Aplus Accounting 9 Help

* If you want a clean data set / no data to work with instead of demonstration data, go to TOOLS - DELETE ALL DATA BEFORE A DATE - enter todays date (for example ) - Yes - press escape on various reports that will automatically appear showing you what is being deleted - also go to the Data Managers in each module and delete the different Customers, Vendors and Employees. *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction and notes on manual 1 - 2

Accounts Receivable 3 - 5

(Enter Payment Information, Invoicing, Report Menus, specialized)

Accounts Payable 6

(Enter Check Information, Check Register, Report Menus, Account Management, 1099'S)

Check Registers 7 - 8

General Ledger 9 - 10

Inventory Control / Fixed Inventory 11 - 12

Job Costing 13 -15

(Bid Sheets, Estimating/Budgeting, Job Cost Analysis, Update Job Costing, Job Cost Reports, Excel Interface).

Payroll 16 - 18

(Check Information, Check Register,, Time Clock, Report Menus, W2's)

Purchase Orders 19

Contact Management 20

Tools 21 - 22

Notes on the table editor.   23

Common user mistakes 24 - 25

Add-ons and Future Enhancements 26

.1.

USER MANUAL

This accounting program was written to clearly and concisely keep track of all business transactions.

This accounting program was written to clearly and concisely keep track of all business transactions. The main features that this program offers which other accounting programs may or may not offer includes, user-friendliness, computer graphic enhancements and an extremely large job costing program.

This program is designed in a top down, tree like structure, that is, the more general options are located at the top of the menu systems and the further in to the menu system you go the more detailed and less general the information will be.
Because of the user-friendliness of this program we did not write an extremely large manual for it. The computer leads the user along through their accounting functions with highlighted bars, help messages and on line help. A main idea to think of when learning this program is to ask yourself what it is that you wish to do. For example, if you are keeping track of incoming checks, good places to go would accounts receivable then enter payment information then find the name of the customer that wrote you the check. From this point on the computer will tell you exactly what to do, such as, enter account number, enter due date, enter invoice amount. Another example would be, if you wish to pay someone a check, go to accounts payable then to Enter Payment information or

Basic Checking then to search by vendor name and then the computer will lead you along and ask for various check information. Once the check information is finished then go to the check register then print checks. You have just written and printed a vendor a check. One of the things that this program does concentrate on and will continue to concentrate on is search capabilities.
Every main data screen has a DATA MANAGER screen that manages general information for that module.
From here you will see a LOCATE and a SEARCH command button to help you locate what you are looking for - you may modify what you see in these command buttons as you see fit.
In addition, this program has double function F1 key capabilities. If you are searching for a customer or vendor or employee name or account number you can press the F1 key and
see a grid of their names or account numbers. Any other time except when you are searching for information the F1 key will pull up the appropriate on line help for the section of the program you are in.

.2.

When you are in a data grid window and about to enter payment information, you can get to the first letter of the name you wish to find by entering the first letter of the name or account number you wish to find, as many software packages can do. From here you can press enter to select the name you wish to enter payment information on.
Escape on a grid Option should not save anything, F2 on a grid option should save your changes.
Due to the size of this program, not all screens and reports are in the manual right now.

.3.

Accounts Receivable

Enter Payment Information

Invoicing

Credit Card Interfaces, Dispute Interface, Shipping Interface

Inventory Control

Recurring Invoicing

Report Menus

Specialized

Chiropractic

Internal Medicine

Photography Database and Viewer

Property Management

Restaurant

Accounts receivable is divided in to four main parts.  The first part of the accounts receivable is the data manager.  As with most accounting packages, general information must be entered in to the program before more detailed information such as invoices or checks may be written.  This menu option allows the user to search for the customer by almost any criteria.

The invoicing program is divided in to three main parts, Invoicing (which process invoices), Report Menu (which retrieves all information stored in the Invoicing part of this program including job costing for invoices and city/state taxes) and invoice also has various search capabilities to view and edit invoices in many ways.

Invoices are paid when the amount paid on the different records associated with the invoice number exceed the amount invoiced on the different records associated with the invoice number.

 The paid field as we can see in invoicing is called "Paid".

When invoices are paid the date paid will automatically be filled in.  In addition, we have a MarkAsPaid field by the paid field.

If you Mark an invoice as paid with a "T" and the amount paid is equal to 0 the program will automatically make the amount paid equal to the amount invoiced. 

Amount Due line item figures represent only the Amount Due for the line item (Invoice Amount - Amount Paid) not for the entire invoice.  Amount due in the subtotals and totals in the reports represent the Amount Due on the invoices / filtered by invoice number as it should be. 

 The REPORT menus in this program accesses all invoice information entered by accessing various invoice reports using information in both the current and permanent data. The STORE INVOICES TO PERMANENT DATABASE section of the invoice program is written so that information in the current database does not get cluttered up and slow down the program by making the programs sift through all sorts of information every time the user writes an invoice.

.4.

Accounts Receivable = Enter Check Information is for entering payments that you do not wish to invoice on.  For Example, un-invoiced cash, checks or credit card payments you receive.  Amounts entered will show up in the Permanent Invoice Database and corresponding reports.

 Information entered defaults as paid with invoice numbers of 0.  All information may be changed.

**The materials field needs to be filled out before taxes will be taken out.** While this program does calculate taxes off of materials, if you want your customers to pay City and State taxes then you need to enter what they owe as line items in the invoices. In addition, while this program does have shipping and late charge fields, if you want your customers to pay shipping or late charges then these figures need to be entered as line items in the invoices.**

Inventory is subtracted out of Inventory Control if the product name in Invoicing matches the Model in Inventory Control at the time that you Post Current Invoices to Permanent Invoices. This is incase someone changes a order or cancels a order while information is still in the current invoicing data.

When ever editing (browsing) information a ctrl-u or clicking on the far left table cell until it turns black will mark data for deletion and an F2 will save changes. When the databases are packed the records marked for deletion will be deleted. The invoice part of this program integrates with inventory control.

Every time invoices are stored to the permanent invoice database the count variable in invoicing is subtracted from the count variable in the inventory control for identical product and model names exist in both invoicing and inventory.  INVOICING MENU (pack, add customer, delete, edit and grid) are designed for more detailed information management in needed.  One final point is that customers need to be ADDED before invoices may be written to them.

Due dates are automatically figured out by the computer by adding the terms such as 7 or 14 days to the current date.

Reports start at the top of the report menus with information that has been stored in the current work space and as you move further down the menu systems the reports focus more on all the different information that has been stored both check registers databases.  Many of these reports are date coded so that if you want information on any past year, quarter, month, week or day you can quickly access it by entering a beginning and ending date for the report and then sending this information to the screen or the printer.   

.5.

The invoice, city and state tax reports are activated when

the following conditions are met :

1. Current information is stored to the permanent invoicing databases.

2. Invoice have been written and fully paid either in the

   Enter Payment information section or the invoice section.

 3. City and State rates are entered in the different customer's general information.

 The materials figures in the invoices are entered if you are using taxable materials.

Checkno / (payment type) is the only variable in the program with a double meaning.  If the checkno is filled in with the word credit instead of the checkno or the word cash you will be asked for payment type, cardno,
expdate and payname. If you see CASH or CREDIT on a report where the heading says Checkno the meaning is extremely apparent.

.6.

 

Accounts Payable

Enter Payment Information

Basic Checking

Credit Card Interfaces, Dispute Interface, Shipping Interface

Check Register

Accounts Management

Check printing and batch processing

Report Menus

1099s

 

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE is divided in to four main parts. 

The first part of ACCOUNTS PAYABLE is BASIC CHECKING that is designed to look and feel like your check book except that all of the more complicated fields are there that are not on your check book suck as account number, category number / category description and the XX field - X to pay now, * for a condensed check and a space to pay later.

The second part of the accounts payable is the Enter Check Information menu.  This menu  option allows the user to search for the vendor by name.  If the user chooses the check information option the program will then prompt the user for more detailed information on the received amount such as check number, amount paid, amount invoice, job name, vendor number.  The program then stores this information for later use. The second part of the accounts payable program is the check register which has its own help section.

Both Basic Checking and Enter Check Information can be used interchangeably.  For both Basic Checking and Enter Check Information, Amount Due line item figures represent only the Amount Due for the line item (Invoice Amount - Amount Paid) not for the entire invoice.  Amount due in the subtotals and totals in the reports represent the Amount Due on the invoices / filtered by invoice number as it should be.

The third part of accounts payable is the report menu which generates a number of reports including statements for income at any point in time, monthly, yearly reports and 1099's.

Accounts payable gives you the option to pay checks later and write them ahead of time.  The field XX as displayed in the check entry parts of the program needs to have a X in it before the checks can be routed to the screen or printer and the stored to permanent data.  This will probably confuse some people if they do not see this variable, but we received many requests for the ability to write checks and only pay some of them at a time.  The symbol * denotes condensed checks for the purpose of writing the same vendor one check for several different jobs.

 The DATA MANAGER is also in this module, as in the other modules in order to effectively manage general (in this case vendor) information.

.7.

CHECK REGISTERS

There are check register programs located in both ACCOUNTS PAYABLE AND PAYROLL.  We decided set computerized check formatting up so that there would be 2 check stubs and 2 checks per page.  Laser printers do not like to have partially processed pages sitting in them therefore, the additional decision was made to have pages eject after checks are printed.  This means if you have an odd number of checks in a batch you will either waste one of the checks or have to send it through the printer again if you do not want to waste it.  If you have a dot matrix printer you can simple roll the check page back after printing to avoid wasting a check.  We tested this program with Check Soft Express from Office Max.

The first option in the check register menus are CHECKS TO SCREEN.  In this option, checks and pay stub information are sent to the screen as if printing.  In the second option, CHECKS TO PRINTER, checks are sent to the printer in the form of checks. ( if the checks are marked with a X or a * in the XX field). 

Condensed check are written by writing several checks to the same vendor with the XX field marked with a *.

** For release 5 of this program, please restrict yourself to one condensed check at a time.  The program currently cannot produce more than one condensed check per check run.

If you mark the PAYTYPE field as CASH or CREDIT then the program will not produce a check when this information posts and the checks are run.  ** 

If the check information is correct one should "POST CHECKS THE PERMANENT CHECK REGISTER" which will store all printer checks in the CHECK REGISTER to the PERMANENT CHECK REGISTER and will print. 

The CHECKS TO SCREEN option can "STORE CHECKS TO THE PERMANENT CHECK REGISTER", but the assumption is that you will probably not use this because printing checks is easier that writing them by hand.

For both Accounts Payable and Payroll the DATEPAID field is automatically filled in for you when the checks are printed and then you are asked " ARE THE CHECKS RIGHT AND READY TO BE STORED TO THE PERMANENT CHECK REGISTER ?" and you say "YES"

The Adjust Accounts Information is very much like what your bank might show you and is described as followed:

 .8.

When you write checks the check amounts are deducted from your balance that you currently see from the Accounts Management Screen.  If the top of this screen says "CHECKING ACCOUNT" then Accounts Payable and Payroll checks you write will deduct from the "CHECKING ACCOUNT" when you post the checks to PERMANENT DATA. If the top of this screen says "SAVINGS" then the checks you write in Accounts Payable and Payroll  will deduct  

from the "SAVINGS" account when you post the checks to Permanent Data.  ECT... You have 4 accounts you can set up under the CHANGE ACCOUNTS INFORMATION option. If you go to CHANGE ACCOUNT INFORMATION and then USEACCOUNT you may enter a number from 1 -4 which will decide which of the 4 accounts the program points to. The DEPOSIT / WITHDRAWAL REPORT also exists in the Accounts Payable report menu and shows detailed information on your account activity just like your bank might show it to you. 

CHECK REGISTER REPORT is a report with amount totals for this check batch. 

ALIGNMENT REPORT makes sure the checks and printer is aligned correctly.

Database Grid are options that view the various databases in which information is stored.   

AR does auto (on the fly) calculations inside grids.  At this time AP only does auto calculations, only when writing checks or posting. If you choose to mark records in AP as paid that are not paid or unpaid that are paid then the reports will reflect these inaccuracies.

.9.

General Ledger

Balance Sheets

Capital Statements

Chart of Accounts

Income Statements

Profit Loss Statements

Trial Balances

Budgeting

Journal Entry

General Ledger / Job Costing Interface.

Total Fixed Inventory is automatically reflected in General Ledger as account number 12002.

The general ledger part of the program keeps tract of general ledger account information.  General ledger account numbers and corresponding descriptions are linked to the various parts of the accounting program by keeping track of what kind of transaction is taking place and for what amount.  Standard reports that appear in this part of the program include balance sheet, capital statement, chart of accounts, income statement, profit-loss statement, trial balance and journal report.

The post option in general ledger posts all current information from various parts of the program to general ledger.  Applications for this type of information includes, tracking where the largest amounts of transactions are taking place, profit margin analysis and quick access to total figures on account information and forecasting.  The POST AMOUNTS TO GENERAL LEDGER option takes all of the check information entered in accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, job costing and payroll and matches account numbers with general ledger account numbers.  It then sums this information in to the appropriate debit and credit column for each account number.

When we were testing the Post option we thought something was wrong because all of the values that we expected to fill in were not filling in.  The computer code reads -

USE ARPER  

SET FILTER TO SUBSTR(ACCOUNTNO,1,5) = ACN .AND. DATEPAID > BD .AND. DATEPAID < ED

SUM AMOUNTREC TO ACCTOTAL

Which means I need date paid values filled and account number values filled in for this to work and for Accounts Payable and Payroll I need to post check information to the Permanent databases (so that the DATEPAID values fill in).  While testing this I forgot to fill in the DATEPAID field for some of the values I was expecting to post to General Ledger.  My mistake.

For both Accounts Payable and Payroll the DATEPAID field is automatically filled in for you when the checks are printed and then you are asked " ARE THE CHECKS RIGHT AND READY TO BE STORED TO THE PERMANENT CHECK REGISTER?" and you say "YES", which means that checks need to be posted to permanent data before General Ledger will reflect this information. Why should checks that have not been printed or distributed be reflected in General Ledger?  They should not.

 .10.

Journal Entry allows the user to make debit and credit alterations that act on the various account numbers and account descriptions.  When you use the post option in general ledger all of the journal entries will be erased and the current state of the accounting package information will be presented again for the time period entered.

EDIT CHART OF ACCOUNTS allows for the input of new charts of accounts or the altering of the existing chart of accounts.  The stipulation on this is that you use 5 digit account numbers in the EDIT CHART OF ACCOUNTS option and in the rest of the program.

Aplus Accounting uses a single posting method for General Ledger and not a double posting method for General Ledger.  This means that if you want your trial balance to balance, instead of expecting the program to add false offset figures to the postings which forces the trial balance to balance it is up to you to balance your trial balance.  This can be done with doing your own double posting in the Edit Chart of Accounts grid or doing your own double posting in Journal Entry inside the General Ledger module.  We prefer reality over fiction.  If your accounting package is doing an automatic double posting method we do not think that this is a realistic view of the current state of your company.

Budgeting is similar to Edit Chart of Accounts and Trial Balance but instead of reflecting the actual state of your business Budgeting reflects your desired state of your business.  As with most parts of the program, users may edit the account numbers, descriptions and totals in budgeting as much as they like.

.11.

Inventory

Inventory Control

Inventory control has multiple interfaces for managing and searching for your inventory data.

Report Menus

Fixed Inventory

Fixed Inventory also has multiple interfaces for managing and searching for your inventory data.

Report Menus

 

This program has 2 inventory modules.  The first one is activated when INVENTORY is pressed in the main menu the user will see the INVENTORY CONTROL MENU.  This program is designed to find items subtracted from its quantity variable when products and quantities entered in INVOICING match the model variables in INVENTORY.  In this way the user can keep track or quantities in inventory just by considering inventory to be reduced at the time of invoicing.  The FIXED INVENTORY MENU is the same program except it works off of a completely different data set and inventory is not reduced from it at the time of invoicing. Normally fixed inventory is inventory that companies do not sell on a regular basis such as their office furniture.

I have given users the opportunity to user either quantities in inventory or serial numbers.  If you are using quantities in your data records then it would be inappropriate to use serial numbers also, because then one data record would only pertain to one item in inventory, but we felt that this flexibility to do things either way should be there.

These inventory modules keeps track of inventory by sorting, adding, deleting and editing inventory items in a number of ways.

The view option allows the user to choose from stock items or model number to isolate the item that is searched for.  In addition, the view option is the largest part of the inventory program and can even directly edit inventory items after they have been isolated as well as sorting data.  The change option allows for the quick changing of inventory levels as do the data manager screens.  The delete option deletes stock items. The add option adds stock items.

VIEW INVENTORY and CHANGE INVENTORY LEVELS were originally written as a DOS application because we liked the look and feel of many of the inventory programs that we were seeing.  In our opinion, windows programs often still lack in leading the users through every step of what the user should be doing, thereby making the programs dummy proof.  For this reason we left some dBase for DOS code in this large windows accounting program.  If you do not like VIEW INVENTORY and CHANGE INVENTORY LEVELS, the same tasks may be accomplished through the windows looking part of the inventory program (Data Manager, Grid and inventory reports).

.12.

Inventory Control and Fixed inventory are identical except that in Inventory Control, inventory is subtracted from its quantity variable when products and quantities entered in INVOICING match the model variables in INVENTORY.

The report menus are present in both the INVENTORY CONTROL program and in the FIXED INVENTORY program and reports act respectively on the two different data sets.

The inventory module can be used with bar code scanning in to inventory.

Future versions of this program will include automatic reports to the user on items that need to be reordered and automatic reordering to vendors via fax, Email or modem.

.13.

Job Costing

Bid Sheets

Post Estimates to Bid Sheets

Estimating

Job Cost Analysis

Change Orders

Report Menu

Work Orders

Time and materials management as with all of job costing.

Excel Job Costing Interface

Database View And Search Menu

 

When creating a new job in JOBCOST ANALYSIS or ESTIMATING job number needs to be 3 digits and relates to the specific job that you are creating.  The number will be generated automatically when adding jobs.  In the rest of the program the job number is the last 3 digits of the account number. EX. In order for 002 in Job costing to pull in information from the rest of the program the Account numbers in the rest of the program need to be numbers like EX.  23000.002 

The JOBCOSTING part of this program is divided in to 10 main parts(BID SHEETS, ESTIMATING, JOBCOST ANALYSIS, EDIT GENERAL DATA, UPDATE JOBCOST ANALYSIS, CHANGE ORDERS, REPORTS, WORK ORDERS, EXCEL INTERFACE and DATABASE VIEW MENU )

The first part of Job Costing is Data Manager.  As with the other modules this option is for general / basic information on the different jobs.

The second part of Job Costing is BID SHEETS.  This option allows for the automatic production of bid sheets by posting ESTIMATE information in to BID SHEETS after changing the different amount percentages to account for profit to the job being bid for. 

The third part of JOBCOST is Estimating / Budgeting.  The words estimating and budgeting are synonymous. ESTIMATING/BUDGETING is not linked to anything because it is usually used before any activity has begun on jobs.   

In the fourth part of job costing is job cost analysis and this part of the program is available on request only.  This is the most comprehensive part of Aplus Accounting

and calculates what is received and paid on the different jobs.

.14.

The fifth part of JOBCOSTING is CHANGE ORDERS.  Cost over runs frequently occur on jobs and require an additional contract between the contractor and contracted for the purpose of acknowledging the additional cost over runs on the job.  This options does not interface with anything else, but when the contracted is invoice and pays on the additional work then the effect of the change order will be seen.

The additional assumption is that the because change orders are a cost overrun, the universal construction code is already entered in BID SHEETS, ESTIMATING and JOB COST ANALYSIS. 

The CHANGE ORDERS is one of the many parts of the program that automatically generate a number, in this case the CHANGE ORDER NUMBER.

 The sixth part of JOBCOSTING is JOBCOST REPORTS. The job cost reports link to accounts receivable, accounts payable and payroll. By being able to access all of this information in single reports the program determines all profit and loss information applicable to the different jobs as the job is in progress.

The seventh part of JOBCOSTING is WORK ORDERS.  Work orders are for assigning work to employees in an extremely structured manner. 

Job Costing as usual there are 2 sets of address.  There are 6 date fields in WORK ORDERS determine different parts of the work progress, as well as the usual universal construction codes and descriptions to tie in to each work assignment.  

.15.

Work orders has its own help section off of the ? icon as is repeated in the next paragraph:

Work orders is a part of Job Costing that keeps detailed information on work in progress.  By comparison Bid sheets do a good job of bidding for jobs, Estimating does a good job of figuring expenses on jobs, Job Cost analysis and Job Cost Reports do a good job of keeping track of what is currently being spent and made on different jobs.

There is a fairly comprehensive REPORT MENU off of the main WORK ORDER SCREEN.

Work Orders are divided in to incomplete work orders and completed work orders.

Only work orders that are marked as completed will post to the Stored / Completed / permanent work order database.  Likewise the work order reports are divided in to incomplete and completed.  In addition Post Completed Work Orders To Invoicing posts from the stored work order table to invoicing without deleting any work orders in the work order module.  Future versions of this program will post to payroll.

The reports work off of Date Due.  If you do not fill in Date Due then the reports will not show.

The ninth part of Job Costing is Excel Job costing Interface.  This options is designed to export the Aplus Accounting database files to EXCEL .XLS files.    In doing so it overwrites all information in previous .XLS files. The tenth part of JOBCOSTING is DATABASE VIEW MENU which allows the user to view the different Aplus Accounting database files in grid format, much in the same way you would if you used the EXCEL JOBCOSTING INTERFACE.

.16.

Payroll

Basic Payroll

Comprehensive Payroll

Check Register

Accounts Management

Check printing and batch processing.

Time Clock

Post time clock information to payroll checks.

Report Menus

W2s

Usernames are up to 25 characters and passwords are 20 characters.

As with most of this program the payroll module is extremely comprehensive as can be scene with the equations for GROSS and NET.

GROSS = (RATE *HOURS) + ((RATE*1.5)*OVERTMHRS) + BONUS +VACATION +OTHEARN-GARNISH-HEALTHINS-LIFEINS-PENSION-ADVANCES-DENTAL-WORKMENSCM-UNIONDUES-LOAN-OTHDEDUCT

NET = (GROSS - TAXES + BENEFITAMT)

TOTDEDUCTIONS= (ADVANCES+DENTAL+GARNISH+HEALTHINS+LIFEINS+LOAN+ OTHDEDUCT+PENSION+UNIONDUES+WORKMENSCM) 

As with the most of the program you must first enter general information (employee name, employee number, deductions and state withholding percent) before you can write them checks.

If something does not look like it calculated correctly chances are that it did calculate correctly and you are not seeing all of the fields in use on the screen you are on. 

The payroll program is divided in to seven main parts. 

The first part of the payroll program is BASIC PAYROLL.  This works much in the same way as BASIC CHECKING in ACCOUNTS PAYABLE but has all of the many payroll fields that you should have available to you in any payroll program. 

The second part of the payroll program is COMPREHENSIVE PAYROLL.  This works much in the same way as BASIC PAYROLL. All of the fields that you should have available to you in any payroll program are here as in BASIC PAYROLL expect all most everything is in a grid format instead of in a screen format.  If you want something to save then get off of the last field / column you enter something in before exiting and if anything is not saving correctly then press F2 instead of escape to exit. You can mark a record for deletion by clicking on the extremely narrow far left column without a label above it.  This will turn the small square black and then when you exit it will be deleted.

.17.

The third part of the payroll program is PAYROLL - JOBCOSTING.

While Basic payroll and comprehensive payroll works off of the same data as PAYROLL - JOBCOSTING they only lets you write one check to an employee per check run, with PAYROLL - JOBCOSTING you can only write multiple checks to an employee per check run.

This menu option allows the user to search for the employee by employee name.  Once this general information has been located the computer prompts the user for either check information or to return to pay roll menu.  If the user chooses the check information option the program prompts the user for more detailed information such as check number, amount, job name.

The payroll program then stores this information for later user after calculating all taxes and letting the user view the taxes.

The fourth part of payroll is the payroll check register which is described in the check register part of this manual on page five. 

The fifth part of payroll is the time clock which can keep track of all employee work time through them clocking in and out.  As in all the main modules of this program you need to have the general information such as the employee name set up at least in part before they will show up on the time clock.

Time Clock is security intensive and therefore, does require a that Administrator USERNAME and PASSWORD be entered in to TOOLS - PASSWORDS if you are using any other options except CLOCK IN and CLOCK OUT.

Entering any other option except CLOCK IN and CLOCK OUT will be evident in the Exception Report (changed data report). The USERNAME and PASSWORD information for CLOCK IN and CLOCK OUT comes from the general payroll information which may be seen in the PAYROLL - Data Manager.   The USERNAME and PASSWORD information for options other than CLOCK IN and Clock Out comes from Tools - Passwords. 

The sixth part of the payroll menu is the report menus. The reports show information in different forms and with different combinations of information.  If you don't see the information in the form you wish then try looking at a different reports (if all the different variables on each check where put side by side on the same report the report would be too wide for any printer).  As with the rest of the program many of the payroll checks are date coded so that you may have reports for any time period you wish. 

The paywords will fill in for you to 1 cent under $23,000.00.  Past that amount you will have to fill in the paywords your self - for now.
NOTE: General payroll information such as name, state w/holding percent, deductions and marital status must be entered in the general information Grid or the last part of the payroll module DATA MANAGER before the federal and state taxes will calculate correctly.

.18.

Purchase Orders

Enter Purchase Order Information

Dispute Interface, Shipping Interface

Data Manger

Report Menus

Purchase Orders look similar the invoicing part of the program and act in exactly the opposite way from invoicing.  That is, instead of billing a customer will an invoice for a product you sold them or that you are going to sell them, you are sending your vendors a form stating what it is that you are going to buy from them. Keep in mind, you have not bought anything from anyone yet, therefore, there are not any amount paid fields or any credit card interfaces in purchase orders. Use the main Accounts Payable module to pay companies for products at the time you owe them the money. 

The main fields ( not the more detailed fields like SHIPPING, TERMS, SHIPVIA ) in Purchase Ordered are QUANTITY ORDERED, QUANTITY RECEIVED, PRODUCT, UNIT PRICE and TOTAL.  If you leave the TOTAL field blank and fill in QUANTITY ORDERED and UNIT PRICE then the program will automatically fill in TOTAL with ( QUANTITY ORDERED * UNIT PRICE).

This purchase order program is divided in to three main parts, PURCHASE ORDERS (which processes PO's), LOCATE (which retrieves PO's ADDS / EDITS / REPRINTS Purchase Orders) and the Purchase order REPORT MENU.

The PURCHASES ORDER section prompts the user for variables such as product, quantity, amount invoiced, amount paid.  It then calculates the amount due and stores this information for recall in reports or in actual purchase orders.

The REPORT MENU on this program accesses all PO information ever entered by accessing various purchase order reports using information in both the current and permanent databases.

The remaining options ADD, EDIT, DELETE vendors have to do with file maintenance and are designed for more general vendor information management if needed and act off of the same vendor databases as the (Add vendor, Delete vendor, Edit and Grid) in the ACCOUNTS PAYABLE MENU.  As is the similar case with the rest of the program, vendors need to be ADDED before PO's may be written to them.

POST RECIEVED Pos TO PERMANENT DATA will not post anything unless you mark purchase orders as received with some mark in the received field.

.19.

Contact Manager

Contact management allows for the storage off all names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, website information and miscellaneous

information on anyone who's information you wish to store and retrieve.

Reports Menus

The report menu section has a option to post any contact information to Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory or

Payroll so that if someone becomes a customer, vendor or employee, you will not have to re-enter any of their general information. 

The most basic type of program in the world in my opinion is the contact manager.  This type of program / in this case module keeps tract of general information.   If you are speaking with someone and they are not a customer and they are not a vendor or employee and you wish to keep their contact information this is a good place to put them.

The data for this module was originally set up for a travel agency and lists a couple hundred resort hotels around the United States with some of the pictures running off of the View button (that is on all general information screens).  If you do not have this resort information and would like to have it let us know.

When you press ADD in contact manager the date field automatically enters today’s date so that the reports off of the REPORT MENU BUTTON can filter off of different date ranges.

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Tools

Enter current company information and check formats.

Backup data, restore data and delete data before a date.

Import data into the accounting program.

Enter zip codes and tax rates.

Login and exception reports.

Area Codes, States and Country lookups and searches. 

The TOOLS program lets the user manage file information in a variety of different ways and view computer configuration important to the program's operation. 

The first two options of this menu enable the user to back up programs data to either drive E: or drive F:. The second two options of this menu enable the user to restore programs data from either drive E: or drive F:.

Delete all data before a date. / Year End Closing deletes all data in permanent databases with data earlier than the date you specify.  Beware, do not delete any data you wish to keep of you will have to restore it from back up data.

The PASSWORD option of the TOOLS menu is larger than it looks.  If you do not leave a password in this space then the program will not prompt anyone for passwords.  If you do leave a password in this space the password programming will be activated.  You can type in as many usernames and passwords as you like and require that people using the program remember their usernames and passwords that are entered here.  If the program is used in this manner then various parts of the program like the restaurant module will keep track of who has been using the program when and will run some reports on this subject. Usernames are up to 25 characters and passwords are 20 characters.

CHECK DATA FILES AND DISK SPACE shows what data files the program is using and how much hard drive space is available.  This program needs at least 20 megabyte(20,000,000 bytes) for itself to operate correctly.  Your hard drive should have at least 300 MB of free hard drive space for a healthy hard drive.  CHECK COMPUTERS MEMORY checks random access memory(RAM) on the computer while this program is running.  Available RAM should be at least 128MB.  Various diagnosis tools such as defrag and MSSYSINFO can tell you if you are having hardware problems with your hard drive or RAM. 

ENTER ZIP CODES AND TAX RATES is originally from the US post office and contains many domestic and foreign zip codes which the

various ZIP buttons in the program will act on after you type in a zip code.   Right now the accounts receivable data manager is set up so that if you enter a zip code and then press enter or hit the zip code button then the city, state, country, city tax rate and state tax rate will be filled in for you.  We do not wish to keep track of all of the city and state tax rates for the country, therefore, if you are doing business in a certain city and state you may wish to go in to the ENTER ZIP CODES AND TAX RATES option and make sure the tax rate information is correct for the areas you are doing business in.

ENTER CURRENT COMPANY INFORMATION is a good place to keep your contact information and tax license numbers so that this information may be automatically added into some of the reports, such as, contact information will appear in invoices and purchase orders to name a couple.

PACK ALL DATABASES, compresses all of the databases used in the program which makes the data more efficiently stored and free of any accidentally added blank records.

The next version of TOOLS will contain a CONTRACT button of many of the world popular contracts not included in the rest of the program such as Copyright, Patent, Incorporation contracts to name a few of many.

Company Logo options will also be listed here.

QUIT

Many of the menus have the word quit written on them.  This does indeed get you out of the program.

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NOTE ON THE GRID / BROWSE EDITOR

The parts of the program options which have the word Grid or the word edit in the option use the Aplus Accounting grid editing feature.  You can move anywhere in the data and any changes you make may be saves by pressing F2. If you wish to delete a data record(row) press CTRL/U or click the far left extremely small unmarked field and make sure you see it turn black. move off of the row you have marked for deletion and then press F2 to save changes and deletions.

We believe in letting users enter information in grid formats should they wish to. Spread sheets have been extremely popular in the past probably in part because of this full screen data editing capability. 

Escape on a grid option should not save anything if you stay on the same record you edited.  If you move off of the record you edited then Escape or F2 on a Grid option should save your changes.

If you are entering information in a grid you need to get off of the current field / column before the information in the field will save.  Hopefully this will be better in the new version of Aplus Accounting that just came out. ** This is one of the few cumbersome parts of this language compiler we have seen.  If this is bothering you, one could use other parts of the program and not use grid formats to enter and edit information.

Records may be added to grids by the drop down menu then go to Tools The go to Append New Record.  If you are adding a record to Invoicing or Purchase orders for a new Invoice or Purchase order line item then you should include the new invoice number or purchase number in the new record.

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Common user mistakes.

General information such as name, address tax percents need to be added on customers, vendors and employees before check information can be added.

There are different databases in each program module for organizational purposes.  For example,  names, addresses, phone numbers in general databases,  check information in detailed databases and past information is posted / stored in the permanent databases (so that current information is not cluttered up by what you have done in the distant past). 

If you are not viewing information you have entered it may be because it is in a different database than you are looking for it.  For example, in accounts payable and payroll  you must store detailed check information with X's or *'s to the check registers before you can print checks.

There is a minimum amount of information you can enter in to the program, such as, names and amounts and the program will function.  The drawback to only entering the most important information and not entering other information, such as, account numbers, category numbers and dates is that you may not see all of the information you may like on the reports if it has not been entered in the input parts of the program.

Some of the reports are in Elite or Condensed print.  If you are using the wrong printer driver for your computer the printer might not switch to elite or condensed print.  Another solution to this problem is to turn your printer on condensed or elite print if your printer supports this. 

The reports aged payable, tax reports, year to date reports) where made elite and condensed because of the large volume of information variables they contain.  If you have any trouble with setting up your printer feel free to call our technical support line.   

If you are using job costing the job number is the last three digits of account number/job number.  Example 21000.155 . This number could represent an accounts payable on job number 155.

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Because of the 155 tagged on the end of the account number this associated information will be pulled in to job costing providing a job number 00000.155 is created in job costing analysis or estimating.   

When creating a job in EDIT in JOBCOSTING the program will automatically assign the job the next available job number, such as 155 so that the computer can process the number correctly even though only the last 3 digits of the account number is the job number.

In both accounts receivable and accounts payable the invoice number is the most important number because it ties together all payments and partial payments.  Suppose you are in accounts receivable and you have invoiced a customer on one invoice for several items they have bought and they paid you partially upon ordering.  Then at later dates, they send you different checks for the remainder due on the invoice.  When you Enter Payments in accounts receivable - Enter Payment information, and have entered the proper invoice number you are getting paid on, the program will search through everything that has been paid and invoiced

on that invoice number both in invoicing and in Enter Payment information and if the amount received is greater or equal the amount invoiced all of the invoice items will be marked as paid and this invoice will no longer show up on unpaid reports.

Similarly, in accounts payable if you pay several times on an invoice you have received, and the correct invoice number is entered on the different checks you are writing, the invoice will be marked as paid when the amount paid is greater or equal to the amount you have been invoiced and this invoice will no longer show up as unpaid on reports.

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  Add-Ons

One of the great things about this program is it may be run on most of the world’s major operating systems or computer systems. (DOS,UNIX, OS2, VMS, WINDOWS or MACINTOSH)  In addition, this program has worked with all network configurations we have yet tried it on.

This program now has bar code scanning capabilities for an additional $925.00 which includes scanning hardware, scanning hardware set up and training.(Great for inventory).

FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS

Additional Specialized Accounts receivable sub modules such as INTERNAL MEDICINE, LOANS, RESTAURANT, SALES ORDERS and Fax interface.

Fax Interface

For further information contact us at www.JobCosting.biz or info@JobCosting.biz