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Features of the Pretty Good Accounting System Version 2.0 (C) May 1999 by Duane Bristow, Albany, Kentucky The PGAS, Pretty Good Accounting System, computer program package has been developed by work with a number of small businesses of various types over the last twenty years. It is thought to be much more versatile than any other accounting package available and, since it is completely customizable, is considered by many to be the best value available. Features include: Ease of operation with user friendly menu driven screens. Has Reindex facilities to repair indexes damaged by electrical failures. Reports are available on screen or printer or output as a disk file. User designed help screens available at all times. Context sensitive help screens can also be available. Prompts at the bottom of the screen give help for filling in each field where input is required. Program allows keystoke macros to be defined and used. The system also allows direct access to most areas in sub menus from the command line making navigation to frequently used menus a one keystoke operation. The system will run on any IBM compatible PC produced since 1990 requiring only 512k RAM memory to run and requiring less than 50 megabytes of disk space for storing over 200,000 transactions. Custom input screens can be designed and added to the system by the programmer as needed. Automatic transaction entry at the end of the month or the year is available for recurring transactions. Posting transactions: Transactions posted are held in a temporary holding area until they can be checked and verified. This allows editing and deletion of erroneous data without compromising the integrity of financial reports and audit trails produced. Manipulation of up to one hundred temporary transaction files also allows versatility in posting current data before closing a previous accounting period and allows transfer and review of posted data between stations, or even from remote locations, by any number of users or supervisors. Transactions, when transferred to the main accounting database, are indexed by day making easy access to data from any period of the past. Since size of the transaction database is limited only by the amount of hard disk space on the computer it is completely feasible to have complete financial details available for many years in the past. For example, one local farm supply store using this system is able to produce records of a customer's financial transactions in detail for a period of ten years and will easily be able to keep records for at least twenty years in less than 100 megabytes of hard disk storage space. (Another feature is compact data storage with each transaction requiring only 240 bytes.) Check, Invoice or reference numbers up to 6 characters. General Ledger accounts from the chart of accounts may be referenced by a name code up to 8 characters, an order code up to 8 characters or by any part of the account description. The name code is for ease of reference. The order code determines the order of accounts printed on reports. Complete sets of order codes can be saved and recalled. It is also possible on balance sheets and P&L reports to specify the depth into the 8 characters of the order code so that reports can give combined totals of several accounts. GL accounts also have a type code which can be used for ordering and depth reporting on GL reports. They also include flags to trigger input of [P]rofit center, [Q]uantity, [N]umber, or Sales [T]ax. Here is the GL account editing screen. General Ledger Account Record # 3 Name code: BA______ Order code: 103.00__ Bank Account__________________ Flags: ____ (PQNT) Type: AC (ALORE + others) GL accounts and vendor records may be edited directly on the posting screen for ease of use. Vendors are defined as any person or entity with which business is done other than employees. Vendors records can be accessed by record number, by code (first three letters of last name plus first two letters of first name for individuals or first five letters of name for entity.) They can also be searched for any string of characters in the vendor name producing a list from which to choose. Here is the vendor editing screen Vendor Record # 1 Current bal. 0.00 Doe, John 555 Oak Street Albany, KY 42602 444-55-6777 (606) 555-1111 jdoe@mindspring.net A good customer Cat. R Individual Carrying Charge Carrying charge 0.020 Discount (decimal) 0.000 Credit limit 9999999 Include sub vendors N Sales tax exempt reason: Billing message - Billing rate: 0.00 Last billed 00/00/00 0.00 transaction 0 The system allows 4 lines for address in addition to name phone number Taxpayer ID number email address Remarks A one character alpha-numeric category (many vendor reports allow filtering by category.) A default profit center for this vendor An individually defined GL account for carrying charges An individually defined monthly carrying charge rate An individually defined credit limit (vendors over their credit limit can be flagged.) An individually defined discount rate in decimal (discounts are credited at month end) A designation to get sub vendors for cases such as the vendor being an intermediary to the real vendor (credit card company for example) A two digit reason code if the vendor is sales tax exempt An individually defined billing message A billing rate in cases where the product sales screen is used to calculate billings from hours of service. The vendor screen also shows the current balance owed, the date and amount of the last bill sent and the last transaction number listed on the last bill sent. The business can define any number of profit centers and the profit center involved can be posted with each transaction. This allows separate General Ledger reports including Balance Sheets, P&L reports and GL account audit trails by Profit Center. The system is capable of handling different sales tax rates for up to 20 states. The user can review totals in the temporary transaction file by GL account and by AR and AP account and employee totals and check totals by a trial balance report before transferring transactions to the main transaction database. The system will print payables and payroll checks, if desired. It can be customized for any check format. It also allows each bank account to be reconciled against the bank statement. Updating payroll tax withholding tables can be done by the user at the beginning of the year in about ten minutes from the appropriate IRS publication. The payroll system handles weekly and biweekly pay periods properly by Dept. of Labor overtime pay rules. It also allows any odd length of pay period. Gross pay can be any combination of salary, piecework or hourly rates. The system also allows add on of vacation, holiday, sick and other pay. Six payroll deductions per employee in addition to standard tax withholding are allowed. Any of these can be designated as cafeteria deductions. State withholding for Kentucky is built in and other states can be customized. The user can designate a profit center, a bank account for net pay, and a GL expense account for payroll for each employee as well as accounts for each tax and other deduction. Employees can be designated as exempt from federal, state, FICA or Medicare withholdings. Each deduction allows an absolute dollar amount per pay period or an amount based on gross pay. Such additions to federal and state withholding are also possible. The payroll system also accumulates sick and vacation hours and deducts regular and hazardous duty retirement matching employer's part. In Kentucky it can handle KLEFP & KREDA. Reports: See the outline of the accounting system for a list of reports available. In general reports are very versatile and can be output to the screen or to a disk file or to 80 column or 132 column printer pages. Balance sheets can be printed to 8 depths of detail and can be based on account order codes or type codes. They can be printed for any month up to 24 months back. They can compare any month to the previous month, year ago, beginning of year or budget amounts. P&L reports can be printed to 8 depths of detail and can be based on account order codes or type codes. They can be printed for any time period up to 24 months back. They can compare that time period to the previous period, year ago, year to date or budget amounts. Audit trails can be set up for any time period by day in the entire transaction database. They can include any GL account range desired and can be filtered by almost any parameter including string searches. They can be sorted at two levels by GL account, date, vendor, profit center, or check number. They can be formatted to list either details or totals only. Taken together all these setup parameters make this report so versatile that it can be considered to allow an almost infinite variety of reports. Another very versatile report is the vendor list allowing filtering of vendors listed by category and search string as well as only those who either have done business or have not done business since a specified date. The list can be sorted either alphabetically or by dollars of business done since a specified date. The report can also be formatted for various degrees of detail or set up for mailing label format. The employee list is very similiar in versatility to the vendor list. The aged accounts report can be filtered by vendor category and can be sorted either alphabetically or by amount owed or by amount owed and unpaid at any month back from 1 to 9. Utilities: System utilities allow review of transactions in the main database by date or by input order and filtering by string searches. They also allow these to be copied from the main database to the temporary transaction file for review in greater detail. By setting flags and constants the operation of the entire program can be customized. Security & networking: The system is network aware allowing up to 36 named network stations to use the system at once. Logs of user access and activities can be enabled and users can be required to log in by name and password. Users can also be granted any combination of the following access levels. Transaction posting Payroll Post to main database Rename temporary transaction file End accounting period Payroll reports General reports System manager On the other hand all security features can be disabled for ease of use. Special Input Screens: Special input screens allow input of transactions in customized formats for specific businesses. The invoice screen allows input of all information for product shipping and printing a shipping invoice as well as automatically posting the invoice to accounts receivable. The Time Accounts screen allows setting up consumer credit accounts for monthly payments and posting payments received on these accounts as well as keeping running balances on each account. The inventory received screen allows input of invoices for inventory items received automatically posting amounts to Accounts Payable for the vendor or posting a check written on the bank account. It then updates inventory items quantities and values when transactions are posted to the main accounts. The inventory screen allows setup and editing of inventory sales items as well as input of inventory items received and inventory lists and automatic updating of inventory values in the General Ledger and inventory charge off. The product sales screen allows posting sales of products which require speciality tax calculations. The screen automatically calculates prices and taxes from product identification and quantity. The log tally screen is a special screen for use by sawmills and other log buyers to calculate total amounts due for logs purchased, print summary sheets for the log seller and automatically post amounts owed to the accounts payable system. The MDAS daysheet reading function allows an interface to our Physician's Accounting System posting summaries of all daily charges and payments received from that system to the PGAS system. The purchase order screen is used to control purchase orders. It allows entry of new purchase orders of inventory items, entry of received purchase order items and various ways to search and summarize purchase orders both current and archived as well as print a report of purchase order items received. The cash register screen allows sales of items by inventory number either cash or charge at a cash register and prints a register receipt. It automatically posts all sales to the main system and, if an inventory module is used, posts cost of sale transactions too.
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Last revised April 8, 2003.
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