6 Extra Tips for Ordinary Peachtree Tasks

For those of you just finding your feet in Peachtree, there is a good chance that even if you’re doing things correctly, there are some little bits and pieces that are stumping you or slowing you down unnecessarily. Today we check out some ways that Peachtree Accounting users with a decent footing can go above and beyond to make tasks easier!

Purchases and invoices can be the same thing

Peachtree Quantum, and all of the simpler versions tend to use confusing terminology sometimes, referring to your Accounts Payable as either purchases or invoices, while referring to your Accounts Receivable as invoices. If you're trying to decode a Help file or how-to guide, you'll need to be aware of this!

Email and web addresses can be interactive

You can click on an email address or a website from your vendor information to either open the email program or the internet browser. This is especially useful for dedicated staff that have Peachtree open for most of the day. However, your email client must be MAPI-compliant - one popular program that isn’t is AOL.

You can remind yourself of different vendors terms from within the program

If you've been using the standard trading terms for vendors that you need to pay until now, it can be a real sanity-saver to enter each vendor's individual trading terms within your business software. Click the little arrow next to Terms in Maintain Vendors, and deselect Use Standard Terms on the dialog box that appears.

Tricky ways to display lookup lists

There are several ways to display lookup lists within Peachtree Accounting. You can either:

• Set your global options so that the lookup list displays when you type the first few characters of a customer or vendor name - although this is case senstivie
• Click the magnifying glass
• Click the right muse button in a lookup box
• Press Shift plus Question Mark (Shift + ?) .

Don't slash or dash it

When you’re typing in dates, remember that Peachtree doesn’t allow you to use dashes, and that it will automatically insert slashes if you just type the numbers in a date field.

Hover for WTH moments

If you’re looking at a button but can’t for the life of you remember what it's for, don't go immediately to the Help file - hover over it with the mouse for a second to display a little yellow Tool Tip box.

Peachtree Issues Solved

Peachtree is a fabulous program, but one whose twists and turns can be difficult to learn! Thankfully there is a fabulous user community supported by a strong backbone of Peachtree Accounting certified consultants; today we trawl through some of the problems that users have had in July to hopefully help you get your small business accounting software working for you again.

Adding unusual pay amounts

Not every employee and every job fits neatly under hourly or overtime pay. If you pay commissions to your staff, or want to make one-off payments in Peachtree Complete, you can do the following:

• Define a field under the employee tab of the Payroll defaults
• Or, click Payroll Setup in Peachtree 2009
• Label the new field Misc. Income
• Input the tax levels and click the Adjust button

Surcharges for particular items

If you have a particular inventory set that needs a 15% surcharge, you can use the Inventory Price Levels feature to list the higher prices, and tehn set the company to use the higher level as the default.

Locations going to default

Some users are wanting to set up new locations, and have the payroll, wages and taxes default to the original company location. Unfortunately you cannot set defaults by department or by location; however you can manually set the GL accounts in the Maintain>Employees menu. Make sure you uncheck the 'Use Defaults' box.

Printing the wrong check numbers

One common (but slightly tricky) mistake this month has been putting checks in the printer in the wrong order. You can correct this in Peachtree by:

• Pulling up the first check in the payment list, and renaming it 0001X.
• Pulling up the second check, and changing it to the first check's number
• Pulling up the first check, and changing it to the second check's number!

Print preview for payroll not working

If the Print Preview feature for payroll reports isn't displaying, you'll need to click on the black arrow to the right of the Print icon once the payroll has been calculated. Select Report instead of Preview, and you'll get a pre-check register.

Health insurance allowance as an additional income amount

For employees that get a health insurance allowance (usually because they are on their spouse's insurance), you can set this up in Peachtree Quantum by going into Maintain> Default Information> Employees> Employee Fields tab and adding an additional line. Label the field name and set the appropriate GL expense account - however don't check off the CALC column, and do leave the formula field blank. Click on the Tax formula line and then hit the Adjust button.