What’s new in Peachtree 2003?

New in Peachtree 2003

*Denotes not applicable in Philippine setting

New to First Accounting, Peachtree Accounting, and Peachtree Complete

Enhanced Customer Statements

Peachtree customer statements are now more flexible. Improvements include a new statement note and the ability to choose where it will appear on the printed statement.

In addition, you can now choose the following options to make printed statements more useful:

• Choose a date range for statements

• Choose whether or not to print statements for inactive customers

• Choose whether to print detail information for sales transactions/credit memos, receipts, or both

Enhanced Customer Support

In this release, we’ve made it easier for you to contact Peachtree’s support staff. The Ask a Question option on the drop-down Help-button menu (available for most Maintain and Task windows) lets you e-mail a question to Peachtree’s support staff. (Requires a support plan with e-mail support.) We’ve also improved the technical support sheet that helps expedite any support call you may need to make.

Enhanced General Ledger Report (Peachtree 2003)

The General Ledger report now has a new Fiscal Year-End Balance line that show balances as of the end of the fiscal year. This will appear on the report whenever it covers multiple periods and crosses from one fiscal year into another. And to make the report easier to follow, if account information carries over from one page to another, account headings now appear at the top of the second page.

In addition, the Report Options page for the General Ledger report now offers a new Hide Period Subtotals on Multi-Period Report option. If you choose a time frame for the report that covers more than one accounting period, you can now choose to hide subtotal amounts for each individual period appearing on the report. This will eliminate redundancy and in some cases save paper.

Enhanced Sales Tax Calculation

The Maintain Sales Tax Authorities window has been enhanced so that you can now enter a tax rate based on a formula. This will let you set up tax rates according to rules for states that require a two-tier tax structure.

Improved Peachtree Today

In Peachtree 2003, Peachtree Today has a whole new look and brand-new pages. The new pages include the Daily Register, which totals your company’s transactions for the day, and the Navigation Aids page, which centralizes these useful aids that help you get around quickly in Peachtree.

Navigation within Peachtree Today is now easier than ever, too, with a new sidebar menu for getting from page to page and a horizontal options bar on each page for quick navigation to subsections of the page.

New Customer Credit Memos Window

With the addition of a new Credit Memos window, you can now create credit memos directly, not through negative invoice entries made in the Sales/Invoicing window. And now you can apply a credit memo to an existing sales invoice, which will automatically reduce the amount of the original invoice. There is no need to create a separate receipt for the transaction.

Besides this, your credit memos will now have a different range of numbers than invoices, helping you keep tabs more easily on receivables transactions. New credit memo forms and better credit memo reporting are further benefits you’ll appreciate.

New Drill-Down Detail in Financial Statements

In financial statements, including customized statements, you can now drill down to the General Ledger report. Double-clicking an amount listed in a financial statement displays the appropriate General Ledger report in detail form.

What’s more, from the General Ledger report you can further drill down to the task windows where associated transactions were created. For example, if you double-click a sales amount in the statement, the General Ledger report will show the transactions whose totals add up to that amount. You can then drill down to a transaction in its original task window and modify it there as needed.

New Employee Name Field

For Release 2003, Peachtree changed the employee name field from a single name field to three fields for last name, middle initial, and first name. This was done largely to support changes to the federal W-2 form.

If you used a previous version of the product, Peachtree converts your employee names from a single name to the first/middle-initial/last-name format. The conversion process makes certain assumptions. You should check your employee names after converting your company to make sure they are correct.

New Inventory Item Maintenance Fields

In Release 2003, the Maintain Inventory Items window contains new fields that provide more detailed item tracking. The fields include UPC/SKU, which lets you enter your item’s Universal Price Code/Stock Keeping code number; Weight; and Buyer ID. This last field lets you designate a company employee as buyer for the item.

Other new fields allow you to see at a glance the quantities of the item that are on hand and available, as well as those committed on sales and purchase orders (Peachtree Accounting and Complete Accounting only).

New Peachtree Online Backup Service

If you want to enhance your backup strategy and protect your Peachtree data even further, consider the Peachtree Online Backup Service. The Peachtree Online Backup Service allows you to back up and store your company data offsite on a remote server. This gives you the added peace of mind that your data is protected. Peachtree has partnered with Connected to offer this easy-to-use, yet powerful subscription service.

New Purge Wizard

A “wizard” helps automate a process that would otherwise be complicated and time-consuming. The new Peachtree Purge wizard walks you through the process of purging old records and transactions, asking you the right questions to help rid your database of unwanted data. An improved purge log fully details the purge process, and new topics in Peachtree Help list purge criteria so you’ll know exactly why some records and transactions weren’t removed by the process.

New QuickBooks to Peachtree Conversion Utility

This new utility streamlines the process of converting a QuickBooks company to one that is Peachtree compatible. A series of windows steps you through the process of setting up important features of your new company, such as the accounting and costing methods it will use and how many accounting periods will comprise a fiscal year.

New Select All/Select None Buttons

The Peachtree Select for Payment and Select Employees to Pay windows have new All (Select) and All (None) buttons that let you choose to pay all of the listed transactions or none of the listed transactions. Rather than selecting and deselecting all transactions manually (which could be time-consuming if there are a lot of them), now just click a single button and your job is done.

New Vendor Credit Memos Window

With the addition of a new Vendor Credit Memos window, you can now create credit memos directly, not through negative invoice entries made in the Purchases window. And now you can apply a credit memo to an existing purchase invoice, which will automatically reduce the amount of the original invoice. There is no need to create a separate vendor payment for the return transaction. Better vendor credit memo reporting, with the ability to print only credit memo information or suppress all such information, is an additional benefit.

Streamlined Printing

In Peachtree 2003, printing forms is quicker and easier than ever. When you print a form from a Task window or one of the newly designed navigation aids, a single print dialog appears. From here, you can change the number of the form to be printed, select the number of copies, and change the printer and type of form to use. In addition, you can choose to print a practice form or go directly to the Forms Design window, where you can customize and save the form you want to print.

New to Peachtree Accounting and Peachtree Complete

New Sales Order Ship-By Date

New to the Sales Orders window is the Ship By Date field. Here, you enter a date by which the order must ship. Once the order is saved, the Ship By date will show up in a number of sales order reports: Picklist report, Sales Backorder report, Sales Order Register, and Sales Order report. This will help you keep tabs on the order and the inventory needed to fill it. To make sure the order gets out the door on time, you can also use the ship-by date to create a Sales Orders to Ship event that will show up in the Action Items window and as a customer event log for the customer who placed the order.

New to Peachtree Complete

New Integration with FAS FirstStep Fixed Asset Management Software

With Release 2003, Peachtree now integrates with a specially designed version of Sage Software’s popular fixed assets program. Called FAS for Peachtree, this version of FAS FirstStep lets you share Peachtree company account information with FAS and post FAS depreciation expense information to Peachtree. A single dialog box links a FAS for Peachtree company to your corresponding Peachtree company so this exchange of data can take place.

New Inventory Item Classes: Master and Substock Items

The new master stock item class lets you set up a sort of inventory item template whose information you can then share with a number of substock items. If you were to set up individual stock items instead, you’d have to manually distribute this information for each item you set up. But with a master stock item, you designate a number of attributes (item characteristics) that fall in either a primary or secondary attribute set. For example, say the master stock item is a T-shirt. Its primary attribute set might contain all the different colors that you carry. A secondary attribute set might contain all the different sizes you carry.

When you save the master stock item, Peachtree automatically generates a number of substock items that share these attributes in all possible combinations until the combinations are exhausted. This will save you lots of time, compared with setting up individual stock items based on similar attributes.

 

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