition.

New Features

Many of the new features in Sage Peachtree 2011 are concentrated in the Job/Services Management area. Service Billing functionality has been streamlined to permit “batch-oriented” service billing (a la Timeslips), with various filters available for selecting the group of time and expense tickets to be billed at once, across multiple customers. A new default in the Job Cost setup area allows the user to set a warning message for any transaction that does not have a job code assigned to it (critical for those users that assign job codes to virtually every transaction). A new Job Status field has been added, which is fully customizable and can be applied to all jobs, and can be used for filters and sorts on reports and list views. The Notes field on the job screen has been expanded to accommodate up to 2,000 characters of information (the old limit was only 200 characters). When entering transactions the job code entered on the first line of the transaction will “pre-populate” on each subsequent line of the transaction (but of course can be edited as needed), to speed data entry when the entire transaction applies to a specific job. The job lookup screen on transaction entry can be sorted by the user to speed the process of finding the correct code.

At the Quantum level, there is a whole new Job Management Center dashboard, with extensive customization capabilities to allow the user to review virtually every element of a job, from purchases to time tickets to payroll entries to billings.

A new Change Order capability has been added to Peachtree Premium and higher versions, with fields for tracking change order date, notes for the change order, and a detailed area for assigning/editing cost codes related to the change order. A Change Order form (which can be customized) has been added to the forms list to allow the change order to be sent to the customer for approval and signature.

The new Inventory/Services Management Center pulls together comprehensive information about a specific item, or group of items, in one screen, so that the user can easily review purchases, sales, stock levels and shortages, unit costs and pricing, customer purchase history, etc.

A much improved integration with the Sage ACT! Contact management product will be released in the fall of 2010. The new link will allow ACT! Users who do not have access to Peachtree to review detailed customer purchase history, open sales orders, invoice detail, and other customer and vendor related information. Inventory information stored in Peachtree should also be accessible in ACT! to non-Peachtree users, depending on security settings.  This should allow sales reps to create customer quotes from “live” Peachtree customer and inventory data without having to open Peachtree. Once accepted, the quote can then be converted to an order and/or invoice in Peachtree.

Sage Peachtree will officially support Windows 7 with this release, and will provide support for Office 2010 with the first Service Release of the 20111 edition (probably this fall).  Support for Terminal Services has now been extended to the Peachtree Complete product; this functionality was previously available only in Peachtree Premium and higher.

All in all, Peachtree 2011 appears to be a very compelling release for anyone who needs more extensive job/service management functionality, or is looking for stronger tools for managing inventory. Peachtree’s competitive advantage over QuickBooks has historically been in the inventory and job cost areas, and with these new capabilities this advantage has increased significantly. I suspect that the new functionality in job costing will lead to all kinds of clever and creative uses for this powerful tracking capability in a variety of “non-traditional” settings.

Give us a call if you would like to dive into this new release in greater detail. We expect to have a “Test Drive” edition of Peachtree 2011 available on our website shortly.

What does this mean for you?  

If you are using a version of Peachtree earlier than Peachtree 2008, it means that Sage’s “official” support for your version will end shortly after this new release. While we will continue supporting these “obsolete” versions, we are constrained by our inability to obtain the manufacturer’s support for those earlier versions. It may be time to consider an upgrade.  

If you are using Peachtree 2008 or later, you should carefully review the new features for the 2011 version, and make your upgrade decision based on features. We can tell you that there are significant new features in the area of inventory management and job costing, so if you use either of these components you will want to carefully review these features.  

If you decide to upgrade, we urge you to consider placing your upgrade order through TriStar. We do very little advertising, receiving the majority of our new business through referrals from the Peachtree website. Our positioning on that website (currently #1 for Pennsylvania) is determined by the Peachtree orders we place with Sage. Your upgrade order will help us maintain that lofty position.

 In most cases we are able to match or exceed whatever upgrade pricing Sage is able to offer you directly (as a consequence of our Platinum status). So, by placing your Peachtree upgrade order with TriStar you help us maintain our Platinum status, and we help you to save a little money on your upgrade.

 A classic “win-win!”

 Give us a call if you would like to discuss your upgrade options.

Good financial reporting always needs to start with a good chart of accounts. If you haven’t visited this critical area of your Peachtree setup in some time, it’s time for you to take a closer look. Are the categories you are tracking the ones that make sense to you? Don’t just leave this to your accountant–you are the one that needs to ultimately make sense of these business indicators!

A recent Wall Street Journal article (Colleen Debaise, November 1, 2009) highlighted the three basic financial statements every business should review, and provided a good summary of their purpose. And of course all of these reports are readily available in Peachtree.

The Balance sheet, or statement of financial condition, is a snapshot, as of a specific date, of the financial condition of a business. It is a summary of the business’s financial situation. The balance sheet tells a business what it owns and what it owes. The Balance Sheet is divided into three distinct sections:

•  Assets are the resources that a business controls such as cash, equipment, buildings, furniture and money owed to the business such as accounts receivable.
• Liabilities are the debts or obligations of the business owed to others such as accounts payable, notes and loans payable, taxes, and payroll.
• Net worth, also called equity, is what’s left over, or assets less liabilities.

The Profit and loss statement (P&L) , or income statement, is an historical record that shows how much a business has made in revenues, how much it has spent on expenses, and the resulting amount of net income over a specific period of time (such as a week, a month, a quarter or a year). This statement tells a business how much it is making or losing, and if structured properly, which specific products or services, or groups of same,  are selling the best and where the business is spending too much on expenses.

The Cash flow statement shows how cash “flowed” in and out of the business over a specific period of time, and usually uses the same time frame as the corresponding profit and loss statement. A P&L may show a profit, yet the business may not be generating enough cash. Sales may be growing to new customers, but those new customers may be slow to pay, causing a cash shortage. Also, the business may be spending more on inventory in anticipation of growth, once again causing a cash shortage. Profitable businesses can quickly become “cash poor” and lose control of the business, as a result of too-rapid growth without the corresponding financial controls in place.

  All three financial statements together should be considered when evaluating the financial condition of a business.

And Peachtree makes it real simple to generate all three — as long as you start with a decent Chart of Accounts. If you haven’t reviewed yours in some time, maybe it’s time to take a fresh look.

 Two reasons.

 First, have you ever tried to restore a tape backup file to your server? Chances are this backup system was set up, and is periodically tested and maintained – hopefully! – by your IT person or firm. Chances are also that you don’t really have a clue how to restore a file yourself, or an entire directory, from your backup media, thus requiring you to chase down your IT support resource in the event you need to restore your Peachtree data. By the time that occurs you have either been “down” for longer than you can tolerate, or additional accounting data has been entered into the system, meaning more redundant entry when the database is finally restored.

I still recount a “horror story” from over fifteen years ago, when a client dutifully changed backup tapes every morning, took them off-site every night, and never made an application-based backup. One day they corrupted their database and needed to restore from tape, only to find that the tapes were all blank. No one had ever verified what was being backed up, or tested the restore process to insure its reliability.

 Application-based backups should not be considered as a replacement for an unattended server-based backup system, but as an adjunct to such a system. Server-based backups typically write their data to some type of external storage device, so that if the server drive fails (the most common type of server failure, by the way), your precious data is available to you “detached” from the server drive. It is, however, so much easier to restore an application-based backup file, since the program takes all of the “techno-babble” out of the restore process and guides you through the restore right from within the application.

These types of backups can of course also be stored on external media (thumb drives, USB drives, etc.) but will run much more slowly if directly backed up to an external device. Better to first back up to a local drive, then drag the completed application-based backup file to the external media for secure storage.

 Second, do you really remember – or have the time – to manually run a backup every day? Can you routinely get everybody out of the system, on your schedule, so that you can run the backup? Probably the answer to one or both of these questions is “no”. Peachtree’s automatic backup configuration can eliminate these roadblocks to protecting your valuable accounting data.

 To use the new Peachtree automatic backup feature you run a small “utility” (from within the application, off of the File menu) to specify:

• what company to back up,
• where to store the backup file,
• what credentials you have to permit access to the company database,
• what additional components you may want the backup to include,
• and what to do in the event that a backup file with the same name already exists.

You save these settings in a “configuration file” (one for each company whose backups you want to automate), and then invoke the Windows Scheduler application, which is typically installed on all Windows-based PC’s.

 Windows Scheduler then takes over the process, asking you how often the backup should run, and what time it should kick off. The “no-brainer” setting for this are “daily, in the middle of the night sometime”.  Just be sure that it can complete its backup before your server based-unattended backup starts up, as the one could conflict with the other and prevent a clean backup from either source.

 If you are not yet running on Peachtree 2010, you can still use Windows Scheduler, in conjunction with some old-fashioned “batch files”, to more or less accomplish the same automated backup routine.  Not a simple task, however. You can start a fire with a flint and some straw, as well, but lighters are a whole lot easier. And “easier” usually translates into actually getting the job done reliably and consistently.

When it comes to backing up accounting data, reliability and consistency are the values you are looking for.

 Give us a shout if you would like to learn more about automated backups for Peachtree.

 So, what is this mysterious critter that sits lurking quietly beneath the surface of Peachtree?

 In overly simple terms, it is what is called a “database manager”, storing the data that users enter into Peachtree and “managing” the process of “locating and serving” the right information to users based on their activities in Peachtree (and their security settings). Pervasive manages the byzantine process of updating the Journal Header, the Journal Row, the Customer, and the Item tables every time a user enters an invoice in Peachtree, making sure that all the data goes where it belongs and is properly indexed so it can be located again when needed.

 Pervasive SQL, unlike its more well-known “big brothers” such as Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and MySQL, is designed specifically as a “low cost of ownership” self-administering database manager, with no dedicated Database Administrator (DBA) required, and no real technical knowledge needed to initially install and configure the product. In fact, the Peachtree installation routine makes all of the Pervasive installation and configuration settings transparent. This is a good thing, to a point, and fits nicely with the pricing model and target audience for the Peachtree application.

 However, veteran computer users should recognize that there is no such thing as “one size fits all” when it comes to configuring a database. Some Peachtree users hit the database very lightly, while others process thousands of transactions in many different tables within the database. Hardware and other “environmental” configurations can be vastly different from company to company, which can have implications for performance, and therefore for database configuration. Sage has to account for all possible variations in uses when setting up default configuration settings.

 Because Sage Software has no way of knowing in advance exactly how you plan to use your Peachtree system, or what your transaction volume will be, the only logical response from Sage for initial database configuration is to make the settings conform to a “lowest common denominator”, which addresses the published minimum hardware and overall “technology environment” requirements. That is really the only way to go to insure that the product will work “out of the box.” Keep in mind, however, that the Pervasive SQL engine can only work with what is made available to it, via its configuration settings, and the minimum, automatically-set system configuration does not necessarily insure an optimum setup for your specific accounting software needs.

 So, what is a user to do to wring a bit more performance out of this powerful-but-low-maintenance-oriented database manager?

 There are four factors to consider in “tuning” your Peachtree setup. Three of these are relatively straightforward, are independent of the Pervasive database itself, and can be addressed by most competent IT professionals. The fourth factor involves “performance tuning” for the actual Pervasive PSQL engine on the server, and is a little more involved (including modifying Registry settings on the server, which makes some folks get sweaty palms right away – for good reason).

Server Hardware
Don’t have a dedicated server? Get one. Peachtree doesn’t need a dedicated server to operate, but if the performance of your accounting system is a concern of yours, start here. Using a so-called “peer to peer” network for running an accounting product requires acceptance of lots of performance concessions, which most users grow tired of pretty quickly. Servers today are more reasonably priced than they have ever been.

Look for at least a dual-core processor, around 3 Gigahertz or better. Pervasive does not take advantage of dual processors yet, but if you run other applications from the same server (as most small businesses do), using dual processors will allow the operating system itself to manage some of the “load balancing” between the various apps.

Purchase the fastest disk drives you can afford. Disk access time can make a huge performance difference for a heavily input-output intensive application such as accounting. A “Raid 0” stripe array, while pricey, will allow much faster disk writes than a more “conventional” disk setup. Your money or your time…..

Server Memory
Server RAM is not terribly expensive, and is relatively simple to install these days. The question of “how much” RAM to install can be complicated, and the answer is generally dependent of what apps will run on the server. Of course no one ever has good answers to all of these questions when purchasing a new server, so there are two rules of thumb here.

1. Never buy less than 4 Gb of RAM for a modern server.
2. Always ask your server vendor about memory “deals” (2-for-1, additional discounts for larger chipsets, etc. etc.) and then purchase the most memory you can afford within the confines of  that “deal”.

Windows servers have some limitation on how much memory a user can address, but having plenty of memory will insure that there is always more than enough left for other server purposes after the user has maxed out the user-addressable memory available.

Network Environment
Many apparent database performance issues are actually a consequence of the network “infrastructure”, and these can really be the devil to diagnose. There are a few obvious things to consider here.

1. Network interface cards (NICs), routers, and network switches are all critical components of the computing environment, and it rarely pays to “skimp” on those components. Purchase high quality components from known manufacturers, and have them configured by knowledgeable IT professionals.
2. Don’t have your network cabling installed by your brother’s nephew (unless he is a competent IT guy).
3. Don’t use a wi-fi connection for a large database; wi-fi is neither fast enough nor reliable enough (with microwave ovens, cell phones, etc. interfering) to trust for accounting transactions.

 Configuring the Peachtree Pervasive Database Engine
This is the fourth and final piece to focus on to “tune” your Peachtree install for optimum performance. I will address this final piece of the puzzle in my next post on PeachFuzz.

 Workflow Manager
With Quantum’s “Transaction Tracking” feature, users can now build a customized “workflow processing” model right within the accounting system.  For each type of Peachtree transaction (sales orders, vendor invoices, inventory adjustments, journal entries, etc.) users can define a series of “statuses” (typically chronological), and assign a user’s login ID to each status as the “responsible” party. As the transaction gets processed, and moves from status to status, the next person in line to handle the transaction gets notified that the previous status is complete and the transaction is ready for the next step. Notes can be attached to each transaction status, so that detailed information about the previous steps in the workflow process can follow the transaction as it moves from status to status, and person to person.

Sales orders are the obvious target for this kind of processing. When a quote is accepted, the sales rep (who perhaps does not have authority to create new orders) changes the status of the quote to “accepted”, which notifies the sales department that it can create the order.  Entering the order notifies the warehouse (or production) staff that an order for items has been placed, and they should pull the items. When the order is pulled,  the warehouse can notify the next person in the chain that the order is ready for shipping, and notify accounting that the order can be invoiced. All of this can happen automatically, in real time, within the accounting system, as work is processed.

Less obvious but equally useful tracking tasks will undoubtedly emerge as users gain more experience with this new Peachtree Quantum capability. Things like  

• notifying the CFO when all adjusting journal entries are complete so financials can be printed;
• letting the owner know that payments have been processed and checks are ready for signature; 
• checking with other users for items needed when preparing a blanket purchase order;
• advising the “next person in line” that a manufacturing transaction has been imported from your external production system and an order can now ship

We will be tracking new and creative uses for this very flexible new tool in the Peachtree Quantum product, and will report on the more innovative uses we uncover.

Customizable Dashboard
Peachtree radically overhauled its “Executive Dashboard” feature a few versions ago. With the release of Peachtree Quantum 2010, Sage gave Quantum users the ability to create their own customized “dashboards”, each configured as a separate tab on the “My Dashboard” screen.

 Users can select from a list of  over thirty “modules” of information to include on a dashboard, and can then filter the information displayed based on the type of information selected (based on date,  customer type,  open purchase order, employee pay type, etc. etc.). These tabs are “user-specific”, so each user can configure his or her own dashboard with just the information required to manage his or her work.

 Combining the “Customizable Dashboard” with the previously described “Workflow Manager”, users can create a tab detailing accounting system transactions by their tracking status. This approach will display what transactions are at what status within your system, and give a very powerful picture of your company’s “pipeline”, showing where resources are tied up, what bottlenecks are creating problems,  who is handling too many transactions, etc. etc.

 Users can also add a tab called “My Peachtree Inbox”, which will display all of the transactions currently assigned to them. From this tab the user can easily mark transactions as processed and assign them to the next person in the chain, without leaving the dashboard.

 Peachtree Quantum Manufacturing Edition (QME)
This July Sage announced the first of its “specialty” Peachtree Quantum editions, with this initial release focused on manufacturing. The Quantum Manufacturing Edition (QME) combines the power and flexibility of Peachtree Quantum with the comprehensive inventory and production management capabilities of MISys, a very well regarded, value priced manufacturing product that has been in use by small manufacturers for almost 30 years.

 TriStar just completed the certification training required to sell and support this manufacturing product, and are anticipating our first implementation of QME in September of 2009. We’ll have a lot more to say about the new QME product in a future blog posting.

 Clicking the “Notes” button on a sales order, invoice, purchase order, or vendor invoice will open a multi-tabbed window. Typing into the “Customer or Vendor Note” tab will allow you to enter a message up to 2,000 characters in length, and will allow you to print the note on the form, either prior to or following the line items on the form. You can provide a lot more detail on your invoices by putting it into the notes field, rather than trying to add a series of “comment” lines as individual items.

 If the note is for “internal consumption only” (perhaps alerting your A/R or A/P clerk to monitor this invoice closely), type the note on the “Internal Note” tab, instead. It will stay with the transaction, but will not print on the form.

 BE CAREFUL WHEN PRESSING THE ENTER KEY. Pressing “Enter” saves the entry and closes the window. Text entered in the Notes window will wrap automatically. If you need to create a new paragraph but stay on the same note, press CTRL and ENTER at the same time to move to a new blank line but keep the window open.

 Unfortunately, Notes are “transaction-related” (i.e., attached to the record) and not “line item” related I.e., attached to a specific item), so if you need to enter a note for a specific line item and not for the record in general, you still need to use the “Comment” approach to place the message in the proper spot on the form.

 Attachments
Attachments in Peachtree work just as the name suggests: you can “attach” any electronic file (spreadsheet, photo, PDF file, Word document, etc.) to either a Peachtree transaction (e.g., an invoice, a journal entry, etc.) or to a “master record” (customer, vendor, job, etc.). Have a photo or a graphic of a particular item you are ordering? Attach the photo to the order. Need to justify a general journal adjusting entry? Attach the letter from your accountant to the entry. Want to show support for your Peachtree budget? Attach the Excel worksheet to the budget.

 A couple of “tips and bewares” when working with attachments:

1. You have to first save the record before you can add an attachment; Peachtree doesn’t know the record is there, and therefore can’t add the attachment, until you first hit the “Save” button. Then you can add the attachment to the saved record.
2. Once a file is “attached” to a Peachtree record, it exists independent of the “original” file (Peachtree makes a copy). This means that you can give the attachment a different name than the original, or can even delete the attachment, without effecting the original file. It also means, however, that any changes made to the “original” file after attaching it will not be reflected in the attachment; once attached there are two separate files, each with its own independent existence. If you need to change the original and reflect the change on the attachment, make the change, save the original, delete the attachment, and re-attach to the Peachtree record.

Sorry about raising anyone’s anxiety levels. In the words of Rosanna DanaDana, “never mind…..”

We encountered this issue internally yesterday, and were able to confirm with Peachtree Tech Support this morning that “at this time” the Timeslips TALPro link is not functional with Peachtree 2010. Sage expects to release a “link utility” for Peachtree 2010 at about the same time that they release Timeslips 2010 (early to mid-July), at which time, according to Support, “some” (?) earlier versions of Timeslips will be able to link to Peachtree 2010.

For now, our advice to anyone running Timeslips and Peachtree with the TALPro Peachtree link active is to not install Peachtree 2010 yet. By all means purchase the Peachtree upgrade (to capture the upgrade discounts available) but let it “age” on the shelf for a while until we have a functional link between the two products available from the manufacturer.

We’ll post an update here as soon as we have successfully installed a link between Peachtree 2010 and Timeslips. Stay tuned.

 For virtually everyone, Microsoft Excel is the “tool of choice” for designing and calculating budgets. Its “columns and rows” orientation make it the ideal tool for interactive, “what if” calculations. Excel, however, is not the best tool for maintaining a budget and tracking performance against “actuals”. Doing this essential step in Excel requires a lot of extra re-keying, or some complicated exports and imports. Fortunately, Peachtree plays quite nicely with Excel-based budgets these days.

 In Peachtree Premium and Quantum, you can establish as many different budgets as you need, and can select any budget to print on your financial statements to facilitate comparisons (Peachtree Complete allows only one budget). Any single budget can reflect up to four years of data: the two currently open fiscal years, plus one year prior to the earliest open year and one year following the latest open year.

 Budgeting can be performed for all of your accounts or for any range of accounts, using filters. Especially handy is the filtering available by account “type” (income statement accounts, expenses, etc.), or by account “segment” (Premium and higher only) to create department-level budgets. An existing Peachtree budget can be easily copied to a new budget, and recalculated using various formulas to test the new assumptions.

 The best thing about Peachtree’s budgeting capabilities, however, is how easily it interfaces with Excel. Import and export buttons are conveniently situated on the budgeting screen toolbar, making it a snap to get your budget data into Peachtree, and equally easy to get it out again for further work in Excel. TIP: When building your budget, first set your filters in Peachtree, then export a “blank” budget to get all of the relevant accounts quickly and easily into Excel, along with all the appropriate period column headers.

 Once you have your “baseline” data (accounts and periods) populated in Excel, do all of the normal budget construction directly in Excel, then when the budget is completed send the data back to Peachtree via a CSV file, which is simple to create in Excel (Save As…).

 It is also pretty easy to manipulate some of the budget data directly in the Peachtree budgeting screen, by using the “Autofill” button on the toolbar to complete a row, or by using the “Quick Action” buttons (Copy and Adjust) accessed via a right click of the mouse anywhere on the cell grid, to modify amounts by a fixed dollar amount, a percentage, or to round to the nearest dollar, hundreds, or thousands.

 Peachtree budgeting also works nicely with Peachtree Alerts, to automatically send a message to a selected user when any account is over budget for either a specified period or for the year-to-date budget.  With the Peachtree’s capabilities to handle attachments to records, you can even “attach” the original Excel budget to the Peachtree budget as a fool-proof “source document” audit trail.

 Peachtree won’t necessarily help you generate more income, but it can provide the tools you need for creating a good roadmap to follow – and monitor – through the twists and turns of a troubled economy.