Accounting software - need advice!

[Lefta Dissenter]

I work for a small township (about 6,000 households), and the accounting software that we use SUCKS! It's a new job for me, and I have been trying to get the books ready for an upcoming audit. However, the software is incredibly glitchy, and some things posted to the general ledger either double post or disappear entirely. The support is even worse, and I think we're just digging ourselves deeper into a hole by continuing with this.

I've finally convinced the admin. that we need to get different software for our accounting - preferably something from a larger software company, so the support staff would be more than one guy in his basement office.

Can anyone recommend a good program for such a situation? It would be nice to have something that is easy to use, so even the employees who don't have any background in accounting can figure it out. As it stands now, the woman who has been doing most of the data entry is just following instructions, but doesn't know anything about double-entry accounting, so she can't track down problems. That's why things have gotten so far off track, because she didn't know enough to recognize that the problems we were having were software and support issues, not operator error.

Thanks so much for any and all advice!

[davsand]

1. Assuming you don't have all the same needs as other non-profits...

I'm assuming you don't need to track grant money or Administrative, Fund raising, Programmatic expenses like other non-profits--so do tell me if that is the case--OK?

MYOB is one to check out along with Peachtree or Quickbooks business. I have not worked with any of those--I used a program we put together in-house when I was keeping the books for non=profits.

I don't know if Quickbooks for business has any kind of payroll abilities, but that is certainly something to check for if you have to do payroll at all. (I hated those damn W-2s and the unemployment tax forms!)

You might want to talk to your auditors and see what they suggest for your situation... They know what reports they want to see!!

Good luck!


Laura


BTW, it just occurred to me--you don't have to track or bill any of the real estate taxes or anything, do you? If so, that makes this a whole lot more convoluted...

[Lefta Dissenter]

3. Hi Laura,

Thanks so much for the reply. I've just spent a little while looking through the Peachtree site, and was about to head to quickbooks. I'll go to MYOB if for no other reason than I like their name! :) Peachtree offers a free trial, which I may try once I'm back at work on Monday.

We definitely need to do payroll, and it looks like peachtree can handle that. We had been collecting the prop taxes ourselves (before my time), but as of this year have turned it over to the County. I am not sure if it is going to stay with the County, or if we'll be getting that back at some point in time. I'll ask about that.

You simply wouldn't believe the mess I'm dealing with. Some of the year-end 2003 figures don't even agree with what was given to the auditor for last year's audit, so it's difficult to figure out where to start. And after the support guy 'fixed' a glitch in our GL, the figures had changed YET AGAIN!!! How can that happen to a year that's been balanced and closed out???????????? :mad:

I put a call in to our auditor the other day to ask for recommendations, and haven't heard back yet. :( I figured I'll proceed with researching options, and then email her with a short list and ask her if she has a preference.

Thanks again for your recommendations - and to anyone else who has advice to offer! :hi:

[davsand]

5. Oh lord. You DO have mess!

ere they doing regular backups of the accounting system? If you have a backup copy from before the "fix" you might be able to resurrect FY03 that way... Just be sure to load it where it won't conflict with your other installation.

Failing that, and failing the ability to spot some glaring change in your prior FY, I think you may want to weigh the time and PITA factor (Pain In The Ass) of just taking the new software and reconstructing FY 03 then 04. It'd be a bitch to deal with, but it might be the only thing that will leave you feeling like you got it right...

A lot of that decision would depend on how many transactions you do each month and how many accounts you'd need to reconcile. It just makes my head hurt to even consider walking into that kind of mess. Is there any way they can give you enough funding for some temp data entry people if you DO have to re-enter it all?

On the subject of the Property Tax bills, if you DO have to take that back over, do you have to calculate them as well or is it just a simple sort of database of A/R? If it is A/R you should probably be able to use one of the commercial packages, but if you have to deal with the levies and the rates AND calculating the bills that would almost call for some specialized software that costs a S*&Tload of money. (I'm not even going to get started on the whole CAMA system thing for dealing with the the assessment of Property Taxes!)

I am SO sorry you are dealing with this! Feel free to get hold of me if you want to vent... Look at it this way--when you get done you are gonna be a hero for cleaning up the mess!


Laura

[Lefta Dissenter]

6. HA,

I was at the point the other day that I said I was going to start with Jan l, 04 and enter everything by hand, the old double-entry accounting on green paper way. Then at least I'd know where every transaction went.

I'm afraid that the backups all have their range of problems. It took me almost three weeks even to just balance the cash account (the account hadn't even been reconciled with the bank statements in a year). And AP was making no sense, which is why I went to the 'support' guy. As one fun example, the month end balance for open payables was something like $66,000, which was a realistic figure, but then the beginning balance for AP for THE NEXT MONTH showed a zero. :eyes: So how does THAT happen??? :shrug: The audit was originally scheduled for this coming Friday, but I said there was NOOOOOOOOOOO way we'd be ready for that, so we got a reprieve of about three weeks. I don't think I could get funding for temp, since I'm supposed to be part-time, and I've already been putting in at least 8-hour days. But I don't mind putting in long hours if I can actually accomplish something!

I may take your advice and push for a quick purchase of Peachtree and just start with 01/01/04, if we can get that #&$*@()%^#() support guy to unscrewup 03.

I'll have to do a little digging for info on the prop taxes.

At any rate, thanks for the understanding and the sympathy! I may come crying back to you this week! :cry:

[DBoon]

2. If you are into open source software and Linux

consider gnucash

[Lefta Dissenter]

4. I'm afraid

that's out of my league. I know nothing about Linux. :(

[landdaddy]

7. Get trials of both

Peachtree and Quickbooks. I did that for my bro in law's company and they ultimately went with Peachtree, which I found to be very user friendly, and at about equal in price to QB's. I had never worked with any accounting software before and PT came off as the better of the two for me.

[Lefta Dissenter]

8. Thanks, landdaddy!

I'm glad to hear that you are happy with the Peachtree. It certainly looked good to me. HOWEVER, I just realized that I can't figure out if we can do modified accrual with the Peachtree Complete. I just dropped them an inquiry, but I'm sure I won't hear back until Monday or later. Do you happen to know if that's possible, or can you only work on a cash basis with the PT?

edited to add that I know it makes sense that if I can work with AR and AP, it should be accrual, but the way the current software is acting, it still throws everything into the current period as though we're on a cash basis, unless we perfom some major surgery on each transaction to allocate it differently.

Thanks again for the advice. :hi:

[HamstersFromHell]

9. Peachtree or Quickbooks

Biggest difference in the two is in how they deal with transactions or invoicing.

Peachtree (at least the last version I worked with) is geared more to a business who does a lot of transactions. The files are split into separate sections. (a/p, a/r, g/l, pos, inventory, etc. are all separate files with a master customer file and index files to tie them all together.

Quickbooks is geared more toward small business with much fewer transactions, as it puts *everything* (and I do mean everything) into one file, and builds a new set of indices each time it's loaded. Works fine, but when you're doing a few thousand transactions a month, the size of that file gets huge quick, and starts to become very unwieldy without a lot of RAM in the computer to even load the file. Against my wishes, the company I used to work for moved from a Linux based package (Appgen) which worked fine (but is not idiot proof!) because they couldn't remember basic rules like don't open a transaction without properly closing it. They switched to Quickbooks, and within 6 months, the one huge file had grown to over 120 megs in size, and took any of the workstations about 10 minutes to pull up and reindex each morning. Then the complaints of slow searches, etc. started. I think you see where I'm headed here.

Quickbooks may be cheaper, but look at the volume of transactions you'll be doing each month and choose by that criteria.

Hope this helps!

[Lefta Dissenter]

10. it DOES help,

thanks a lot, HfH! It's sounding more and more like I'm going to download the trial for Peachtree at work and make everyone there love it (whether they like it or not :crazy: ). I think if I could get a week uninterrupted with a friendly program, I could probably re-enter all of 2004. That is, IF we can come up with solid figures to start the year with :eyes:

[cally]

11. We use Quickbooks

for my small business. We don't have many transactions each month so the file is small. I also use it for payroll.

I'm happy with it. I'm not an accountant nor a bookkeeper but I was able to keep my own books immediately. I do have a bookkeeper and accountant check it occasionally. It's easy to switch back and forth from accrual to a cash basis for reports.

I've been fairly happy with the support. Sometimes they charge if you call too often, though.

I don't use it for our invoices. We send a letter and their invoice system won't allow me to do that. We end up with two systems for our invoices which is annoying. It does help with accuracy since two of us are entering the same data in different databases.

[Lefta Dissenter]

12. OK

so I guess I'm back to landdaddy's advice of downloading trial versions of both QB and PT, and comparing them. Either ONE of them has to be better than the mess we're in! We also just send letters for invoices, but we might have only 5 to 10 a month, so it's no problem to just do that separately.

Thanks SO much for your input. I'm glad that people are finding success with the widely available programs that are reasonably priced.

[CabalPowered]

13. If you're billing for utilities and such, might check out Data Now

http://www.idahocomputer.net/