Clean up or catch up on your books!

iSOFT is now offering bookkeeping services at a reasonable rate for our clients.

• Keep up with your bookkeeping with part-time or temporary help
• Outsource special accounting projects that you don’t have time to do

Our expertise in accounting and AccountMate—and our familiarity with your company and your system—can help you keep things running smoothly. 

If you're interested please contact us to discuss your needs.

“How do we do our annual Physical Inventory Count?”

It's that time of year for most companies. A Physical Inventory Count is the best way to do a mass update of your inventory item onhand counts—to ensure you have an accurate Warehouse Quantity Listing report for validating your inventory asset GL account(s).

Here’s an overview of each step, available in the Inventory Control module under the <Transactions> and <Reports> menus.

1. Freeze Inventory 

This can be all items or subsets based on ranges of item numbers, warehouse, bins, class and product. Contrary to the label, this doesn’t actually prevent transactions from being entered, so it IS possible to continue operations (receiving POs, posting manufacturing, shipping Sales Orders, etc.) but it’s tricky to do it right so please give us a call to chat through those tricks. What this does is write a “snapshot” of the then-current inventory quantities into an underlying table that the adjustments will be based on. 

2. Physical Count Worksheet Report

This provides the paperwork for your warehouse staff to verify the onhand counts. It can be printed with or without the current onhand count, depending on if you want to provide the counters the current quantity. 

3. Input Physical Count

Here’s where you manually enter the correct count. This can also be done for subsets in case some counters finish faster than others and you’d like to get started on a subset of items.

Pay attention the FIRST time you enter this screen, when you’ll be prompted, “Use Current Onhand Count as Counted Quantity?” Answering <Yes> means the input grid will be populated with the pre-existing quantity, so you won’t have to type it (if it’s the same). But answering <No> means the counted quantity will be set to zero in the grid and you WILL have to type every quantity (and any you don’t enter will be set to zero). The easiest way to zero your entire inventory is to answer <No> to the question and then post all those zeroes… and then you call us and we have to reverse all those transactions.
Answer <Yes>.

==> Import Physical Count: Some clients find it easier to type counts into an Excel spreadsheet—and once upon a time we would then have to import to your underlying tables for you, but that’s now built-in functionality so you might want to use this instead.

4. Physical Count Variance Report

Once you’ve entered the counts, this report lets you see where the previous and current counts differ—with recent versions of AccountMate allowing you to print the report only for items with variance, and ordered by item average cost or total item cost variance so you can easily identify the important items to focus on in case you need to do some recounting. 

==> After printing this report, it’s common to then have to go back to the warehouse and count a few items then enter the new counts in step #3 and re-print the report here in step #4. You’ll count, input physical counts, and print the variance report until you’re confident the current count is correct.

5. Update Physical Count

This can be done for all inventory or a subset, and this does the actual posting of the entered values—which is actually posting the “difference” in the count between the quantity frozen in step #1 and that entered/imported in step #3/4. So, if the original count was 10, then you input a count of 7, this will post a transaction of -3. Newer versions of AccountMate include an option for you to specify a special GL account for the financial impact of this process so you can easily see this separately in your financials. This posting clears the items out of the “Frozen” state. 

6. Clear Frozen Inventory

Normally, you don’t need this option because if you’ve done the “Update” process then there’s nothing still frozen. So what is this for? Think of it as a handy “I give up” option. If you’ve frozen inventory, entered counts, have huge variance, re-counted, and still aren’t happy with your variance but have to get the business back in operation and don’t have time right now to figure out the situation—then this is the “punt” button so you can come back later and try again. 

As always, we’re standing by to support you on the process, so don’t hesitate to contact us.

Please be aware that Microsoft Extended Support for Windows 7 (for desktop PCs) and Windows Server 2008 are ending in January. See the official details from Microsoft here and here. Having your accounting and financial information on systems with no security updates and patches is a dangerous place to be—so chat with your IT support regarding getting your systems updated.

The next important end-of-support date is for Microsoft SQL Server 2012, for which support ends July 12, 2022—so here’s your 2 1/2 year notice on that!

AccountMate's recent webinar covering the major new features and changes introduced in AccountMate 11.1 for SQL/Express is now available for you to watch in the Webcasts On-Demand area when you log into AccountMate’s website.

Highlights of the new features in AccountMate V11.1 include: 

New Projected Cash Flow reporting features, expanded Executive Summaries, Manufacturing remnant and scrap tracking, expanded Revenue Tracking, RMA support for build-on-the-fly kits, and improved Search options.

Let us know if you have a question or if you’re ready to schedule getting your system upgraded to the new release.

There may be times when your company must pay employees additional earnings such as bonuses, commissions and other earnings. You may be paying these additional earnings to your employees as part of their regular paycheck or paying them in a separate check. AccountMate provides the flexibility to use either of these two methods.

You may also apply withholding taxes and personal deductions to additional earnings as needed. And, you can generate a separate report that tracks those additional earnings.

This week we publish Article # 1182: How to Post Employee Additional Earnings. This Technical Note covers the procedure to post payment of additional earnings for each method, as well as the procedures to apply withholding taxes and personal deductions to these additional earnings. Samples are included that illustrate the appropriate use of each method.

Banks may provide data that can be downloaded from their website or may send files via emails and other electronic transfer methods, or you may have generated these files outside the AccountMate application. Rather than manually recording bank transactions one by one, you may import the file using the Import Bank Transactions function. It allows you to import bank transaction data from an Excel, CSV, TXT, or DBF source file.

Article # 1345: Understanding the Import Bank Transactions Feature provides you with tips to successfully import bank transactions and discusses the procedures for importing bank transactions. It also lists the reports that show the imported bank transactions.

 

When recording transactions in AccountMate, it is often necessary to look for a customer, vendor, inventory item, or another particular record from among a multitude of records. To facilitate your search, AccountMate allows each user to customize the Search window criteria to suit the user’s specific needs and to maximize use of the Search feature.

A number of handy options are provided—for example, perhaps you want to automatically exclude inactive GL Account IDs and inventory item records when searching.

Article # 1119: How to Set Up Search Criteria for Each User explains the setup procedures. 

Versions: AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN 
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM8 for LAN

Module: AP 

Q: When I post an AP invoice, I notice that I can enter only the vendor # in the AP Invoice Transactions function. We have hundreds of vendors and we can remember best the vendor’s company name rather than the vendor #. Is there a way to set up AccountMate so that I can enter the vendor’s company name instead of the vendor # in the AP Invoice Transactions function? 

A: To enter the vendor’s company name in the AP Invoice Transactions ► Vendor # field, perform the following steps: 

1. Set up a new macro in the Vendor # Search window: 

1. Click the Lookup button beside the Vendor # field to display the Vendor # Search window. 
2. Click the List Box button beside the Search By field, and select the Company option. 
3. Click the Save button beside the Macro field to display the Save Macro As window. Alternatively, you may click the List Box button beside the Macro field Save button, and choose the Save As option. 
4. Enter the macro name in the Save Macro As window, and click Save. 
5. Click again the List Box button beside the Macro field Save button, and select the Set as Default option. 
6. Click OK to save the settings, and close the Vendor # Search window. 

2. Exit the AP Invoice Transactions function, and access it again. Enter the vendor’s company name in the AP Invoice Transactions ► Vendor # field, and press the Enter key to display the Vendor # Search window. 

Note: The Vendor # field accepts up to ten (10) characters. If, for example, the vendor’s company name is “Aero Furniture Factory,” you can enter only “AERO FURNI” in the Vendor # field. 

3. While the cursor is on the Company field, press the Enter key again. AccountMate displays in the grid the applicable vendors. If there is only one vendor in the grid (e.g., there is only one vendor for which the company name starts with “AERO FURNI”), you can immediately press the Enter key again; then, proceed to post the invoice. If there are two or more vendors displayed in the grid, choose the correct vendor before you press the Enter key. 

Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express 
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM8 for LAN

Module: SO 

Q: We recently updated the Unit Price of most inventory items. Will AccountMate use the new Unit Price when we ship or invoice sales orders that were created prior to the Unit Price update? 

A: No; the Unit Price that the Ship Sales Order function will use is the Unit Price that was entered and saved when the sales orders were created. Similarly, when invoices are generated from shipment, it will use the Unit Price from the sales order. If the sales orders are not yet shipped, then you can amend the sales orders and manually enter the new Unit Price before you ship them. 

Note: The default Unit Price when creating sales orders is subject to AccountMate’s pricing hierarchy.

Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express 
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM8 for LAN

Module: PR 

Q: Each time I apply payroll/payment to an employee, the small Amend Applied/Payroll Payment window is displayed, showing the Applied Amt among other information with the option to Continue, Next Employee, or Prev Employee. Why? 

A: The small Applied/Payroll Payment window is displayed when you apply payroll/payment to an employee who has an existing applied payroll/payment record that remains to be paid. This window will disappear once you pay the applied payroll/payment through Print Check or Post Handwritten Check or you void the applied payroll/payment transaction.