In simple terms, a Peachtree archive is a “read only” snapshot, or copy, of your live database, as of the moment you create the archive.  In Premium and Quantum editions, the archive creation process can be run from directly within the software.  For Peachtree Complete, the user must “manually” create an archive outside of the application interface.

In Premium and Quantum, the “Archive Company” routine is available either from the File menu or as an option in the closing “wizard” when a year-end close is run.  The routine asks the user to give a name to the archive file (it defaults to a name which includes the current system date) when creating it. We recommend that you NOT accept this naming suggestion, but instead use something somewhat more descriptive, like “FY2010 before close”, or “pre-chart of accounts change”, or something that will help you find what you are looking for when you need to peek in the archives.

And the whole point of creating an archive is of course so you can return to it to look something up when needed. Let’s review how that works.

To open an archive, choose the File menu and select Open Archived Company.  Peachtree will then present you with a list of all of the archives that have been created for the particular live company from which you opened the list. If you are looking for an archive for a different Peachtree company, open that other live company first, then choose Open Archived Company.

The reason for this slightly confusing navigation scheme (for users with multiple Peachtree companies, anyway) is that the archives Peachtree creates are physically stored within the data folder that holds your live data, in a folder named “Archives”. You cannot choose where to create the archives, and when opening an archive you cannot choose what folder to look in. Peachtree will always and only look for an archive file to open from within the Archives folder within your company data folder.

Once you have opened a Peachtree archive, you can perform all of the normal lookup and  search functions, and run any reports for that company you may need for that particular time frame. The only thing you cannot do is change any of the data. The database and all of the tables within it are permanently stored in a “read only” state, removing the possibility of making changes to archival data (I good thing, in our opinion!).

Should you accidently move, damage, or destroy your archive database, you can restore it to its original location (so it can be opened) via the “Restore Archive” routine from the File menu. This will allow you to browse out to the location of the archive to be restored, and then restore it to the folder where Peachtree needs to house it in order to allow it to open.  It is important to note that this “restore archive” process does not restore the archive into your live data, or replace any live database. It only puts the archive file back where it belongs to make it usable again.

If you are using Peachtree Complete instead of Premium or Quantum, you will need to “manually” create your archive to replicate this product functionality. Basically, you will need to make a physical copy of your live database folder, give the copied folder a different name, and then change security settings on that copied database from within Peachtree to make the files “read only” for all users. This is definitely a “home brewed” solution, which does not offer all of the functionality of the Peachtree Premium and Quantum Archiving routine, but it does give you access to data and reports that would otherwise be inaccessible.

If you have questions or issues with creating and managing Peachtree database archives, give us a call at 610-941-2116 to see if we can help you figure out an archiving procedure that is right for your company.

Please click here to read and/or download our PDF sheet containing useful payroll processing information.

Remember that we can provide all of the end-of-year forms you might require (W-2′s, 1099′s, etc.) at very competitive prices. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like a quote on forms, checks, envelopes, or whatever printed material you may need at this time of year.

Since the key words are inactive and closed, prior to purging it is very important to make all list data that is to be removed (customers, vendors, employees, chart of accounts, inventory items, etc.) “inactive”, and all transaction data that is to be removed “closed” prior to running a purge. Contrary to what many Peachtree users believe, running a year-end close does not remove any data from the system; it merely “tags” transactions as belonging to a “closed” fiscal year, and also puts them into “read only” mode, making further editing impossible.

This can be problematic in that records that are not “closed” prior to running the year end close are stuck in the database, unable to be purged because they are not “closed” and unable to be closed because they are not in an open fiscal year. In this unfortunate “Catch-22” the best recourse is frequently an outside data repair service that can use developer tools to remove the “stuck” records.

Once you have determined the set of records to be purged, we recommend that you define a “purge sequencing strategy” to determine discrete, limited sets of records to purge over multiple passes through the Peachtree database. This is particularly important if the number of journal row records in your database exceeds 250,000 (you can check this within Peachtree by going to Help | Customer Support and Service | File Statistics, and scrolling down in the “Number of Records” column to check the size of the “Jrnl Row” table).

Quantum users can efficiently process a considerably larger volume of journal row records, but even for Quantum users we recommend purging when the volume of records exceeds 750.000.

A typical “purge sequencing strategy” would first seek to identify any transaction records older than 12 to 24 months prior to the first day of the earliest open fiscal period. Thus if your earliest open fiscal period were January 2010, you would be looking for records older than 1/1/2009 (or 1/1/2008 if you want to keep more records available).

To determine the oldest records in your system, open the transaction screen into which you enter the largest number of records (sales offers, vendor invoices, purchase orders, etc.), and click on the “List” button on the toolbar. Change the drop-down filter so that it shows “All Transactions” and note the date of the earliest record displayed in the list. That is your oldest transaction.

Do this same date lookup for each transaction type for which you want to perform a purge. With this information, it should be possible to establish a “phased” approach to transaction purges. If your earliest transaction date is April of 1999 (perhaps when you initially installed Peachtree) you might want to set three (or four, depending on transaction volume) distinct date ranges for the purge within each transaction type. Thus your sequencing might look like this:

Once you have removed all of the transactions that are no longer needed in the system, one or more additional iterations of the purge routine can be made, to remove so-called “list records” (customers, vendors, etc.) that have been tagged as “inactive”. If there are no transactions attached to these inactive records, they will be quickly and easily removed from the database.

Two additional items to consider prior to initiating a purge:

1. Consider creating an “archive database” prior to purging, so that all of the data you are about to remove from the system can still be easily accessed, in read-only mode, from the archive database;
2. After each successful step in the overall purge sequence, make a Peachtree backup of the database. Thus if your purge fails for some reason after Step #5, you will not have to start all over again from step #1. Thus seems blatantly obvious, and yet is all too often ignored. Peachtree backups are fast and easy to perform, and once the full purge is completed all of those interim backup files can be safely deleted.

We have performed hundreds of purges for clients, and when followed carefully these steps will never fail to produce the desired results (sometimes with the aid of a few additional tricks we have learned over the years!). If you feel squeamish about running a purge yourself, give us a call at 610-941-2116 to discuss your database maintenance needs and request a fixed price quote.

Terminal Services has become a very popular vehicle for configuring remote computing environments, and most of the software applications we support at TriStar explicitly support Terminal Services. Peachtree is no exception to this. However, there are some very subtle but significant configuration settings which can seriously impact Peachtree’s performance in the terminal services environment. Emailing documents (via the Peachtree PDF Writer) is one of those areas.

Our client was consistently unable to email invoices through Peachtree when operating on the Terminal Server. The client was also experiencing periodic difficulties printing to her local printer when attempting to print to it through Terminal Services. Needless to say, this can get to be very annoying very quickly, and erode one’s confidence in the technology which allegedly facilitates this kind of remote access.

After much troubleshooting, we discovered that a somewhat obscure “group policy” setting in Windows Small Business Server 2008 was automatically “redirecting” any document sent to the My Documents folder on the Terminal Server over to the file server, which then ran afoul of the registry settings, or permissions, for Peachtree when attempting to email (or in some cases print) a Peachtree document.

Having diagnosed it, the fix was simple: turn off the group policy setting for this within Small Business Server. Voila! All Peachtree documents can now be emailed, and the sporadic printing issues have all disappeared.

If you are running on Small Business Server 2008 (or any other version of Server 2008 for that matter) check your “Group Policy” settings to make sure that you are not also an unwitting victim of “My Documents Redirection.”

Emailing invoices out of Peachtree is really very easy and convenient – but only if all of the technology is harnessed to work together.

Please let us know if you have also experienced emailing and printing issues in Terminal Server. We may be able to help you fix it.

In attempting to run the Peachtree year end Wizard for a client, we received error messages pertaining to corrupted data. In attempting to restore a recent backup that was not corrupted we discovered that the last backup was nine days earlier, which only happened to exist because we were performing other work on their database at that time. We restored that database, and were then able to run the year end wizard without error, but the client had to re-enter all transactions for the nine days since that backup was made. If we had not made the backup nine days earlier, the next most recent backup was six months ago. Can you imagine the time and effort involved in re-entering six months of transactions?

Another client who converted to Peachtree in 2009 had never performed a backup. Due to a vendor import done incorrectly, all default general ledger expense accounts and vendor payment terms were inadvertently changed. Since the client had never performed a backup, a lot of effort was required to correct these vendor file errors.

With the release of Peachtree 2010, there is an Automatic Backup utility that allows automated database backups to be run as a service, unattended, outside of Peachtree, on a scheduled basis. This can be a bit technical to configure, but it is hardly rocket science, and once configured it will run without any further end-user attention required.

The only maintenance required by this helpful Peachtree feature is to manually remove older, obsolete backup files on a periodic basis. We generally recommend keeping only year-end and end-of-month backups, deleting all others not dated in the current month. Failure to perform this periodic maintenance can quickly fill up the destination drive for your backups, creating performance bottlenecks.

We recommend using the Peachtree Automatic Backup Service for all clients who are not already completely comfortable with managing their server-based backup systems. With the Automatic Backup utility there is no reason to not have a recent backup.

Please contact us for guidance on setting up this Automatic Backup utility along with instructions for doing manual backups and managing all backups.

Backup! Backup! Backup!

 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.

• Sales/Invoicing defaults to accounts receivable.
• Receipts defaults to a specific cash account.
• Purchase/Receive Inventory defaults to accounts payable.
• Payments defaults to a specific cash account.

 Occasionally there may a need to change that default G/L account, on a case-by-case basis, for a particular transaction, such as receiving cash into a different cash account.

However, when you change that default G/L account for a single transaction, the next time you enter data into that transaction screen  the system “remembers”  the last default G/L account used. We have seen many instances where this can cause transactions to be posted to incorrect G/L accounts.

To avoid these “mystery posts” which can cause reconciling headaches, when entering transactions into Peachtree, especially after a previous change of the default G/L account, be sure to check that the current default G/L account is correct. If it is not, change it back to the correct default G/L account before leaving that data entry screen. By doing so Peachtree will remember that setting for the next time you enter data for that same task.

 In a multi-user environment it is advisable to always check the default G/L account, because another user may have changed it.

 If you should find a transaction with an incorrect default G/L account, you can still open the transaction and correct it for that transaction, as long as it is in an open fiscal year. Checking before you save, however, is much less painful.

Give us a call at 610-941-2116 if you would like to know more about Task Window defaults in Peachtree.

There are many different methods for accomplishing the same result in Peachtree. Choice of method can depend on whether:

• one credit card statement is paying just a single Peachtree vendor or many different vendors,
• the credit card is used for “non-Peachtree vendor” purchases,
• printing a “paper trail” of the credit card payment to attach to the vendor invoice is important,

to name just a few considerations in selecting a “best practice” for processing credit card payments to vendors in Peachtree.

We have developed a procedure which a number of our clients have successfully implemented for paying vendors via credit card. This method seems to work acceptably in many circumstances. Try it out, and modify as needed to make it work for your own particular situation.

1. Set up a “cash account” for your credit card.

Create a cash account for each credit card

2. Enter your vendor purchases as normal, charging the purchase(s) to the general ledger account(s) you would typically use for that vendor’s purchases.

3. To pay the vendor(s) invoices, go to Tasks, Select for Payment, Paper Checks.

4. Make your payment selections based on date and/or vendor ID; If paying more than a single vendor with this credit card payment, do not select any vendor on the selection screen; on the following screen you will be able to “tailor” your selections to only those vendors for whom a credit card payment has been made.

5. On the “Select for Payment” screen which opens after setting your filters, change the general ledger cash account at the top of the screen to select the “credit card payment cash account” set up in Step #1, and change the default sort method to be “vendor.”

Select the invoices to be paid

6. Select the invoices for each vendor that appear on the credit card statement, de-select all others that are not being paid by credit card, and verify that the total “checks” at the bottom of this screen agrees with the total credit card statement amount. (NOTE: these amounts will not agree if there are other charges on the credit card statement beyond vendor payments; this is not a problem, it just means that this reconciling method will not work in this instance).

7. When your selections are complete, choose to print the “checks” you have selected onto plain paper, using either a standard “Peachtree check form” or a custom-designed check form you have created to attach to all vendor invoices paid via credit card. In either case it is a good idea to use a “custom” check number, starting with the credit card vendor’s code (e.g., AMEX) and followed by some kind of logical sequence number, like the first payment on the January invoice (AMEX2011-JAN-01), and let Peachtree “auto-increment” the check numbers accordingly for this check run. (e.g., AMEX2011-JAN-02, AMEX2011-JAN-03, AMEX2011-JAN-04, etc.).

8. Now it is necessary to pay the credit card statement from your cash account, as you normally would any other invoice in Peachtree. You should of course have the credit card company set up as a vendor in Peachtree.

9. You can pay the credit card vendor directly from the “Write Checks” menu. To do so you will use one of two methods, depending on whether or not there are additional purchases on the credit card statement being paid that do not represent vendor purchases entered and paid via credit card earlier in Peachtree.

10. If only paying credit card items that have been charged to vendor invoices already “paid” in Peachtree, simply select the checking account cash account (probably the default cash account) on the upper right of the “Write Checks” screen (which will be the credit entry) and select the credit card payment cash account at the bottom left of the screen for the “expense” account. This will be the balancing debit entry, and will “zero out” the credit amount previously posted to this same account when the vendors were paid via credit card in Step #7 above.

Use "Write Checks" to pay credit card

11. If your credit card statement includes charges you are paying for “non-vendor-related” purchases, you will then need to use the “Split” button that appears to the right of the Expense Account selector, and pick the appropriate general ledger accounts for those credit card purchases, per the window below.

Split the credit card payment across multiple GL accounts

If you would like a printed copy of this credit card processing procedure (in PDF format), send an email request to info@tristardatasystems.com, with “Credit Card Processing Procedure” in the subject line of the email.

The overall focus of this release is to improve performance and simplify use. The developers attempted to answer three key questions which they believe need to be addressed by all businesses:

1. Is my business on track in terms of overall performance indicators?
2. Am I on schedule with overall financial indicators and with individual jobs/projects?
3. Am I within budget at both the company and the job/project levels?

Sage has taken a strong “dashboard” approach in addressing these key issues, expanding the dashboard functionality introduced in Peachtree 2010 for customer management to both the inventory/services management area and to job costing (for the Quantum version onl)y in the Peachtree 2011 edition.

New Features

Many of the new features in Sage Peachtree 2011 are concentrated in the Job/Services Management area. Service Billing functionality has been streamlined to permit “batch-oriented” service billing (a la Timeslips), with various filters available for selecting the group of time and expense tickets to be billed at once, across multiple customers. A new default in the Job Cost setup area allows the user to set a warning message for any transaction that does not have a job code assigned to it (critical for those users that assign job codes to virtually every transaction). A new Job Status field has been added, which is fully customizable and can be applied to all jobs, and can be used for filters and sorts on reports and list views. The Notes field on the job screen has been expanded to accommodate up to 2,000 characters of information (the old limit was only 200 characters). When entering transactions the job code entered on the first line of the transaction will “pre-populate” on each subsequent line of the transaction (but of course can be edited as needed), to speed data entry when the entire transaction applies to a specific job. The job lookup screen on transaction entry can be sorted by the user to speed the process of finding the correct code.

At the Quantum level, there is a whole new Job Management Center dashboard, with extensive customization capabilities to allow the user to review virtually every element of a job, from purchases to time tickets to payroll entries to billings.

A new Change Order capability has been added to Peachtree Premium and higher versions, with fields for tracking change order date, notes for the change order, and a detailed area for assigning/editing cost codes related to the change order. A Change Order form (which can be customized) has been added to the forms list to allow the change order to be sent to the customer for approval and signature.

The new Inventory/Services Management Center pulls together comprehensive information about a specific item, or group of items, in one screen, so that the user can easily review purchases, sales, stock levels and shortages, unit costs and pricing, customer purchase history, etc.

A much improved integration with the Sage ACT! Contact management product will be released in the fall of 2010. The new link will allow ACT! Users who do not have access to Peachtree to review detailed customer purchase history, open sales orders, invoice detail, and other customer and vendor related information. Inventory information stored in Peachtree should also be accessible in ACT! to non-Peachtree users, depending on security settings.  This should allow sales reps to create customer quotes from “live” Peachtree customer and inventory data without having to open Peachtree. Once accepted, the quote can then be converted to an order and/or invoice in Peachtree.

Sage Peachtree will officially support Windows 7 with this release, and will provide support for Office 2010 with the first Service Release of the 20111 edition (probably this fall).  Support for Terminal Services has now been extended to the Peachtree Complete product; this functionality was previously available only in Peachtree Premium and higher.

All in all, Peachtree 2011 appears to be a very compelling release for anyone who needs more extensive job/service management functionality, or is looking for stronger tools for managing inventory. Peachtree’s competitive advantage over QuickBooks has historically been in the inventory and job cost areas, and with these new capabilities this advantage has increased significantly. I suspect that the new functionality in job costing will lead to all kinds of clever and creative uses for this powerful tracking capability in a variety of “non-traditional” settings.

Give us a call if you would like to dive into this new release in greater detail. We expect to have a “Test Drive” edition of Peachtree 2011 available on our website shortly.

What does this mean for you?  

If you are using a version of Peachtree earlier than Peachtree 2008, it means that Sage’s “official” support for your version will end shortly after this new release. While we will continue supporting these “obsolete” versions, we are constrained by our inability to obtain the manufacturer’s support for those earlier versions. It may be time to consider an upgrade.  

If you are using Peachtree 2008 or later, you should carefully review the new features for the 2011 version, and make your upgrade decision based on features. We can tell you that there are significant new features in the area of inventory management and job costing, so if you use either of these components you will want to carefully review these features.  

If you decide to upgrade, we urge you to consider placing your upgrade order through TriStar. We do very little advertising, receiving the majority of our new business through referrals from the Peachtree website. Our positioning on that website (currently #1 for Pennsylvania) is determined by the Peachtree orders we place with Sage. Your upgrade order will help us maintain that lofty position.

 In most cases we are able to match or exceed whatever upgrade pricing Sage is able to offer you directly (as a consequence of our Platinum status). So, by placing your Peachtree upgrade order with TriStar you help us maintain our Platinum status, and we help you to save a little money on your upgrade.

 A classic “win-win!”

 Give us a call if you would like to discuss your upgrade options.