When is the best time to close the year?
Closing the year
Adding New Fields Great time saver!
Keyboard Shortcut Find function
Posting Transactions to Previous Months Great time saver!
Password Pitfall
Vendors Setup
Customers Set Up
Jobs Set Up
Reports Sections
Customising the Report
Changing Accounting Period
When is the best time to close the year?
Don't close your books until you are absolutely sure you have no changes to make to that year.
There is no way to get back to the closed year unless you restore your backup for that year, make your changes and then
rekey all information from that time forward. (You cannot merge information from one backup to another.)
Closing The Year
Before closing the year, be sure that the data directory for your company
doesn't contain any extraneous files. For instance, the file JRNLCLS.DAT can cause odd happenings. This file is created
during the close process. If that process is halted for any reason, the file stays in the data directory, thereby hampering things
the next time that you try to close the company. In the event that you run into problems closing a fiscal year, compare the file
names in your company's data directory to those in the BCS sample company in Peachtree. Any extraneous files should be
deleted or moved to another directory.
Adding New Fields
To quickly add a new customer, vendor, GL account, etc., select that
field from a transaction dialog box, then double-click on the field to open the corresponding Maintain dialog box. Jason Upah
reminded us of an even easier way--select the field, then press the + key on your numberpad. Either method is much quicker
then clicking the New button on the drop down list or traversing through the Maintain menu.
Keyboard Shortcut
If you're using Peachtree 8.0 or later, pressing F3 provides instant access to the Find dialog box available on
the Edit menu.
Posting Transactions to Previous Months
Need to post a transaction, such as a vendor invoice to a previous month? Peachtree forces you to
switch back to that month to do so. However, there's a faster way:
- Enter your transaction, such
as a vendor invoice, as normal but use a date in the current month.
- Post (or Save) the
transaction.
- Click Edit (or Open), then
bring up the transaction again.
- Change the date to the desired period, then click
Post (or Save). Peachtree will warn you about changing the transaction in previous period, but it will let you save the
transaction into the prior period.
Although not ideal, this method is faster than going through the Tasks | System | Change Accounting Period menu
twice! It's particularly helpful when you work in a multi-user environment, since you can avoid asking other users to exit
Peachtree while you change the accounting period.
Password Pitfall
If you want someone to have full access to a certain module, e.g.
Accounts Payable, but no other section of Peachtree, make sure to give them full access to Post and Unpost under the Tasks
section of the System tab. Otherwise, the user will open previous transactions, but not edit or print, even with full access to
that module.
Vendors Set Up
You need to setup a vendor for everyone that you will write a check to. You can also setup vendors when
you are writing checks or entering invoices.
- Assign the Vendor an ID.
- Enter the full name in the
Name Field.
- Enter the General Information
as you determine necessary.
- Under the Purchase Default
tab enter the Expense Account Number associated with that vendor in the Purchase Acct field. An example, if the Vendor was
Bell of PA then the Purchase acct would be telephone.
- Fill in any other fields
necessary for your company.
- Click Save.
- If you are done entering
vendors, click Close.
- If you need to continue
entering vendors, repeat steps 3 through 7.
Customers Set Up
All of your clients have to be setup as a customer. You need to setup a customer before you can setup a
job that is associated with that customer. Jobs can be associated with more than one customer. You can also setup the
customer when you entering the invoices in the system.
- Under Maintain choose
Customer/Prospects.
- Assign a Customer ID - The
customer ID can be an abbreviation of the company name.
- In the name field enter the
company name.
- Enter the information of the
company - contact, address information, etc.
- Click on the save button to
save the information.
- If you are done entering the
customers then click close.
Jobs Set Up
Each job has to be associated with a customer. It is good practice to assign a job number to each invoice that you create. It is
also good to assign job numbers to payable invoices and checks.
- Under Maintain, choose Job
Costs:Jobs.
- Assign a unique Customer ID
- The customer ID can be an abbreviation of the company name.
- Fill in the General, Custom
Fields, and Estimated Exp./Rev tabs. In the General tab enter the customer that is associated with that job in the Customer
field. Enter the start date. You can go back later when the job is finished and enter the end date.
- If you are entering more jobs,
then click save, and repeat steps two and three .
- If you are finished entering
jobs, click save then close
Report Sections
There are a variety of reports in the system. Go to reports and select the Group that contains your
reports.
Accounts Receivable:
This is where you are going to find reports that deal with customers,
invoicing and cash receipts from customers. Some examples of the reports in this section are; Customer list, Deposits for the
month, sales journal, Customer ledger (detail for each customer) and aged payables.
Accounts Payable:
This is where you are going to find reports that deals with vendors, payables, and checks. Some examples of the reports
are vendor list, check registers, vendor ledger, and aged payables.
Payroll:
You can find reports
regarding the employee in this section.
General Ledger:
This section is going to give you
information regarding the accounts. Some examples of the reports in this section are the chart of accounts (listing of all the
accounts), general ledger (detail of all the transactions in each account) and trail balance reports.
Financial
Statements:
In this section you are going to find financial reports, for example the balance sheet and income
statement.
Job Reports:
This section will contain reports dealing with the job. The reports you will
find is a Job list, job ledger (detail transaction for each job), and estimated revenue and expenses report.
Account Reconciliation:
In this section are going to be the reconciliation reports for the bank
accounts and the credit card statements.
Company:
The only report in the company section is the
audit trail report.
Report Groups:
This section is where you can setup a group of reports that you
are always printing. For example your month end reports.
Note: Once you have selected one of the sections you
can switch between the sections by just highlighting the section in the left hand box. When you highlight a section the right
hand box will list the reports that are in that group. This is an easy way to go through the reports to find what you are looking
for.
Customizing the Report
Changing the report so that you can get the information you want is a good idea. For example if you want
to run a report for a specific date or only for a specific accounts. Below are some easy steps to change the report so that you
can get the information you are looking for. Most of the reports period will default to the period that your general ledger is in. To
change the period see changing accounting period below.
Changing the date:
- After you have called up the
report that you want to run (to call up a report just double click on the report that you want). Click on the Options button.
- On the filters tab select go the dates fields. You
can either click on the drop down menu to get a list of periods or you can change the From and the To date fields to the period
that you what the information for.
Filter:
- You can filter the information
that you want to see. For example, if you were running a check register report you could filter the information to only show you
a specific range of check numbers.
- To change the filter you Click
on the options button.
On the filters tab you change the filter
for the range that you want to see. What you can filter on is going to change with each report, depending on what information
that report is giving you.
Changing the Accounting Period
To change the Accounting Period follow these steps below:
- Go to Tasks and click on system at the bottom.
- Then go to change accounting period.
- Select the period from the drop down menu.
Note: By changing the accounting period you will change the default entries where all the reports run, and the default date
that the system will use when entering your information. By changing the date you are changing any of the information that has
already been entered. It will allow you change the date back and forward at any time. Try to keep the accounting date in the
month that you are working on.
