Peachtree has long offered report customization via the popular Crystal Reports, but .the learning curve on using this product with the Peachtree database has been very steep. The new Business Intelligence module makes connecting to and extracting data from Peachtree significantly more “user friendly”, allowing almost anyone with rudimentary Excel skills to start building basic reports based on Peachtree accounting data.

Much of the inherent functionality of the Business Intelligence module relies on the innate power of Excel, especially Excel’ pivot table functionality, to deliver truly powerful reporting. Recognizing that the key to building powerful reports lies in Excel, and not in Peachtree itself, Alchemex offers a variety of video training clips on “Intermediate to Advanced” Excel skills from their website, which anyone using the Business Intelligence tool will want to review, to brush up on Excel. There is also a growing “community” of users on the website, with free membership offered to all, where new users can tap the expertise of more experienced users.

 Business Intelligence reports will be loaded directly into the Peachtree reporting window, so users will access them directly from within Peachtree. Reports can then be run “on demand”, without having to manually update the report each time it is run. Realtime information is pulled directly from the Peachtree database (or from other databases as well, with the optional “connector” module), and once the data is pulled into Excel it can be “sliced and diced” as needed by the user.

 There is even a “scheduling” option, so that standard can reports can be produced automatically, at user defined intervals, and sent directly to individual users (via email) as needed. We believe that this functionality will open up all kinds of possibilities for users to develop creative reporting solutions.

 TriStar has completed a Sage-sponsored, five-part training program on the use of this new Business Intelligence tool, as a prerequisite to obtaining “certification” as a Business Intelligence report developer for Peachtree. Once certified, we expect tor create a series of sample reports which we will post on our website for clients to review, so you will be able to get a better understanding of the capabilities of the product.

 A free 30-day trial license for Sage Peachtree Business Intelligence is available to any Peachtree 2012 licensee. At the expiration of the trial period a single user license can be purchased for $250, with additional user licenses priced at $50 per user. The optional “connector” module, which allows users to create totally custom reports pulling from virtually any field in the Peachtree database (not just the fields connected via the “standard” reports that ship with the product), is available for a fixed charge of $100.

 Please contact TriStar if you would like to learn more about this exciting new reporting option for Peachtree.

Sorry about raising anyone’s anxiety levels. In the words of Rosanna DanaDana, “never mind…..”

We encountered this issue internally yesterday, and were able to confirm with Peachtree Tech Support this morning that “at this time” the Timeslips TALPro link is not functional with Peachtree 2010. Sage expects to release a “link utility” for Peachtree 2010 at about the same time that they release Timeslips 2010 (early to mid-July), at which time, according to Support, “some” (?) earlier versions of Timeslips will be able to link to Peachtree 2010.

For now, our advice to anyone running Timeslips and Peachtree with the TALPro Peachtree link active is to not install Peachtree 2010 yet. By all means purchase the Peachtree upgrade (to capture the upgrade discounts available) but let it “age” on the shelf for a while until we have a functional link between the two products available from the manufacturer.

We’ll post an update here as soon as we have successfully installed a link between Peachtree 2010 and Timeslips. Stay tuned.