What's New in Accounting

Feature Update

Release: November 2016

Updates in this Release

• New Banner: We have started upgrading the look and feel of Accounting, starting with the banner.
• Detailed Add-on-the-Fly: You are now able to add all of your Customer and Supplier masterfile information as soon as you create them on the fly.
• Trial Balance Export: Customisable date ranges have been added to the Trial Balance export.

Check your Gross Profit as you are Invoicing

We have included a popup on your Quotes and Invoices to allow you to check the GP of the Items that you are selling.

Using the selling price of the items on your invoice, you can compare this to either the average cost or last cost of your items to determine the profit you are making before you process.

• User Access: This feature will only be available if you enable it under your Tax Invoice User Permissions under Control User Access.
• View Invoice GP: Once access is granted the popup can be accessed via the Options menu on your Quote or Tax Invoice.

Feature Update

Release: September 2016

Updates in this Release

• Trial Balance: Additional date options and custom dates have been added.
• Report Filters: Years will now be displayed as the financial year-end date. For example: Financial Year 1 March 2016 to 28 February 2017 will no longer be referred to as the 2016 year, but 2017.
• Transaction User Defined Fields: Transaction user defined fields have been implemented on Banking and Journals. To add additional information to your transactions, access the user defined fields from the Detail section in Banking and Journals.

Banking Changes – Duplicate Transactions

Based on feedback we have received from many of our customers, we have made the following changes for duplicates:

• Duplicates Found: This will no longer open up the Detail section and require you to select View Duplicates – it will automatically open the Possible Duplicate Transactions pop-up.
• Keep Duplicates: A new bulk action button has been added to select to keep duplicate transactions.

Support Notifications

Remember to regularly check our Support Notifications page https://sageone.co.za/support-notifications/ for updates and bank feed delays or issues.

Multi-Currency and Time Tracking – Beta ends 1 October 2016!

After a successful beta for Multi-Currency and Time Tracking, these features will remain free until 30 September 2016. From 1 October, there will be a charge of R79 per month, per company.

Feature Update

Release: May 2016

Updates in this Release

• Discounts: Enter a Discount Amount (not only a %) on your invoice lines.
• Account Category Grouping: Find Accounts easily with new grouping by category:

• Company Settings: Disallow selling of items below zero quantity.
• Additional Report Drill Downs: Drill down on any report - to source transaction or previews on documents.
• Additional Contact Selection when Emailing: Choose additional email addresses from your list of contacts on customers and suppliers when emailing your quotes and invoices.
• Recurring Invoices: Make use of Document User Defined Fields to add additional information to your invoices.
• Purchase Order Status: Manage your purchase orders easily to quickly view which ones to follow up on.

Batch Updates to Lists

Update one or more customers, suppliers or items quickly and easily using the Update button on the list grids.

Company Notes and Attachments

Struggling to find the attachments you have linked to transactions?

Attachments are all listed in one place now - under Company Notes and Attachments. Filter and search to quickly find the attachment you are looking for - you can even drill down directly to the transaction from this page.

Invite Support User

Invite an Accounting support agent to a company to expedite any queries you have on Accounting. You will be in total control – from sending the invite (without disclosing any of your login details), to cancelling it and removing access to your company.

Feature Update

Release: February 2016

Supplier Batch Payments

* Available in certain countries only

Streamline your monthly admin process with Supplier Payments from Netcash. You are able to pay all of your outstanding supplier invoices conveniently from one central place.

Simply click which Suppliers or specific invoices you wish to pay and Accounting will send a batch file through to Netcash for you to authorise for payment. At the same time the invoices in Accounting will be automatically allocated.

Accounting Report Writer

No two businesses are the same. Report Writer gives you the freedom to view your data from a different angle by interacting with your reports, and even to tweak your reports to suit your unique requirements.

Accounting Report Writer connects to your Accounting data and securely loads it into the Report Writer where you will be able to customise your Financial Statement reporting.

Multi-Currency - Sign up for the beta!

• Send invoices and make purchases in different currencies.
• Set up bank accounts in other currencies.
• Get the latest end of day Exchange Rate automatically from Accounting or set up custom rates.
• Manage currency fluctuations easily - Accounting calculates your unrealised and realised foreign exchange gains or losses automatically.
• Send invoices and make purchases in different currencies.

Feature Update

Release: November 2015

Changes in this release

Balance Sheet: The long-awaited Balance Sheet replaces the Statement of Assets and Liabilities. If you have inventory on hand, you will need to account for your opening and closing inventory values on the Balance Sheet. Watch out for the links available to assist you with this in-product.

New Defaults: Set default VAT types on Customers, Suppliers and Accounts as well as default Discounts and Due Dates on Customer and Suppliers.

Account Lines on Documents: Add your own description to Account lines on your quotes and invoices.

Custom Layouts: Import and export Custom Layouts to quickly and easily share invoice and statement layouts.

And, at last! Multi-Currency is here! Available in a limited beta by request only!

• Send invoices and make purchases in different currencies.
• Set up bank accounts in other currencies.
• Get the latest end of day Exchange Rate automatically from Accounting or set up custom rates.
• Manage currency fluctuations easily - Accounting calculates your unrealised and realised foreign exchange gains or losses automatically.
• Print statements and reports in foreign or home currency.

Feature Update

Release: August 2015

Resizing Columns

Resize your columns and save the settings on all the list grids and banking screens:

Other Changes

List Grids: The manual sort order you set on your list grids by clicking on each column heading will now be saved automatically.

Company Settings: To speed up selections on your reports, you can now choose to exclude inactive Items, Customers and Suppliers in the Report Filter lists.

Bank Feeds: Based on feedback received from customers, Bank Feeds appear to refresh but no transactions are pulled through to the bank account. A new option to Fetch Transactions Manually has been added under Manage Bank Feeds which will force a transaction refresh. This option can only be run once per day.

The Accounting Accountant Edition - Reinvented!

Hit the ground running each day with the all-new Accountant Edition Company Console!

Designed to help you get the most out of your day, the Accountant Edition Company Console allows you to:

• Get a quick snapshot of tasks and alerts that need your attention to help you prioritize your day. Get a view of recent transactions in each of your client's companies to check their processing habits and provide well-timed feedback.
• Manage your deadlines with quick sorting on financial year ends and VAT submission dates and easily access what you need with click-through’s straight into your client’s company.
• Track your time with Accounting Time Tracking directly from the Console.

Time Tracking Beta - Update!

The following changes and updates have been made on Time Tracking:

Profitability Reporting

See how profitable your projects are with the Profit by Project Report. This will allow you to compare your actual invoicing against your user costs and project expenses. The Cost by Project Report will illustrate your user costs based on their hours worked on each project. It also includes all project expenses that have been linked to a project on the banking screen.

Timers!

Capture every valuable second of your time using our new built-in timers. These will run in the background while you perform your work.

Lock your Timesheets

Now you can lock your older timesheets and dates so that no more time is captured for closed off periods.

Add-on-the-fly: Projects and Tasks

Add projects and tasks directly from the timesheet screen.

The Accounting Time Tracker Mobile Apps!

Track time on the go with the Accounting Time Tracker apps for iOS and Android. Link a project and task to your time entry, start your timer and make sure you account for every minute!

You can find the Accounting Time Tracker app in the Google Play Store, as well as in the iTunes Store.

Feature Update

Release: June 2015

Time Tracking – Sign up for the beta!

Time is money – and our all-new Accounting Time Tracking beta is designed to help you track your time and make sure you get paid for it!

• Set up your projects and tasks.
• Set budgets, task rates and billing preferences for each project.
• Start capturing time.
• Invoice out time linked to your timesheet entries or manually invoice out tasks linked to a project.
• Link expenses to projects and optionally recharge them to your customer.

Start tracking your time now by signing up for the beta! Log in to your account, choose the link on your Dashboard or Workspace and sign up - someone from the Accounting team will be in contact with you!

More Flexibility on Lists

The new grids in Accounting are designed to give you more flexibility when working with all your Accounting lists – lists such as customers, suppliers, items or invoices (documents).

You can:

• Sort your lists by clicking on the column header, or do sorting on more than one column by using the Multi-Column Sort icon.
• Export your list to CSV. You can refine the list by searching for particular items or filtering and then using the Export to CSV icon.
• Customize the grid columns you display.
• Use the Quick Reports for easy access to the most commonly used reports on each list.
• Action a particular record in the list.
• Perform Multi-Actions on one or more rows in the list. These include selecting and emailing invoices, changing recurring invoice settings or the status of one or more quotes.

Netcash Bank Feeds

Set up Bank Feeds for your Netcash bank account and automatically import bank statements into your Accounting bank or credit card accounts.

Each day when you login to your company, any new transactions available in your Netcash bank statement will be automatically refreshed and available for review in the Accounting Banking screen.

Other Enhancements

• New Reports: Unallocated Receipts and Payments. View your unallocated receipts and payments – these reports are available from Customer and Supplier Reports.
• The Report Designer has been renamed to Custom Layout Designer.
• An Email button has been added to the new-format reports.
• Drill down from your VAT 201 to the new VAT Audit Report to view transactions per VAT code.

Feature Update

Release: February 2015

Features in this release

Banking has had a complete revamp and face-lift! Getting to grips with the new banking

The Bank Statements and Process Banks and Credit Cards screens have been combined under one Banking screen. Whether you are manually capturing transactions or importing them (either via Bank Feeds or via CSV or OFX formats), you will be working in one screen only! The new Banking screen uses tabs to separate New Transactions (manual or imported) from Reviewed Transactions (processed) transactions, allowing you to easily toggle between those transactions that still need to be reviewed and those that have already been finalised.

Some new ways with banking

• Allocate invoices to receipts and payments directly from the Banking screen.
• Sort by any column in the grid.
• The Banking screen utilises all your screen space and only the most important fields will be displayed, with more detail available in an expanded section for each row.
• You can select one or more lines to perform an action on, from marking transactions as reviewed to batch editing transactions.
• A Payee column has been added.
• Keyboard shortcuts are available to do the most common tasks.

Thank you to our beta customers! A big thank you to everyone that signed up for the banking beta. The feedback we received from you was invaluable and we are happy to say that most of your feedback has resulted in improvements in this final release.

User Defined Fields available on customer and supplier documents

When you create customer and supplier documents, you can now enter some additional information in user definable fields that can display on your invoices. Note: To include these document user defined fields on your documents, you will need to customize your document layouts using the Custom Layout Designer.

Report Changes

Over the next few releases we will be making changes to the Accounting reports to bring all reports in line with the format of the current Accounting Financial reports. Reports that are updated in this release include Customer and Supplier Balances Outstanding, Quote and Invoice reports, Sales and Purchases by Item, Customer, Supplier and Bank Transactions reports and VAT reports. Look out for the new grouping options on the Cash Flow report!

Feature Update

Release: November 2014

Features in this release

Multiple Price Lists

Accounting now includes unlimited price lists on your items! Set up your price lists under Company Settings – General Settings - Items. Price Lists can be assigned to each customer and you can select price list pricing on quotes and invoices. If you want to make global selling prices changes such as adjusting prices by a percentage, or copying one price list to another, use the Adjust Item Selling Prices function on the Items menu.

Invoice and Statement Layouts

Select a specific invoice and statement layout per customer or supplier under the Report Layouts tab or select which invoice or statement layout to use while processing quotes and invoices or printing statements.

Customer Zone and Email Branding

The Customer Zone has a new look and can be branded with your logo! Check your Company Branding Settings to make sure that your logo is set up to appear on emails to your customers and the Customer Zone.

Invoiced Status on Quotes

A new status has been added on Quotes. Quotes linked to invoices will get an Invoiced status and warnings will appear if a quote that has already been invoiced is re-invoiced.

Accounts List and Account Transactions Report

The Accounts List and Accounts Transactions report have been enhanced to include all accounts, bank accounts, system accounts and sales/purchases accounts.

Sales History Widget

Customize your Sales History Widget by selecting which transactions and financial categories to include.

Analysis Code Sorting

Analysis Codes are now sorted alphabetically.

We are improving Banking! Sign up for the chance to get early access on the beta!

Banking in Accounting has traditionally been done in two screens - Bank Statements and Process Banks and Credit Cards. This has presented some challenges – a couple of examples being confusion around bank transactions entered from two different menu options and frustration having to allocate the entire "batch" of imported transactions before processing bank statement transactions. Accounting banking will get a complete revamp and face-lift!

A new way to do your banking

• The Bank Statements and Process Banks and Credit Cards screens have been combined under one Banking screen. Whether you are manually capturing transactions or importing them (either via Bank Feeds or via CSV or OFX formats), you will be working in one screen only!
• The new Banking screen will use tabs to separate New Transactions (manual or imported) from Processed transactions, allowing you to easily toggle between those transactions that still need to be reviewed and those that have been finalised.

Other changes that will make banking less frustrating for you

• You will be able to allocate invoices to receipts and payments directly from the Banking screen.
• You will be able to sort by any column in the grid.
• The Banking screen will utilise as much screen space as possible and only the most important fields will be displayed, with more detail available in an expanded section for each row.
• A Payee column has been added. Start capturing your banking transactions with Payee information now – reporting will be enhanced in future releases to make use of this information.
• You will have keyboard shortcuts available to you to do the most common tasks on the Banking screen.

Sign up for the beta!

To sign up for the beta, please log in to your account, go to Process Banks and Credit Cards or Bank Statements and sign up from the link on screen. As soon as the beta is available, the Accounting team will be in contact with you.

Feature Update

Release: August 2014

Welcome to Accounting!

Pastel My Business Online has changed to Accounting – the same great features you already know and use, just with a new name!

Banking Details on Suppliers

Capture your supplier banking details so that you can have instant, secure access to this information when you need to pay your suppliers.

Additional Costs on Supplier Invoices

Additional cost supplier invoices allow you to capture extra charges that relate to items that you purchase without affecting the quantity on hand. The most common examples of these extra charges would be transport costs or import duties when you bring in items from overseas. These extra charges relate to the items that you have purchased but are usually charged by different suppliers. You will now be able to capture these additional supplier invoices at the same time that you capture the actual item invoice.

Make sure your emails get to your customers!

Accounting sends emails on your behalf and because of this, some email service providers will validate and reject these emails. To stop your emails from Accounting being blocked, we have added a new From Email Address option under your Company Settings. This option will be selected as the default and will ensure that emails you send from Accounting are delivered to your customers. Email replies from your customers will be sent to your email account as usual.

Cash flow report enhancements

See exactly where you are spending your money with a detailed cash flow report. Now you can see exactly which accounts are costing you the most money and where you are getting income other than your customers. The new detailed cash flow report splits out your cash inflows and outflows by general ledger account, giving you a quick view of where your money is going.

Feature Update

Release: May 2014

My Workspace

Do you use a few menu options often and wish you could get to them quicker? Try the new My Workspace option - a fully customisable, graphical view of the most commonly used tasks in Accounting.

Where do you find My Workspace? Select My Workspace from the Home menu. If you want to see My Workspace as the default instead of your Dashboard, you can set this up under your Preferences under My Profile.

Financial Years: Add a Lockdown Date

Once your accounts have been reviewed and your financial reports for a year have been finalised by your accountant, it is a good idea to set a lockdown date to stop changes to any transactions for that year. To set a lockdown date in Accounting, go to Financial Years under Company Settings.

Managing VAT Periods and your VAT Returns

The VAT periods available in South Africa are classified into categories which will determine your VAT reporting frequency. Each VAT period requires a submission and typically ends on the last day of a month with the submission typically due on the 25th of the following month.

To help you manage reporting for each VAT period as well as what submissions are due, we have moved all VAT reporting into one central VAT Returns and Reporting screen. Here you will be able to see each VAT period, what VAT is payable or refundable for the period as well as run reports for each period.

Once your VAT submission for a period is finalised, you or your accountant will need to close the VAT period in Accounting. This ensures that your actual submission and the transactions in Accounting will always match up. Any transactions that you back date will be carried forward to your next VAT period to ensure that all transactions are reported to SARS.

You can also add VAT payments or refunds for a particular VAT period. If you import bank statements which include payments or refunds to SARS, you will be able to link these to a VAT period. What do you get? An accurate, overall view of your VAT, including a list of your VAT periods, submission dates, payment and refund amounts as well as full drill down to various VAT reports.

Note: The first time you try to run a VAT report, you will be requested to specify your last VAT period end date and your last VAT submission date. Thereafter, Accounting will manage these dates based on your reporting frequency.

Add Attachments to your Quotes, Invoices and other Document Options

You can now attach files to any document. For example, if you have specific terms and conditions you need to attach to a quote or invoice, choose Document Attachments on the Options menu while you are on the quote or invoice. Attachments you add here will not automatically be emailed with the document, but are easily accessible from the handy Attachments button on the email screen.

Add notes to your documents by choosing the Document Notes option and add Anticipated Payment Dates - this feature is explained in the section about managing your cash flow below.

Managing your cash flow ... and who owes you money ...

At its simplest, cash flow management means getting your customers to pay you as quickly as possible while delaying any money you need to pay out as long as possible.

Get paid quicker by monitoring which invoices are due for payment or overdue so that you can follow up with your slow-paying customers. To make this easier for you, you can view the status of your invoices easily in the invoices list.

Add an Anticipated Payment Date to adjust the payment date of an invoice so that you can record when your customer will actually pay you - together with any information or notes to assist you in keeping on top of the customers who owe you money. The new Customer and Supplier Payments Due Widgets will give you valuable insight into when you are expecting money to come in or flow out of your business. Turn these widgets on by choosing Add Widget on the Dashboard Options.

Sending out Customer Statements: We've made this easier!

Are you never too sure about what statements will be emailed or printed? Do you never remember what options you selected last month you sent them out? Not to mention that you’re not sure what each option even means and what details the statements will include?

We have made these changes to reduce your statement frustrations:

• We remember your settings as you go through the Statement Run Wizard – so you don’t have to remember them each month!
• We have a Preview button to show you your statements before sending them out and to make sure that the options selected are in fact the options you need.
• The Preview even shows you which statements will be printed or emailed!
• We know that most of you don’t print and post statements – so any customer that you create in Accounting will default to Email Statements. You will, however, need to enter an email address.

Statements and the Customer Zone: If you have enabled Invoice and Account History in your Customer Zone, statements emailed to your customers will now contain a link directly to their statement on the Customer Zone.

Bank Feeds: Managing your bank balance and viewing your bank feed status

Staying on top of your Bank Feeds and ensuring that your Accounting bank balance matches your internet banking balance is of utmost importance.

A new link to your Bank Feeds Status is available for each bank account your have linked and will give you information on your last successful refresh, the number of transactions that have been imported, and most importantly, whether your bank balance is correct.

A full refresh status report is also available which will give you all the information on each account refresh, including the date and time of the refresh, the status, the value of the imported transactions and any differences that you may need to investigate.

Other Enhancements and Changes

• An Emails Sent to Suppliers report has been added.
• The Customer Invoices Report now includes additional information such as anticipated payment dates and the amount outstanding.
• An option in Company Settings to warn if you are selling an item below the cost price has been added. This option will warn by default but can be turned off under Company Settings.
• The Bank Reconciliation screen now includes a Select All and Deselect All button.

Feature Update

Release: February 2014

Analysis Codes (Performance Tracking)

Reporting in Accounting just got a whole lot more powerful with Analysis Codes. If your business has different locations, divisions, projects or any other dimensions that you would like to report on specifically or compare to one another, you can now achieve this by tagging each transaction with up to three different Analysis Codes. Simply set up the Analysis Codes that you would like to track on the Company Menu and start tagging your transactions. You will then be able to run your Profit and Loss Report based on the Analysis Codes you have set up.

Add Attachments to Documents Emailed

Now you can attach files to documents that you send from Accounting. Attachments such as price lists and terms and conditions can be sent in the same emails as documents like Quotes and Invoices.

Additional Company Settings

• Hide your Inactive Customers and Suppliers: You no longer need to view your inactive customers and suppliers when processing documents. Simply enable this option in your Company Settings.
• Warning for Duplicate References: A new option under Company Settings will allow you to check for duplicate customer references and supplier invoice numbers when processing.

Comparative Reporting on the Trial Balance

View This Year vs. Last Year when you run your trial balance.

Quotations in the Customer Zone

Enhance your customers experience with the addition of Quotes to the Customer Zone, giving them the opportunity to view their quotes online. They will also be able to send you a message to accept, decline or comment on the related quote.

VAT Summary Report

* VAT-based countries only

Get a better understanding of what is going on with your VAT in Accounting. The new VAT Summary Report gives you a month-by-month view of your VAT Inputs and Outputs as well as the payments made to the revenue authorities. This will assist in quickly identifying whether your VAT reporting is correct . You are also able to drilldown on this report into the specific detail making up the summary balances.

System Audit Trail

Now you can keep track of what changes were made to your company settings and who made these changes. You will also be able to see any changes made to user permissions.

Quotes and Purchase Orders Reporting

We have introduced new reports for quotes and purchase orders. Use these reports to see the value of your expected sales and expenditure on purchases.

Other Changes

• You can capture a Receipt or a Payment straight from the Customer and Supplier Invoice grids.
• Filter by specific transactions on our Transaction reports.
• See what your quantity on hand is each time you select an Item on a Quote or an Invoice.
• In the Custom Layout Designer you can now include a total for the Line Item Discounts.
• Transaction Searches will now search on all fields and not only the ones displayed.
• Drill down to journals from our Transactions Search.

Sage Online Tools Integration

Sage Online Tools provides all the tools you need to create your own website as well as assist with SMS and email marketing. To take advantage of the free trial - simply go to our Add-Ons page and sign up for a free trial.

Add-Ons: Get more out of Accounting

• Mobile Apps: Take Accounting on the road with you.
• Marketing and eCommerce: You are doing your accounting online - now get the rest of your business online!
• Business Reporting: Easy Excel reporting with live links to your Accounting data.
• Payroll and Payment Solutions: Pay your employees and get affordable payment solutions for your business.

Feature Update

Release: December 2013

The Accounting Blog is here!

Get all the information you need about our product, new releases and interesting news on the new Accounting blog.

blog.pastelmybusiness.co.za

Check it out now!

Your Accounting Customer Zone and Online Payments

* Available in certain countries only

Allow your customers to view invoices and make payments online by clicking a link in their email. This gives your customers the most up-to-date information, including their account history with you. You can get paid faster by using Online Payments by Netcash, where your customers can pay you directly from the invoice using the Pay Now button!

You can also decide how much your customers see:

Invoices Only: Your customers will see their invoices online and can print their invoices and pay you if you have enabled Online Payments.
Invoices and Account History: Your customers will be able to do everything above plus check their account history and statements.
Use the Customer Zone Notifications widget to track who has viewed their invoices, sent you a message from your Customer Zone and paid you.

Read more about this on our blog.

Bank Statements, Duplicate Transactions and Online Payments

When you make use of Bank Feeds or import your Bank Statements, you will be notified of possible duplicate transactions that you can review. When you use Online Payments by Netcash and your customers pay you, the receipts will automatically be matched and reconciled when you import your Netcash bank statement.

Manage your Quotations

Add a status to your quotations to manage quotes pending and requiring attention, quotes that you have lost and those you have won. Use the handy Quotes widget on the Dashboard for a quick view of which quotes to follow up on!

Easy VAT Reporting!

We have made your VAT submissions easier with our new VAT 201 Calculation Report. Run the report for the VAT Period you are submitting for and Accounting will calculate the values to populate your VAT 201 Submission.

The Tax Report now includes No Tax transactions so that you can review all your transactions before doing any tax submissions.

Financial and Management Reporting

Financial reporting in Accounting just got a whole lot better with Account Reporting Groups. Group accounts to display your financial reports in summary or more detailed.

Read more about this on our blog.

Sales and Purchases Accounts for Items

Up until now, all item sales have been linked to one Sales Account. Now you can assign your Items to their own unique sales and purchases accounts.

Item Selling Prices and Units

Update your selling prices quickly and easily based on a mark-up on cost using the Adjust Item Selling Prices wizard. Choose to mark-up based on average or last cost. View the GP amount and GP% on each item and add a Unit description for the item’s unit of measure. You cannot, however, use this field for arithmetical purposes.

Cash Sales

If you wish to process cash sales, you need to create a cash sale customer. Select the option Cash Sale Customer and Accounting will automatically set this customer to Auto Allocate receipts so that you don’t need to allocate invoices to payments. Statement distribution will be turned off, and all fields, including the Tax Reference field, will be disabled since you use this one account to process sales to many customers. All details should be entered on the invoice when you process your cash sale.

Transaction Imports

You can now import Customer and Supplier Adjustments, Journal Entries and Banking Transactions using our new .CSV import.

Other Changes

• Sales Reps: Set a default Sales Rep on each customer.
• CC Address on all Emails: Under Company Settings, add an email address that will automatically appear in the CC field for all emails that you send to your customers and suppliers.
• Emails Sent to Customers Report: You can now drill down to the document details from this report.
• Account Downgrades: Under My Profile, you will now be able to downgrade your account in the month of your renewal – no more calling in to do this!
• Bank Feeds: Refresh your Bank Feeds manually instead of automatically when you log on. This option is available under Manage Bank Feeds.
• Payment Method: Select a default Payment Method per bank account and see which method of payment was used at a glance on the Receipts and Payments lists.
• Journals: Under the Accountants Area, a new report for all Journal Entries is available.
• Search: You can search for Customers, Suppliers and Items by entering any text and Accounting will search all fields on that record. For example, searching for a customer based on their address or user defined fields will display all customers meeting that search criteria.
• Important! Tax Number: New default document layouts for invoices and statements include the label Vat Number or Tax Number. If you have included this wording in your Company Settings under Tax or VAT reference, please ensure that you remove it to prevent a duplication on your invoices and statements.

Feature Update

Release: July 2013

Email Signatures

Create and manage your Email Signatures for Quotes, Invoices, Credit Notes, Recurring Invoices and Statement Runs under Company Settings. Email Signatures can be selected at the time of emailing making it easy for you to select a different Email Signature per Accounting user, for specific customers or special messages to go out to your customers with each email.

Item Adjustments: Quick Entry Grid

Previously, Item Adjustments for cost or quantities had to be processed one at a time. Now, a Quick Entry Grid option is available under the Item Adjustments wizard. This option will give you access to a grid view that allows more than one adjustment to be entered at a time for faster data entry.

A handy Import option is also available to import item adjustments.

Document Options

In our last release, an Options button was added to all documents to display History. Now additional Quick Tasks have been added that allow you to create, for example, a credit note from an invoice, record a payment against an invoice, copy an invoice, create an invoice or a recurring invoice directly from a quote and much more.

Sales Reps

Add your sales reps to Accounting and start analysing your sales by sales person.

Set up your sales reps under Customers Lists and choose which sales person should be linked to which quote, invoice or credit note when processing. A report analysing your sales by sales rep is available on the Reports menu.

Adding Comments and Attachments to Bank Statements

If you need to add additional comments or attach files to banking transactions that you have just imported or that have just come through on your Bank Feeds, there are new buttons available on the Bank Statements screen to do this. Once you process your bank statement transactions, these comments and attachments will also be available to view on each transaction under Process Banks and Credit Cards.

Exporting to Excel using the new CSV Option

Reports can now be exported using the new CSV option for easy and painless manipulation in Excel. Choose this option to do sorting, calculations and any other Excel data manipulation without the additional rows and columns in the formatted Excel export.

Opening Balances for New Companies

When you create a new company and you need to record opening balances from your previous accounting system, the new Opening Balances Wizard is the right tool for you. Displayed in a trial balance format, this wizard will allow you to easily capture each account opening balance and at the same time capture or import your customers, suppliers and items with their respective opening balances.

Opening balances can be changed if something was not set up correctly when you initially captured your opening balances. Select Opening Balances from the Company menu to make changes but be aware that this will have an impact on balances you have already entered and any reports you may have already run.

Favourites Menu Icon

Do you use a few menu options often and wish you could get to them quicker? The new Favourites menu gives you access to your most-used pages in Accounting, with the option to manage your favourites, re-arrange your Favourite menu options or even add the current page as a Favourite.

Item User Defined Fields on Custom Layout Designer

Add Item User Defined Fields on the Custom Layout Designer to include additional information stored on your items under user defined fields on your quotes, invoices and credit notes.

Emailing and Printing Paid and Unpaid Invoices

Email or print customer invoices quickly and easily from the Invoices tab on the Customer masterfile or Customer Quick View with a new option to include Printed Invoices.

Finding Transactions - Search by Comments

Looking for a specific banking or journal transaction? Search by Transactions will now also search your line Comments for specific text to help you find that transaction.

Tax Report

The Tax Report now includes an option to offset credits on sales and purchases.

Note: Credit notes issued may not be set off against the sales made to the same customer unless the credit note concerned is issued in the same tax period in which the supply has taken place. The same applies to Supplier returns. If you are unsure about using this option, please speak to your accountant.

Preview Documents before Printing

Preview your quotes, invoices and credit notes before printing or emailing them to your customers by choosing the Print Preview option available on documents and all document lists.

Statement Runs: Exclude customers with Zero, Negative or Balances Less than options

Options have been added to the Statement report and Statement Run to exclude any customer, dependant on their balance. You have the option to exclude customers with zero balances, negative balances or you can specify to exclude customers that have a balance less than a certain amount.

The Statement Run default options set are to exclude customers with zero and negative balances.

Sage Payroll Integration

Sage Payroll is now integrated with Accounting! Manually recording your payroll journals in your accounting application is a thing of the past. With the Sage Payroll integration tool, you'll be able to automatically post your payroll journals to Accounting.

Mobile Apps Update!

We are excited about the new Mobile Apps for Accounting that will be available soon. These apps include:

• Updates to the iPhone app including invoicing functionality
• Updates to the Android apps including invoicing functionality
• Updates to the Windows 8 tablet app including map features
• Windows 8 Phone app

These apps are either in final stages of testing or have already been submitted to the various Mobile App stores. As soon as each becomes available, they will be added to the Accounting Downloads page. Keep an eye out for these updates!

Calling all Developers! The Accounting API is available!

The Accounting API has been released as a Public Beta and is now available for free to access and develop on. Sign up to be an Accounting Developer on the Developers page and you will receive everything you need to get up and running including API documentation, access to the Accounting developers forum and email support.

Accountant Edition

The Accounting Accountant Edition is a rebrand of the Accountants Console and all the features that are available, and will become available, to Accountants and Bookkeepers on the Accounting Adviser Program.

Features currently available include a My Clients list to access and manage your clients, My Tasks and My Calendar to manage your daily tasks and the Accountant Dashboard to view your client information.

New to the Accountant Edition in this release:

Maintain your clients’ key secretarial information in Accounting. Record a list of all stakeholders in the entity along with their roles in the company. You will also be able to maintain a Share Register for Companies.

Secretarial information is released in Beta. While a great deal of testing has been done and we are confident that this feature works well, we welcome any suggestions and feedback while it is in Beta! Please email [email protected].

Feature Update

Release: May 2013

Item Codes

You are now required to add an Item Code when adding new Items. You will use this Item Code to find and choose an Item from the Item drop down list when you are doing Quotations and Invoices, or when purchasing Items. Item reports will be ordered by Item Code followed by the Description and you will be able to easily search for Items - by code or description - with the new Search for Item option on the Item drop down lists.

Already using Items? If you have already added Items, when you login for the first time, you will be required to enter Item Codes for all your existing Items. You have two options:

• Add your own Item Codes manually, or
• Accounting can create the codes for you - in which case the first six characters of your Item Description will be used, followed by an incremental number. You will be able to renumber your Item Codes later by choosing the Renumber Item Codes option on the Items Special menu.

Displaying Inactive Items

Marking old Items as inactive helps you keep your reporting neat and uncluttered. All reports already have an option to print Active, Inactive or Both. Now you have an option to include or exclude inactive Items while processing.

Use the new option under your Company Settings to choose whether to display inactive Items or not on Item lists when you are doing Quotations and Invoices, or when purchasing Items. This option can be found on the Document Setup and Logos tab.

Budgets

Create budgets for comparison to actual income and expenditure throughout the year! Budgets can be created from scratch or based on your previous year’s data. Budget values are easy to enter and a handy Copy Budget Values option allows you easily and quickly copy values across, with the option of adjusting and rounding those values each month, every 2 months, every quarter or every 6 months.

View your budget using the Budget Report and track your budget performance against your actuals using the Profit and Loss Report with budget comparisons. You have the option to compare with one of the multiple budgets you can create, as well as an option to include budget variances.

Customer and Supplier Adjustments: Quick Entry Grid

Previously, Customer and Supplier Adjustments had to be processed one at a time. Now, a Quick Entry Grid option is available under Customer and Supplier Adjustments. This option will give you access to a grid view that allows more than one adjustment to be entered at a time for faster data entry.

Editing Customer Tax Invoices

Customer Tax Invoices can now be edited after you have processed and printed them. Edit a Tax Invoice to make small changes to the invoice details – such as adding the VAT number, changing the delivery address or any minor modifications. The Edit Invoice button is available when viewing an existing Tax Invoice. A new Send Invoice button is also available, allowing you to easily print or email the Tax Invoice. The Invoice Options button can be used to view the Invoice History (this is like tracking changes you may have made to the invoice) and will be used in future releases to include other Quick Tasks on the document.

Why Tax Invoices and Copy Tax Invoices?

When you print a Tax Invoice, a printed flag is set to ensure that you only print one copy of the original Tax Invoice. If you print a Tax Invoice again, the Tax Invoice will be printed as a Copy Tax Invoice. This is in line with the guidelines set out by many revenue services worldwide. In South Africa, according to the SARS VAT Guide, it is an offence to issue more than one Tax Invoice per taxable supply. If your customer loses or misplaces a Tax Invoice that you have issued, you may not issue another Tax Invoice. You can however, issue a Copy Tax invoice and your customer will be able to claim tax on this Copy Tax Invoice as it meets the requirements for claiming input tax.

It was in line with the above requirements that Accounting did not allow the editing of Tax Invoices once they were printed. In order to edit a printed Tax Invoice, you previously had to issue a Credit Note and re-invoice your customer. Many of our users have requested that we allow Tax Invoice editing, and in our endeavours to make Accounting an easy-to-use product, we have implemented this change. We do however have the following cautionary advice with regards to editing printed Tax Invoices:

• Before you edit an invoice, Accounting will warn you that you are editing a printed Tax Invoice which means you will be re-issuing an original invoice. Only continue if you are happy to do this.
• When should you edit a Tax Invoice? Only edit a Tax Invoice to make small modifications to the Tax Invoice that don’t affect the original consideration, in other words, the amount of the Tax Invoice. These modifications include adding your customer’s VAT number, changing address details and other similar changes.
• When shouldn’t you edit a Tax Invoice? If the value of the Tax Invoice changes you should (but don’t have to) issue a Credit Note and issue a new Tax Invoice.

What documents can you edit?
You can edit Customer Quotations and Supplier Purchase Orders whenever you want to. Customer Tax Invoices and Customer Credit Notes can be edited before or after printing.  Supplier Invoices and Supplier Returns cannot be edited. Why? Accounting tracks Item average cost on all transactions, specifically Supplier transactions which update the Item average cost. In order to ensure that the Item average cost is correct, when a Supplier Invoice or Supplier Return is processed, the Item average cost is updated. When the document is edited, the average cost is not updated as this will result in an incorrect average cost on your Item.

Customer Returns have been renamed to Credit Notes

Accounting now refers to Customer Returns as Customer Credit Notes.

Selling Price Updates and Recurring Invoices

Update your selling prices quickly and easily from the Item Adjustments option under the Item Transactions menu. If you use Recurring Invoices, be sure to choose the option to Update Selling Prices on Recurring Invoices to ensure that your selling prices are correct.

Frustrated when you lose work by accidentally moving from the page?

If you have ever pressed the Backspace key by accident or navigated to another page while working on a processing screen after entering a large amount of data, you know the frustration with losing work! Accounting will now stop you from navigating from a processing screen (whether accidentally or not) and first warn you that you have not saved your changes.

Reports

View opening balances, closing balances and cumulative values on your Account Transactions and Bank Transactions reports. The Profit and Loss report now includes two options to Compare to Budget and Show Budget Variances, making it easy to track your budget performance against your actuals!

Updating your information on My Profile

Update your Billing Information on My Profile on the Billing Address and Contact Details tab. Invoices sent from Accounting for credit card payment that you make for your subscriptions will use these details. Your Product Referral Reference can also be updated on this tab.

What’s New on Bank Feeds?

Accounting now supports multi-factor authentication bank accounts such as Capitec and Investec.

What is multi-factor authentication? Some online banking websites have additional one-time authentication, on top of user credentials, before you can access their websites. This may take the form of a security email or SMS or a security token provided by the banking institution.

New Windows 8 Tablet App available!

Log on from wherever you are for an up-to-date, bird’s eye view of your business. See your sales and purchases for the day, your bank balances and a yearly view of your sales – this year vs. last year. Add your favourite customers and suppliers and view up to date information on them, check your due and overdue tasks, process quotes and invoices and email these directly to your customers – all on the go!

To get the app, download it from the Windows App Store by clicking here.

New for our Qualified Accountants and Bookkeepers: Tasks!

Accountants and Bookkeepers that are registered for the Accounting Qualified Adviser program have access to the Company Console that allows searching on company names, contact information for each company as well as displaying pertinent information such as the financial year end date and the next VAT submission date. Also included on this console is a reminder of any new notes, due and overdue notes. These reminders include notes that are sent by your clients directly from within Accounting.

My Tasks and My Calendar has been released in Beta. While a great deal of testing has been done and we are confident that this feature works well, we welcome any suggestions and feedback while it is in Beta! Please email [email protected].

My Tasks and My Calendar are new additions to the Company Console, designed to help you keep track of the various accounting or bookkeeping tasks that you do for each of your clients on Accounting. You can create a single task or one that repeats on a regular schedule, in other words, a recurring task. Use the My Tasks tab to manage your tasks, change the task status or login to your client’s data.

My Calendar is a useful tool to get an overview of the tasks and notes you need to work on each day. The Monthly view and Daily view will display all tasks and notes that are overdue, due today as well as those tasks that are scheduled to start.

Feature Update

Release: October 2012

Welcome to the new look of Accounting!

Accounting has had a facelift! We look forward to receiving your feedback so that we can continue making Accounting even more user friendly.

It’s easier than ever to do your banking with Bank Feeds (beta)

Starting today, you can set up Bank Feeds which allow you to automatically import bank statements into your Accounting bank or credit card accounts from banks and other financial institutions. This saves you having to manually import your bank statements yourself.

Each day when you login to your company, any new transactions available in your bank statement will be automatically refreshed and then available for review in the Accounting Bank Statements screen. Use the new Banks and Credit Cards widget on the Dashboard to see the status of each account. Find out more about this widget below. You will save even more time by mapping transactions where Accounting will automatically allocate your transactions to the correct accounts each time your automatic bank statement feeds are refreshed. Managing your bank accounts could not be easier!

Learn more about Bank Feeds

*Beta* This feature has been released in Beta. While a great deal of testing has been done and we are confident that this feature works well, we welcome any suggestions and feedback while it is in Beta! Please email [email protected].

New Banks and Credit Cards Widget

Use the new Banks and Credit Cards widget on the Dashboard to give you an overview of all your banks, credit cards and their balances. There are handy options to Review Transactions or set up Bank Feeds.

Banks and Credit Cards: Splitting Lines into Multiple Accounts

Split transaction lines when processing to your bank or credit card, or after importing your bank statements! Why use splits? Sometimes you would like to allocate a single transaction to more than one account. For example, you may want to split a rates and taxes payment between rates and water accounts.

Once all of your split lines total to the same value as the original line, you can save the split. Accounting will then display the original transaction as well as the splits for easy identification.

Refreshing your dates when showing previous transactions on Banks and Credit Cards

Are you frustrated by waiting for the Banks and Credit Cards screen to load and refresh when you choose a date range? Now you can choose Show Previous Transactions, set your Date Range and simply click the Refresh button for Accounting to load and refresh your grid. One refresh only!

Do you have an Accounting Qualified Consultant? Send Notes directly to your accountant or bookkeeper from within Accounting!

If you have invited your accountant and your accountant or bookkeeper is registered for the Accounting Qualified Consultant program, you will be able to send a reminder note for to do’s or meetings straight to you accountant from Accounting.

From the Accountant’s Area, choose Send a Note to my Accountant and add your note details. You have the option to send an email notification as well as include any attachments. Your note will appear on your accountant’s company console for action.

If your accountant or bookkeeper is not on the Accounting Qualified Consultant program, you can get them on board by submitting their details.

New for our Qualified Accountants and Bookkeepers

Accountants and Bookkeepers that are registered for the Accounting Qualified Consultant program will have access to a company console that will allow searching on company names, contact information for each company as well as display pertinent information such as the financial year end date and next VAT submission date. Also included on this console is a reminder of any new notes, due and overdue notes. These reminders include notes that are sent by your clients directly from within Accounting.

A new Accountant Dashboard is also available, displaying your client’s company information, notes that you need to action, a profit and loss widget, as well as banking information.

Controlling User Access

You can now add user access permissions for your invited users to allow them to Control User Access. This is particularly useful when inviting your accountant or bookkeeper as they may want to change access levels to allow or disallow editing of transactions. Note: by default, this option is not available for your invited users and you will need to allow them access to this.

Company Settings are now available by default to invited users. Note: if you don’t want your invited users to have access to you Company Settings, you will need to turn this option off under Control User Access.

By popular demand: Journals include Debits and Credits

When you process journal entries, the Increase or Decrease column has been changed to Debit or Credit. You now select the account you wish to Debit or Credit and choose the By Affecting Account to process the entry.

Statements: Balance Brought Forward and Exclude Fully Allocated Invoices

Two new options have been added to statements. Choose Show Balance Brought Forward to consolidate all unallocated transactions prior to the date range you have selected, into one balance brought forward line.

Excluding fully allocated invoices will only display those transactions that are unpaid.

Add attachments using the Accounting Document Store

Now you can attach files to Bank and Credit Card Transactions and Journals! For example, keep a record of any purchase by taking a picture of, or scanning, proof of deliveries or invoices. These documents can then be attached to the payment transaction.

Notes on customers, suppliers, items, banks and credit cards, accounts and assets can also include attachments, helping you keep track of important documents. Also attach pictures to your Items for easy identification.

Add Company Notes and Attachments

Now you can use Accounting as your personal online filing cabinet, with all those vital documents that you can never find stored in one secure easy to access location. Your company documents will be safe and secure, and you can access them from anywhere in the world.

To access this feature, from the Company menu, choose Company Notes and Attachments.

Attachments can be electronic documents or printed documents that have been scanned into electronic form. Categorise these attachments using the default categories, or customise the categories to suit your needs. You can store bank statements, correspondence with SARS (including VAT submissions and returns), FICA and RICA documentation, loan agreements, your company incorporation documents, correspondence and much more!

Keep forgetting your bookkeepers’ birthday each year? Need a reminder to increase product prices? Use the Notes tab to keep these reminders. Set due dates to have your reminders appear in your To Do List on the Dashboard.

Delivery Notes

Print delivery notes directly from the invoice screen. You can customise the layout of your delivery notes by using the new layout available in the Accounting Custom Layout Designer.

Changes to My Profile: User Preferences

My Account has been replaced with My Profile. Set your own preference with regards to the number of rows that should be displayed in grids as well as your default Dashboard. We have added this feature because certain monitor sizes allow you to see more on screen.

Enhanced Quick Views: Get information quickly and easily, from any screen!

The Customer, Supplier and Item Quick View screens have been enhanced to include more information. These quick views are accessible from all processing screens, grids and an easy to access Quick View menu.

Now Available! Accounting on your Android tablet!

Accounting has been available on your Android smartphone – now it is also available on your Android tablet!

You will be able to log on from wherever you are to view customer information and record notes (which will automatically display in your To Do's on the Dashboard). Search for customers and contact them directly from your smartphone, using your standard phone or email applications. Find your way to your customer's offices using the map links. View your customer's sales history, create quotes and email them to your customer – all while you’re sitting right in front them!

The Accounting Android tablet application is available for download on the Samsung store or you can download it from our Downloads page.

Pay your Subscription via Debit Order

Finally we are making your life easier by including a debit order payment option for your monthly Accounting subscriptions.

To set up your debit order, please download the Debit Order Authorisation form from the Registration Wizard once you have selected the Debit Order Payment option and submit this to us via email to [email protected] or by faxing it to 011 304 3204.