Selecting accounting software is one of the most critical operational decisions your company can face. Dedicating some time and effort in vetting the best choice to meet your specific needs, procedures, and goals will obviously benefit you in the long run. But it’s not enough to just make a selection, implement it, and forget about it. Au contraire! As with all business systems, reviewing the ROI on a regularly scheduled basis to ensure performance and systems integration is meeting your current business climate should be SOP.

Is Your Accounting Software System Scaling to Meet Current Needs?

Is your current accounting software solution growing in parallel with your company? Perhaps it has the capabilities to expand as you grow, but you are not utilizing it to its full potential. Sometimes companies start out conservatively, and implement systems that work for the company at that specific snapshot in time. Yet as they grow, they may forget to expand their systems to include and automate particular components (or add modules) which will help them be more competitive – and generate bigger bottom lines.

This happens a lot with users of entry software like QuickBooks and MS excel spreadsheets. They seem sufficient at the start, but as projects grow more complex and disparate business systems need to be integrated, there tends to be better solutions.

Does Your Accounting Software Fit Your Needs?

• Can your team generate the right reports easily?
• Is your data integrated into one solution?
• Do you spend too much time trying to find the data?
• Does your software support your company’s internal policies?

For accounting software to fully support your business needs, it should reduce time spent searching for relevant data and more time analyzing the data. In addition to this, you need to easily produce reports with critical information used for making fluid business decisions. On top of all of this, the software needs to be customizable to suit your internal accounting procedures and policies.

Ultimately, Accounting Software should Streamline Operations

Tracking time cards, invoicing, receipts, payments and check printing are the daily operations that provide a quick overview of the complete payables and receivables processes. An industry-specific solution such as Sage 100 Contractor, or Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, can help tie these activities with contractual information such as subcontracts, purchase orders, and project item procurements.

While accounting software is a key to a successful business, the information and data used must be current and accurate. By having an integrated solution, data can be input from the office or the field and your team members can have instant access to critical project information allowing them to analyze data, manage the budget, distribute reports, input time cards, and more.

If you are still using entry level software, it may be time to consider a better solution. And if you use a highly capable business management and accounting software it may be time to have an expert review your processes and needs to verify you are using your current solution to its fullest capacity. In either case, it is likely to improve your profitability.

We at Ledgerwood Associates are happy to help you with your accounting software solutions, implementation, system optimization review, and software training to help you grow your business.

Founded in 1984, Timberline Landscaping installs landscape and irrigation systems, and has expanded into maintenance and snow removal. Jacob Busch, Accountant, implemented MyAssistant in 2008. He reports: “MyAssistant has delivered a lot more information than we were used to having. We knew that the information we needed was in the system and now with MyAssistant we get what we need automatically. We don’t have to worry about figuring out how to get it or just missing it.”

“We’re using MyAssistant to track our billing. We used to have a major problem with work being performed in the field but never billing for that work. We created a custom report that goes out every week showing cost in excess of billings. The report looks at the job’s last cost update and if it’s been more than one week it will show up on the report, which tells us that this job has either stopped work or needs to be billed. We just started doing that this summer [of 2009] and it’s helping keep control of what work we’re doing and making sure it’s getting billed.”

“We also use MyAssistant with Accounts Receivable. We use a default Task [a pre-built rule that ships with MyAssistant] for past due accounts, which I modified slightly to notify me immediately when invoices hit 30, 45, or 60 days past due. [MyAssistant] sends out an email with that information, including the customer’s phone number and contact, so we can get a call out to them.”

“Obviously cash flow is very important. Prior to MyAssistant, our aging report was typically only looked at once a month, so if an invoice was 29 days past due it would not show up on that month’s report. Now we know immediately as soon as someone is 30 days out; we can give them a call to make sure the invoice is in their system and they’re aware we haven’t received payment.”

“We’ve activated some of the MyAssistant project management Tasks, so now we can stay on top of documents. Our estimators and project managers know which RFI’s and submittals are pending and need resolution. We’re also notified if a job hasn’t had some kind of a transaction in the last month. That helps us close jobs so transactions can’t go against the wrong job.”

“The most important thing MyAssistant brings to me is making sure our jobs are getting billed. We can go out and do work, pay for all the material used on site plus the labor, but if we never bill for it—that’s hitting the bottom line. And even if we were to bill for it, [before MyAssistant] we were sometimes talking 30 to 60 days after the work’s been completed. That put a major strain on cash flow. With the help of MyAssistant our cash flow has increased.”

“What I like about MyAssistant is the amount of information I can get in a short period of time.
It used to take me hours to collect all that information from different reports. But with MyAssistant I can setup Tasks and I don’t have to worry about it—when I come in in the morning it’s done all the work for me and I just scroll through the list to see the information I need. It really is almost like having another person helping you. It’s been a major help.”

For more information on MyAssistant contact Ledgerwood Associates.

Many Sage Timberline users received the following error today
“The instruction at #### reference memory ####. The memory could not be read.”

The culprit is a Microsoft Automatic Update.   Here’s how you can fix it…

Special Considerations or Warnings
Defect ID: 530799

Solution or Workaround

Turn off automatic updates and remove the updates with add/remove programs.

To turn off automatic updates:

1. From the Start menu, select Run, type sysdm.cpl and the press Enter.
2. On the Automatic Updates tab, select the option Turn off Automatic Updates.
3. Click OK.

To uninstall updates

1. From the Start menu, select Control Panel.
2. Select Add or Remove Programs.
3. Select the box to Show Updates.
4. Sort updates by date.
5. Remove the following updates, if installed:

• KB976576
• KB956250
• KB982519

1. This will require a reboot.

Hope this helps!