Clueless person in need of help

[Dawn]

I work for a small manufacturing company that is about to grow into a midsized one. We are trying to use PeachTree complete accounting to help with inventory and bill of materials only I don't know where to begin. All of our inventory levels are wrong at this point because we have been entering sales orders in PeachTree for 2 years without ever receiving inventory into the system (I have only been at the company a week and have never used PeachTree, I was hired to try and get the company somewhat computerized)

so I guess my first question is, is there an easy way to make all my inventory levels zero so we can start from scratch in the system with creating a new company and really starting all over?

My second question is, is there anyway to create a bill of materials from a sales order?

My third question is has anyone used peachtree with any type of barcoding software? Is it possible to scan inventory into a bar code software that links to excel and then upload the excel file into peachtree?

My fourth question is - How did I get myself into this mess?

Thank you to anyone who attempts to help me. Dawn

[Marka]

Dawn - first of all no matter what you do there and accomplish in comparison to what they seem to have will make you look like a hero so don't panic.


Second of all too bad you are using Peachtree. YIKES!! I know that is not a good answer but may be true.

WOW - Okay, let's try and take one question at a time.

All of our inventory levels are wrong at this point because we have been entering sales orders in PeachTree for 2 years without ever receiving inventory into the system

If your inventory levels are way off (I would assume you mean your inventory "quantity on hand" levels. Then either you have to enter the receiving for the past two years or start all over again or make adjusting entries to bring the inventory levels back to where they should be. But if you are going to make entries then you need to do a physical inventory to be sure you know exactly where your inventory stands. After taking your physical inventory make your adjusting entries and then from there be sure you enter receving evertime you receive goods. You could start all over from scratch but you will not be able to figure out where you left off. Initiallizing the files (returning all values to zero) could be a way to do it but you will loose all back history of sales to customers etc. I would assume that the A/P's , A/R's G/L and everything else has not been kept up to date either.

If your items need to be set up as "bill of materials" or in Peachtree "assemblies" and they are not at this point, this may present a problem. Peachtree does not let you change an item from "stock" to "assembly" once you have set it up. If you have to set them up as assembly items then you will loose the sales of all of the items for the past two years. If the items are not set up as "assemblies" and they need to be and you take your physical inventory your quantities on hand will soon be wrong again because the components of the items will not deduct when you make a sale. A two year backlog of lack of data entry and maintaince of entering information as it should be requires a total study and evaluation of the present system and the way the company proceeds each day. This is a very hard question for any one to answer on this forum. Even someone with a good background in this area would have to evaluate the situation first hand in order to give any type of good recommendations to you.

If A/P's, A/R's, Inv, G/L etc has never really been maintained in any sort of a constant on going effort for the past two years it may just be better for you to start from scratch setting up a totally new company in peachtree. Take your physical inventory, set up your assembly items, enter you starting balances in inventory, A/P's, A/R's, G/L etc and continue from there.

My second question is, is there anyway to create a bill of materials from a sales order?

You do not create a bill of materials from a sales order. you create a bill of materials from an inventory item. You need to have a clear understanding of what Bill of Materials refers to. Let's say you have an item that is a pack of ciggerrets. Your item ID would be CIGS001 and then your Bill of materials would make up the components that it takes to create that pack of cigs.

Example:

Item ID: CIGS001
Bill of Materials breakdown
Item ID: PCKWRAPER qty: 1
Item ID: INDVCIGS qty: 20
Item ID: FOILWRAP qty: 1
Item ID: PCKBOX qty: 1

Thisis simplified but to just show you how the bill of materials must be set up. in the sample able you have to set up each one of the item id's in inventory before you can assign them to the inventory item itself.
For every 1 CIGS001 that you sell Peachtree will multiply the components used in that sale and deduct it from inventory. If you sell one CIGS001 then it will deduct 1 for all of the components except for INDVCIGS where it will deduct 20 ciggs from inventory. But you must build your assemblies in order for the inventory to be correct. This is your choice as to whether you do it at time of sales order entry or just before invoicing.

My third question is has anyone used peachtree with any type of barcoding software? Is it possible to scan inventory into a bar code software that links to excel and then upload the excel file into peachtree?


There are add-on programs that you can purchase to help you do such things. As a matter of fact if you post this in a separate thread you should have an answer soon.

My fourth question is - How did I get myself into this mess?

Maybe you needed a good challenge or you need your head examined - YIKES!! I like a good challenge in my job I have made peachtree get up and dance in some areas. We do a lot of importing and there is no way for peachtree to keep track of arriving vessels with our goods on them. We carry about 300 sku's and i am now able to keep track of every single one and know at a moments notice what item is coming in on what vessel and when. i also use crystal report writer to help me get this information. I also keep track of 3 different types of inventory in two different physical locations. Oh and to boot, I have some people asking me why some items are as far off a maybe 1.5% - i say "hah!! " to them.

Dawn, you reeally need to sit down and evaluate the situation before you make any major moves with peachtree. if the items were never set up at bills of materials "assemblies" and they need to be then you will have problems right for the start.

Sorry i can't give you more information than that but if you have more questions please post away.

Mark

Oh, and I hate to bring you bad news. If you think you will rely on Peachtree's techs support team be careful! they have advised me to do certain things and i have found myself double guessing their answers and i am glad i did, they would have caused serious problems. I thought purchasing tech support for $239.00 for one year would do me just fine; well, there were many times i called them to get procedures on how to do something and all they do is fax you a procedures list. They do not walk you thru it step by step. I have also asked them qustions about Crystal, not how to run crystal but about their database structure and i hate to say it but i trust my own judgement before theirs and they design the darn thing. Oh, forgot to tell you, they don't support crystal, they charge you for answers about crystal which they did not specify when i bought crstal from them and i used crysta in another job for 3 years so i had a good background for crsytal.

[Dawn]

Mark, You are a godsend. Thank you for all your help and I will be posting away.

You are right - I do like a good challenge (And I need my head examined)

Oh and thanks for the tip on the PeachTree customer service, we were just in the first stages of thinking we may have to buy it, but now I have found this site (and you :)) so I am hoping we won't need it.

[Marka]

You are welcome :) Dawn. You will find we are all very helpful here. I am not suggesting that you do not get tech support contract; I was just stating that sometimes their answers are not always as worthy as you would think.

I had a problem once where our substitute girl had to do the invoicing and she used the wrong date. It was at the end of the month and she used Oct instead of Sept. We wanted the few invoices in Sept billing. I called tech support and she told me to just go ahead and change the dates on the invoices and repost again. I asked her if this would not repost all data again meaning relieving the inventory again. She said "No I don't think so". notice the keywords "think so" - yikes!! I had even said to her that this would probably repost everything twice and then she said "Oh, maybe you are right" - I said "OKay than you and goodbye" - needless to say we just left things the way they were and let the sales go into Oct. I was not about to take chances like that. Then again maybe some other tech support memeber would have had a better answer for me. I just did not feel comfortable with her answer though.

Mark

[Lorin Browning]

Mark,

That was a great answer and appropriate response.

When I am a little sceptical of support suggestions, what I do is: (1) make a backup, (2) try what tech support suggests, (3) inspect to see if it worked, and (4) restore when it doesn't. That way I at least give them a try and don't wind up any worse off than when I started.

[Marka]

Lorin,

I have wanted to do that a few times but because of time restrictions I can't always have the time. If I feel that their reply is just not correct I will not even bother as in the case above. "No I do not think so" is not an answer I feel comfortable with. Sometimes what I do is call back and see if I get another tech rep and then compare answers I get. But I really don't have time to play with them. I paid $239 for unlimited support and so far all I see is that it is very LIMITED . Especially when it comes to working with them on Crystal issues. They never once told me that their tech support did not include Crystal issues when I signed up.

Also when I signed on with this position I was told we would be installing Macola as business solution software and because of certain reasons we were forced to use QBooks at first which did not cut it at all and then to Peachtree which is my book does not have nearly the functionality that Macola has nor the reliability either. The database files in Macola are some much better and clearly defined. when designing crystal reports its a snap. Macola's database structure is so much easier to work with.

If you wanted to do a report that contains customer orders you would work with the files:

CUSTOMERDATA.DAT
ORDHDR.DAT
ORDLINE.DAT

Of course the customer files included all data that had to do with the customer and the other two files only held data that had to do with sales orders - the header file and the line item file.

If you wanted to do a report that had to do with purchase orders etc you woulduse:

VENDOR.DAT
POHDR.DAT
POLNE.DAT
INVDATA.DAT

And once again each file would only hold the data for that particular area.

In peachtree all the data for all transactions are crammed into two files - jrnlhdr.dat and jrnlrow.dat then of course you would bring in your customer, item or vendor files as you would need them. You need to interrogate each and every record of the hdr file to determine what that row represents - it could be a sales order, or a purchase order, or an employee time record, or an invoice or a beginning balance or ..... This makes it so much more clomplicated to work with and deal with. Not only that but Peachtree has yet to define the data fields in their inventory costing/on hand file which means I can not even get a stupid inventory on hand figure at this point without busting my brain on it.

Mark

Mark