Prospective User Questions

[mitty]

I am taking over the Treasurer job for a flying club that I belong to. The club has just bought a copy of QuickBooks, however I would like to investigate Peachtree. One important reason is that Intuit is such an obnoxious company. They waste screen space with their stupid advertising and waste my time with pop-ups. I also suspect that they will use their automatic update capability to snoop around my computer.

Also a capability thing: We rent airplanes by the hour and I would like to book a standard COGS each time we sell an hour of airplane time. QB has "services" and "non-inventory items" that can be used for airplane hours but neither can have COGS associated with it. COGS is associated only with regular tracked inventory items and of course we don't inventory "hours."

So: (1) is Peachtree as obnoxious as QB with the advertising? (2) are they more trustworthy? and (3) Does Peachtree have the COGS capability that I would like to get?

TIA,
Geo. Anderson

[chikamic]

Peachtree does bother you with advertising but theirs is mail (snail & email). Peachtree has its own issues as any software company has, same dog different fleas :-)

Michelle

[mitty]

So I can have a COGS for an intem that I am not keeping as countable inventory?

[TheWolf]

1) Obnoxious? Just the status quo on marketing these days. Peachtree has a web based screen but you can turn it off.

2) Trustworthy? Not sure what you mean but they don't snoop around your computer except for cookies when you visit their website.

3) The inventory restrictions are about the same.

[vashonmm]

mitty,
i prefer peachtree over quickbooks because it is a true accounting program vs qb which is more a record keeping program for people who are inclined to not keep records.
qb also has had a horrible inventory problem for years which i don't think has been resolved yet, namely that if you manually edit the cost of an inventory item, it will change the cost for that item universally. in other words, all your history/reports will now show todays cost for that item instead of what it actually was way back when you bought that item 2 years ago or whenever. qb should not be used if you really have inventory unless you can live with the uncertainty between periodic manual inventory taking.
the downside of peachtree is if you have an aversion to accounting, you will want to hire out setup and procedure development for your systems since it is much harder to fake good accounting or fix bad acccounting after the fact. which, if you're not an accountant, you really should do anyway, as you probably know. many people feel that the flexibility of qb causes much grief. really, it is only better than nothing, it is not appropriate for a business that needs to have sound accounting unless there is very little bookkeeping to be done.
as for cogs, you can have a "cost of sales" account for many different items but for non-inventory items it is of course not going to be any more accurate than whatever dollar amount you assign it since there is no real purchase of airplane hours. some people do fake it with "purchases" of hourly services but of course the true cost of such things is dependent on many variables and is not known except when you take a snapshot with a complete set of financials. this as opposed to physical goods that you pay a specific price for and the real value of which is held in inventory (deprecation, shrinkage, etc not withstanding).
hope that helps, i r not a xpurt but i play one at work...
matthew

[mitty]

>>"cost of sales" account for many different items but for non-inventory items it is of course not going to be any more accurate than whatever dollar amount you assign it since there is no real purchase of airplane hours.<<

Well, I'm no expurt either, can't even play one convincingly. Thanks for your comments.

My COGS dea is that we can compute/predict a standard cost for an hour of flight. Gas, engine wear, etc. The variable costs. So I would like the system to book this as COGS each time we sell an hour to a member but without having to faking "purchases" -- I would like the system to do this just as it would for physical goods.

Then, as actuals come in, I can watch variances to standard cost. Just like in a standard cost inventory system.

The big costing issue is that while we expect to get as much as 2,400 hours out of a $20,000 engine rebuild, a given engine may be quite a bit different than that. We just had to do one at 500 hours, for example.

Hence, I need to figure out a way to spread the statistical variation across 8 airplanes, each with different predicted and actual engine costs and different predicted and actual engine life. This prediction/allocation will become the standard engine cost for each airplane. Seems like a classical application of a standard cost system.

I could do this with 8 journal entries at the end of each month but this system will be run by volunteer, non-accounting, labor so the less dog work and the more automation I can get, the better.

So, back to the opening question, can Peachtree automatically book this COGS for me when an hour of airplane time is put on a member invoice?

[vashonmm]

well, i guess i didn't adequately state my inadequate understanding of the issue. ;-) the thing is, in this universe, no true cost of sales can be tracked for something that has no true cost. another way, if you don't buy it, it has no cost. so, for things like services, which in pt you can set up as service items, there is a field to enter a cost of sales account and it will dutifully record whatever amount you put there on every invoice.

for instance, i set my tech's cost at $45/hr and i sell their service at $95/hr. of course, the actual cost of their service is dependant on all those variables we talked about before so peachtree would be a lying sack of poo poo to report to the irs or my financial institution that the cost of those tech's hours was $45. so the only place that $45/hr shows up is on a gl account summary report, which will show the debits and credits to the account for the period, but it will never show up on a balance sheet (because no balance is ever carried) or on a p&l (because it does not reflect true expenses) or a cash flow (because no cash ever flowed).

still, you can use that figure to do a calculation to see where you stand, hours sold in a given period vs the "cost" of those hours. using crystal reports or pawcom, you could probably create better reports of your own to give you up to the minute figures.

now that i've pretty much beaten that dead horse to pulp, the work around that some use is to create their services as inventory items. then, when they assign a cost per unit, it is reflected in the normal financial reports. the caveat is, of course, that it will be carried as a perpetually growing negative amount unless/until you make a "purchase" or adjusting entry somewhere. which is what they do. then, at whatever point they deem appropriate for their business, they make an adjusting entry to reflect however things turned out in reality.

in your case, since you want to track the depreciation of an actual purchase (the enging overhaul) it would seem to me to be a pretty good way to do it. for instance, if you gave flight time the itemID of "engine" (and perhaps the sales description of "hour of flight"), you could enter a purchase for $20,000 worth of engine from your mechanic, assign the hourly use cost you estimate for that engine and track that real cost as it is consumed on your financial reports. at such time as you need to purchase another engine overhaul or sold the plane, you would make an adjusting entry in you general ledger for whatever difference there turned out to be in final analysis. you would probably want to note on that entry the actual reasoning behind the estimated/actual difference, in case of an audit or inquiry by the board or whoever is going to look at the books besides you and will want to know where that missing loot went.

of course, you could also purchase the overhaul as a completely unrelated expense and make an adjusting journal entry to transfer the value of said overhaul from expenses to inventory assets. and there's the rub. now you have an expense carried as an asset so whoever is doing the taxes and reporting to the board and the bank needs to know this so they can deal with it in whatever way is appropriate. if some goofball is going to come in when no one is around to explain it for them and takes a look at a financial report, they may get the wrong idea about it. it just depends on how casual your club is about such things.

but this is definitly the point where y'all should be taking the advice of your accountant. preferably one who is well versed in the software package you intend to use. i hope i've helped to explain the functionality of peachtree but your accountant is who should be in charge of advising you on how to account for your finances. you will get much better value out of either qb or pt if you get their help in setting it up and what methods you should use to best reflect your reporting needs. of course, if you are an accountant, i shut my mouth.

happy landings,
matthew

[mitty]

Thanks again for your thoughts. I'm startging to get this clear enough in my head that I will be able to talk to one of the CPAs that works for the club about it.

From what you said, I am concluding that if I were to set up airplane time as a service I would be able to assign a COGS to it.

Geo.

[vishal64]

Hi Gurus:
My wife and I are going to be starting our small-wholesale gift (95% finished goods) business soon and are in the process of selecting an accounting software between Quickbooks preimer or Peachtree Complete Accounting.

Our Basic Requirements:
1. Handle between 200-500 inventory items to start with. Ability to grow the inventory numbers through the years.
2. When writing up a sales order, have on hand qty, backordered items avilable.
3. Ship partial sales orders with ability to track back-orders.
4. Alerts if inventory drops below a certian qty for a particular item
5. Ease of use/support/user-friendliness/recurring changes

We would appericiate any expierences you can share with us if you are/were in the wholesale/distribution business and what drove you to choose the software you use(between Peachtree & Quickbooks) and how do you like it?

Our background:
My wife is primarily going to be heading up the business and I am going to be helping part-time as I work fulltime. I consider my self to be computer/software savy. Both my wife and I have limited accounting knowledge, but we do have access to a friend/CPA who is going to be our accountant. He uses the accountant addition of Quickbooks.

Regards,
Vishal