Peachtree Accounting?

[pharry]

Any experience w/ Peachtree? This is related to my other post on inventory management systems. I use Quickbook, but you can't remove retired devices, and I've quickly far exceeded an acceptable file size. Peachtree tells me they don't have this problem, that retired devices can be removed. Any feedback would be appreciated before I jump from one frying pan to another!

[cdicken]

I have no direct experience using PeachTree, and I guess you've realised that Actinic has no Link available to that application.

Sorry I cannot help any more.

[EaglesNest]

Any experience w/ Peachtree? This is related to my other post on inventory management systems. I use Quickbook, but you can't remove retired devices, and I've quickly far exceeded an acceptable file size. Peachtree tells me they don't have this problem, that retired devices can be removed. Any feedback would be appreciated before I jump from one frying pan to another!

Hi Pharry,
I have some pretty good knowledge of PeachTree accounting. What exactly are you wanting to do? I also I have a pretty in depth knowledge of QuickBooks as I used to be a QuickBooks adviser. Please explain in detail what you are attempting to do with QuickBooks and would like to do with Peach...

Regards
Eagle

[pharry]

I'm not going to go with Peachtree because there isn't a link. Brian w/ Sure Solutions suggested I try to make Quickbooks work, which I'd like to do.

I have about 5000 active products at any given time. My problem (QB's problem) is that I add and retire about 300 products per month. Since I can't remove products from QB, my product list is growing fast. Really fast! Which causes all sorts of problems, but most significantly, I'm going to hit the limit before too long. My file got corrupted this summer, and I had to rebuild everything from scratch. Since I have payroll, this was a huge nightmare. But I have to find a way to get rid of inactive products. Customers, too, but products are the biggest problem.

Brian suggested rebuilding a new file at year end. This might not be such a nightmare since I'd have a clean cut for payroll at the end of the year.

Given your experience as an advisor, what to folks do who have a lot of short-shelf-life products?

Thanks!

Pat

[EaglesNest]

I have about 5000 active products at any given time. My problem (QB's problem) is that I add and retire about 300 products per month. Since I can't remove products from QB, my product list is growing fast. Really fast! Which causes all sorts of problems, but most significantly, I'm going to hit the limit before too long. My file got corrupted this summer, and I had to rebuild everything from scratch. Since I have payroll, this was a huge nightmare. But I have to find a way to get rid of inactive products. Customers, too, but products are the biggest problem.

Hi Pat,

The reason that QuickBooks does not allow you to delete products that have been used in transactions is because it is poor accounting practice to just delete an item. Just as you would normally create a credit for an invoice instead of just deleting it for accounting purposes you should not just delete inventory items that have been used in transactions, nor delete customers that have been used in transactions. This keeps your records in tact for reporting purposes.

That being said, you can condense your data file with QuickBooks, Condensing allows you to remove inactive items, transactions, etc., and archives them so that you are able to view them if needed for reporting purposes. When you start the condense process you can choose to either condense by date or condense and entire data file (which you would only do if you wanted to start a new data file each fiscal year or something similar. My suggestion would be to condense your data files on a monthly basis.

When you condense the data file choose the as of date to condense.

For instance, if you want to condense all closed transactions for the previous month to November you would select the date of 10/31/2004. Then following the wizard select any other transactions that you would want to include in the condense. Be sure that you name the archive (condense file) to the date that you started the condense so that you can reference it by date in the future.

I would like to also caution you that you should always back up your data before performing the condense separately from the condense. The condense will back up your file for you but to be on the safe side I would make a separate back up of my data before the condensing process.

I would also suggest that you read up on condensing your data files that is contained in the QuickBooks help files. (Do a search for Condensing Data File)


Hope this helps
Regards,
Eagle

[pharry]

Yes, that helps. Thank you. I'll go read up on condensing. I'm thinking that I do need to start a new file each year, probably in addition to the monthly condensing. But let me go do my homework.

Thanks very much for your time and help.

Pat

[pharry]

Another question -- condensing does not remove any product with any history. Even if I condense, I will eventually hit the max number of products allowed. I can move to Premier or even Enterprise, but that is just delaying the problem.

I can't find any info in help about starting a new file at the end of the year. If I do this, will only the active products go to the new file?

[magicalwonders]

Hello Pat,

Setting up a new file in Quickbooks is easy enough. Just go to "File" and click "new company" Just give it a unique name, "Yourname2" or whatever.

You then set it up as you did your existing one. You can export data from your existing file and import it into the new one. Not sure if it will drag over the non active products though. If it does, you're back to entering them one by one. Heck of a drag, but you'd have to do it anyway if you used a new program. You might be lucky!

You can click from one "Company" to another and back again. so you don't have to wait before setting it up. If you are faced with weeks of data entry before your new trading year you can spread the pain a little bit!

The only downside really is that if you need info from a previous year, you'll have to close the "new company" and open the old one.

Hope this helps

Myles