Helpful concepts and information to help you save time and get more done with Peachtree / Sage 50.
Payroll W-2's
Peachtree 2009 prints W-2's directly onto blank paper. This is part of what they call "Print 'n Sign Tax Forms". This means there is no need to purchase W-2 forms when using the Peachtree PR Tax Update Service called Peachtree Simple Payroll.
With Peachtree, you can print W-2's at any time during the year - you don't have to wait until year end. So save yourself the stress of wondering if W-2's will print ok come January, do a test printing before the end of the year!
Opening a Closed Fiscal Year
User: I have used Peachtree for 7 years (approximately)- we just realized that our CPA produced incorrect financial statements for all of these years - we wish to "reopen" every "old" period within Peachtree and work our way through them, entering correct journal entries and reclosing each period as we restate each and every month's financial statement. Is there any possible way to do this?
Answer: Peachtree does not allow old years (beyond the current two years) to be reopened. The only way to obtain financial statements for those years would be to open archived versions of your company that may exist or to locate backups made over those various seven years. Archiving is a function of Peachtree Premium that makes a duplicated and unalterable copy of your company which is stored for future reference. In Peachtree Premium, the command to make an archive of your company is File/Archive Company. If you have not made archives of your company over the years, then you'll want to focus on your backups.
Hopefully you've saved at least one backup each year. Start by making a fresh backup of your Peachtree company. Next you'll need to restore one of your old backups, run the reports you need, and then restore the next backup and print those financial reports.
Of course this is impossible if you have not saved the backups. However, one thing I've noticed is that even when people don't think they have backups, they often do exist. A common place for additional backups is on your computer's hard drive. Unnoticed backups can be left on your hard drive because the default location for Peachtree to store backups is on drive C. Even though it's best to back up onto removable media, many people either on purpose or accidentally backup onto their hard disc. If the backup you want is on your hard disc, it can be difficult to locate since it might have been carelessly dropped almost anywhere on the drive and you would very likely not have noticed it.
If you want to look for stray Peachtree backups that might exist, use the following command. Choose Start from your Windows Task Bar. Now choose Search/All Files and Folders. Next put *.ptb into the field called "All or Part of the Filename". Leave the "Look In" field as "Local Hard Drives". Now click More Advanced Options and be sure that the 1st three boxes are checked: Search System Folders, Search Hidden Files and Folders, Search Sub-folders. Finally click on Search and the computer will list all the Peachtree backups that exist on you hard drive.
Drill Down on Financial Statements
One of the great features of Peachtree is the way you can click your mouse on any line of a financial statement and see additional related information. Suppose you are reviewing you monthly Income Statement on the screen and you notice that Rent Expense seems high this month. All you need to do is click on the Rent Expense line of the Income Statement and you'll have a display of all transactions that contributed to that figure.
The General Ledger is the report that displays all the transactions in Peachtree. If you've clicked on the Advertising Expense line in the Current Month column of the Income Statement, it will take you directly into a General Ledger report of all transactions that occurred in the current month that contribute to creating that month's total for Advertising Expense.
When reviewing the General Ledger transactions that contributed to the Advertising Expense, you might notice that one or more of the transactions does not look right. Perhaps it has a suspicious date, description, or amount. All you need to do is click on the transaction you are wondering about and you'll be taken to the input screen where that transaction was originally entered. From this screen, the transaction can be modified or deleted. Perhaps you want to change an amount, description, or date. Make the changes you want and then close the various screens that have come up and you'll be right back where you started at the Income Statement - only now it will be updated to reflect the changes you've made.
Peachtree referrs to clicking on a report preview screen to see the underlying transactions as "Drilling Down". This Drill Down feature works on the Balance Sheet the same way it does on the Income Statement. In fact, most reports in Peachtree allow you to drill down from the report into the source transaction screen. It's just that many people do not realize that they can also perform this Drill Down for further detail from any of the Income Statement or Balance Sheet preview screens.
Peachtree Bank Deposit
Peachtree has a feature called Bank Deposit. This is a feature that you are not required to use. It is based on the Deposit Ticket ID field of the receipt.
When you enter a new receipt, you may choose to leave the Deposit Ticket ID blank. If you leave this field blank when the receipt is entered, you can continue to leave this field blank indefinitely, or you can use Tasks/Select for Deposit to assign a value to this field - and thereby create your deposit.
If you choose to ignore Peachtree's bank deposit feature, and you leave the Deposit Ticket ID field blank for all receipts, you'll be fine until you attempt to use the feature: Tasks/Account Reconciliation. When you attempt to reconcile you'll be in for a lot of extra work since the deposit amounts on your bank statement will not match up with deposit amounts on your Account Reconciliaiton Screen. Your Account Reconciliation Screen will show a lump sum for all receipts while your bank statement will show the actual deposit amounts that were made during the month.
By the way, if you are using QuickBooks, you have the same basic bank deposit issue to deal with. Some people use QuickBooks, but they ignore the Bank Deposit feature. Just like with Peachtree, this makes reconciliation difficult since bank deposits are not properly listed. This makes matching your records up with the bank statement tedious.
Using Peachtree with a Different Program for Invoicing
Let's suppose that you are using Peachtree for your accounting but have another program for generating invoices. This might be because your business has complicated customer needs.
For example, you might be a doctor, dentist, or water testing lab. You may have industry specific software that handles special needs related to your customers such as: service contracts, annual checkups, special discounts, results of lab tests, etc.
Your specialized software may do several things all in one step. It may, for example, record the results of an annual checkup and generate an invoice all at the same time.
Once you've setup and are running the special software, you need to consider how to get the invoice information that is being generated into Peachtree. If the invoicing software is Peachtree compatible it means that you'll be able to easily import the data. Use Peachtree's File/Import command.
If the invoicing program is NOT Peachtree compatible, then you'll need to either enter the invoices manually into Peachtree, or send the data to a spread sheet where it can be manipulated into a format that is compatible with Peachtree.