Copyright: Mind's Eye, Inc.


Contents

Mind's Eye, Inc.

1625 N. Hwy 67
Florissant, MO 63031
Voice: (314) 921-8433
FAX: (314) 921-8474

http://www.mindseyeinc.com

support@mindseyeinc.com

Visual Business 98

Introduction

Visual Business from Mind's Eye is The Most Powerful and User Friendly Accounting software available for Windows 95 or Windows NT. It is also one of the first Windows Accounting software packages developed exclusively for Windows 95/NT. It was developed using Microsoft Visual FoxPro, the fastest database development tool on the market today. You will also notice not only it's user friendliness but also that it is very intuitive. You are in control of the program. Meaning you control it the way you work. In today's workplace you are constantly bombarded with interruptions and that's the way this software works. It supports the Multi Document Interface (MDI) by allowing you to open more than one window at a time on your desktop.

Some of the Cool and Powerful Features

Drag and Drop data fills. Just drop a Customer or Vendor ID onto a transaction form like a Quote or a Purchase Order and the program will Automatically fill in the Customer or Vendor information for you Automatically.

Drag and Drop Record Movement. Just drop a Customer, Vendor or Product ID onto another Customer, Vendor or Product Form from an Invoice or a PO and watch the record pointer jump to the item you dropped onto the form Automatically. This is a real time saver. No more typing information to find something.

Drag an ID onto the desktop and the program will Automatically launch the appropriate Form for you with the information you dropped right there displayed for you.

Drag an ID onto the desktop and the program will Automatically launch the appropriate Form for you with the information you dropped right there displayed for you.


Importing Data From Other Applications
Importing Data Files From Other Applications

You may like our software but you don't want to have to enter in all of the data from your current accounting system so let us import it for you in a couple of mouse clicks. Mind's Eye wants to make your transition to our software as easy and painless as possible. Therefore, we will be continually writing new import filters for the software so check our web site often for updates.

Importing data into Visual Business is a multi-step process described below.

Current Applications and Data Supported

There are several applications listed on the import filter form currently. However, only the QuickBooks V5.00 import filter is working at this time. Please check back for updates.

QuickBooks V5.00 Import Information File (IIF)
At this time only the Customer, Vendors and Products data can being imported into our data files. We are looking to automatically import the Chart of Accounts as well. You must Export all items from the QuickBooks Export menu option and save them to a file on your hard drive. Once you have exported the items to the file, you can then import them into Visual Business by selecting that file.

Customer ID's and Vendor ID's are assigned using the QuickBooks internal record number for each customer and vendor that was exported into the IIF file. The Product file Part Numbers are pulled from the part description that was entered into the QuickBooks product file.

Other Applications
Mind's Eye can also write custom import filters and such for practically any data file format out there. So if we do not have support for your custom data, please call us. Custom data importing is billed at hour normal hourly programming rates. Also, please check the web site for updates concerning the addtion of new import filters and such.

Select The Import Data Menu Option

To access the Importing of data into the database files, select Administrative, then Utilities, then Import Data from the Applications menu. Once you have selected the Import Data menu the Import Data Form will be displayed.

Importing the Data

This describes the steps to import the data into the currently open company database files.

1) Select the Application from which you wish to import the data from by clicking on the appropriate radio button.

2) Click on the Import... button to select the file or folder from which you will be importing the data from. (Some applications are imported from an individual file while others are imported from independent data files contained within a folder.) Once you have selected the file or folder all of the data that was able to be processed will be displayed in the individual tabs according to what was found. This data is now contained in temporary tables. IT HAS NOT BEEN MERGED INTO YOUR COMPANY DATABASES YET!

3) Now click on the Merge button to start the process of merging the data with the existing company data. When the data is merged into the existing databases, only those items that do not already have existing unique ID's will be merged. You can edit the ID items before actually performing the Merge.

4) Once all of the items have been merged into the databases you can press the ESC key or click on the Cancel button to close the Data Import Form.


Product Overview

If you are looking for an application that is easy to use, extremely fast and easy to setup to run your business with, then you have found it. You should find that this is the most user friendly business application software that you have ever used! At least, that is what we think you will think. We have been developing this product since 1990 and it has gone through probably a billion revisions in the quest of developing "The Perfect" business application. This program is really an accounting application, but we have hidden that from you. That way you won't be dreading using it. We have made accounting easy to do even for novices.

Mind's Eye, Inc.'s Business Application Software has been designed to help your company tackle the most common day to day issues quickly and easily within your business. This application has been in use since 1990 and has been continually upgraded to meet the changing and growing needs of the business environment. Whatever form of sales you do you will find the program easy to use and navigate as well as extremely user friendly.

It is more than just and accounting application. This application allows you to track your sales, ordes and quotes for customers. You have nearly instant information for just about everything you want to know. You can quickly and easily find out every customer that purchased a particular product from you right from the product screen. You can just as easily find out where you purchased that product from and at what price you paid for each of those purchases. This application runs extremely fast. In fact most people can't believe how fast it accesses the data and finds what they are looking for.

Cool Stuff

We have added a lot of really neat features to the software to help you help your customers fast and very easily. You have instant access to nearly anything you would want to know about your customers right at your fingertips. If you want to send them and email or check out their web site simply highlight any web address or email address and then right click over it to launch a browser or your email application instantly. Pretty Cool, huh? Well most of these ideas have come from the desire to save time at everything we do in our day to day business and we are always looking for newer, faster and better ways to do things so please let us in on any ideas you might have as well.

Program Features and Overview

This program has been designed to help improve your office's productivity in accounting, sales and customer and product management. There is a lot of automation designed into the software and quick links to data querying and editing. One of the most noted features is the extensive use of drag and drop technology for an accounting application. However, this is more than just an accounting software application. It is more of a company management and sales automation tool.

The whole financial status of you company is contained within the General Ledger Master Database Table (GLCA.DBF). This database table contains one record for each General Ledger Account your company uses to post Debit and Credit entries against. The sum of all of these account balances for a given period determines the financial status of your company using the General Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) formulas.:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Income - Expenses = Profit / Loss

Why Are There Different Modules?
While it is possible to track your companies financial status by simply entering in General Ledger transaction entries which post directly to the Chart of Accounts, most businesses would like to keep a detailed account of the happenings in their business with regards to who bought what and when and where it was purchased from. This is why there are different modules within the software to help you track this type of information such as a Sales Module and a Purchase Module. All of these modules can be used to enter in detailed transaction information which can eventually be posted to the General Ledger Chart of Accounts. The transaction entries in these separate modules eliminate you having to understand the Debit and Credit entries for a particular transaction.

Transaction Made Simple
Everytime you need to make a sale to a customer or purchase some inventory, you enter in transactions to track that information. For example, if you want to sell products to a customer, you first need to have those products to sell if they are inventory type products. You cannot ship an inventory item on a Sales Invoice if you don't have any On Hand inventory for that product. Therefore, you need to enter in a Purchase Order or an Inventory Control Transaction to receive the products you want to sell into inventory. If you are selling your customers a service such as consulting services then you don't need to inventory that type of a product to sell it.

The Accounting Part
Typically a company has a 12 accounting periods per year and they generally coincide with the months of the year. The General Ledger Master Database Table contains one balance amount field for each period for every Chart Of Account record in the table. General Ledger transaction entries are used to post updates to these account balances. Even though there are Debits and Credits posted for a transaction only the sum total of all entries is kept in the balance field for each period. The system currently tracks up to 24 periods in the system with a beginning balance of the Chart of Accounts field as well. So when you want to determine the financial standing of your company to a specific point in time, the software reads the beginning of the year balances and adds to those balances all of the individual periods posted balances. For example if you have posted data to periods 1, 2 and 3, the application will take the beginning balances and then add to it the balance amounts contained in periods 1, 2 and 3 to calculate a sum total. For the accounts to that point in time. If all goes well and there were no unbalanced entries posted to the database the Debits and Credits will balance for the period to date balances.

Since the software posts entries to only the individual periods balances fields, you can go back at a later date and enter more transactions for a given period and post those transactions to enter in adjustment transactions or any transactions that may have been missed during the period that the postings were originally done. The software keeps a complete history of all transactions that have been entered into the system and they can be reviewed and viewed at any time. Transactions can be edited at a later date as well to make any corrections that are necessary before posting. However, you will not be allowed to edit these transactions after they have been posted to the General Ledger. You can make adjusting or reversing entries for each of the transactions at a later date and post them into the period that the mistake was originally entered to cancel out any incorrect entries.


How To Purchase Visual Business
How To Purchase a Visual Business License

Mind's Eye, Inc.'s Visual Business software is licensed on a module by module basis as well as per user. Each module is priced individually. Users are licensed on a concurent user basis. Each user that will be launching the software will require the purchase of an additional user license.

General Ledger Module	$795
Accounts Receivable Module	$795
Accounts Payable Module	$795
Sales Order Module	$795
Purchasing Module	$795
Inventory Control Module	$795
Additional User Licenses	$295


Revision History Log
Revision History

May 6, 1998

• Fixed Cash Receipts save function to not allow saving of Zero Amount receipts.
• Modified the Import Data feature to better support QuickBooks 5.0 data to pull in Product Classes.


Installing The Software

Installing the software is very simple. It is contained in one installation executable or on separate individual disks. The software may have come on a CD-ROM or a set of diskettes.

This is the first installation screen when installing the software onto your system. If you want to cancel the installation press the Cancel button and the installation can be cancelled.

Here you will be prompted for the type of installation that you wish to do. There are 4 options to choose from when during installation. The application allows you to create and manage more than one data set while only installing the software one time. Multiple data sets are made available by multiple entries in the Windows Registry file. These entry are stored under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mind's Eye, Inc.\Application Name\Datasets. Underneath this entry you will see multiple entries as:

1: "C:\SomePath\"
1-Desc: "Accounting Data"

The application reads the registry at startup and checks for multiple data sets. At anytime you can close a data set and open another data set by choosing the Select Company option from the Applications menu drop down.

Standalone Computer (Program and Data Files)
Choose this option if you are planning on using this software on a stand alone PC and will not be having any other users accessing the data. You can also use this option if you plan on having other users access the data at a later time that resides on your PC.

Server Installation (Program and Data Files)
Choose this option if you are planning on using this software on a Network. When using this software on a network, only the application software resides on the local PC and the data files reside on the network file server. The software has been designed to be very flexible in the sense that you can actually have multiple data sets available to you to use.

Workstation Installation (Only Installs Program)
Choose this installation if you have already installed the data files onto a file server and are wishing to access those data files from the workstation that you are installing this application on. Using this type of installation only installs the application onto the current workstation. You must then provide a path pointing to the data files on your file server.

New Set Of Data Files (Only Installs Data Files)
Choose this option if you want to install another set of data files onto your network server or your own local PC to work with. You can have multiple data sets stored on your system for available use by the software. There is an option under the Applications menu to open another company by choosing Select Company. You can only open another company when all windows are closed and you have logged out of the current company data files. Having multiple data sets available allows you to setup a practice data set or allows you to setup multiple companies and still use the same application to access the different companies.

Use the Select Company option to open another data set from the Application menu drop down.

Filling in the Organization Information is imperative to obtaining and entering in your Serial Number and Activation Key. You are not allowed to bypass any of the required fields. Once you have entered the fields you can press the Enter key to proceed to the next installation screen.

If this is a first time installation the Serial Number will display TRIAL DEMO. If you are just evaluating the software you will not be required to change the serial number at this time. If you want to have the software automatically log you in without knowing the User Name and Password, then just leave the serial number as is. If you have already registered the software and obtained your own Serial Number and Activation Key then you may enter them into the appropriate fields at this time. Please note the application is limited to the number of records that you may enter into the various database files without having a valid Serial Number and Activation Key.

Registered Users
If you are a registered user of the software and you have obtained your own Serial Number and Activation Key for your Organization then you will want to enter them at this time. Each workstation installation of the software will require that you enter the same Serial Number and Activation Key. If you are installing the software from a network server drive onto your various workstations the Serial Number and Activation Key will be automatically entered for you from the CUSTDATA.INI file that was created during your first installation. If you are not installing the software this will go ahead and enter the Serial Number and Activation Key now.

This is simply a confirmation screen displaying all of the information that you have entered to verify that it is correct. If all of the information displayed here is correct then simply press the Enter key to proceed to the next installation screen.

Select Destination Directory

This screen allows you to select the destination directory or folder that the application will be installed into. Usually you will want to install the application onto your workstations local hard drive. If you are installing the application as a Workstation Only you will only be copying the application to your hard drive and none of the data files. The installation software will also copy the help file to your local hard drive as well along with some run time support files. It is best to install the application into a folder directly under the root directory.

Select Data Set Destination Directory
If you have chosen an installation option that is going to copy a set of data files onto your PC you will be prompted for the location of where to copy the data files to. The data files are where all of your data resides and may be either on your local drive or onto a file server on the network.

Enter a Data Set Description for the Data Set that you are installing and then choose the directory using the Browse... button if you wish to copy the data files to a different folder other than the folder already displayed. The Data Set Description is what will be displayed when you choose to open a different data set within the application. Please read one of the following to sections depending on which type of installation you are performing.

Local Drive Installation
If you will be using this application on a stand alone PC or on a PC that is also acting as a server to the network you should select a directory on your local hard drive. The installation software defaults to installing the data files in a folder directly underneath where you selected to install the application named data. You can press on the Browse... button to select another folder. If you are going to install the data onto a file server to allow for other users to access then read the following section on Network Drive Installation below.

Network Drive Installation
If you are planning to use this application on a network and allow for more than one user to access the data files then you will want to copy the data files onto a file server. By copying the data files onto a file server, more than one user can have simultaneous access to the same data files from across the network. Typically you will want to select a network drive letter such as F:. The data directory will be created for you if it does not already exist on the network drive. You should name the data directory something such as F:\MEIVB\DATA. This will allow you to know what the application is when you are browsing your network drive at a later time. Typically no files are copied into the F:\MEIVB directory. The data files will be copied into the F:\MEIVB\DATA\ directory only.

Once you have selected the folder for the data files to be copied to you may press the Enter key to proceed to the next installation screen.


Logging In To The Software

In order to use the software and gain access to some of the menu items and forms you must first log into the application. To log into the application select Login from the Application Menu. Once you select login you will see the following Login Form.

To log in to the software you will need to enter your User ID and password. If this is a first time login and you have not entered in any new User ID's, you can log in with the User Name: ADMIN and Password: ADMIN. It is highly advised that you change this password after you setup the software and create other users. In the User ID field type in your user name and press the TAB key to advance the cursor to the Password field then press the ENTER key or click on the OK button. You must enter a valid User ID in order to get into the software. If you are not logged into the software most of the menu options will be dimmed and are not accessible.

PLEASE NOTE: When entering your password, it will be masked with astericks (*) as you type each character in your password for security purposes.


Creating A Chart Of Accounts
General Ledger Module Overview

The General Ledger Module is were you create and maintain your company's Chart of Accounts, enter General Ledger Transactions and post all of the outer modules totals to General Ledger totalling transactions. You then post all General Ledger (G/L) Transactions to your Chart of Accounts balances. Before any G/L Transactions can be entered you must create your Chart of Accounts using the General Ledger Chart of Accounts Maintenance Form. The Chart of Accounts are described in more detail in Creating A Chart Of Accounts.

Creating A Chart Of Accounts

Maintaining Your Chart Of Accounts

Entering Chart Of Account Beginning Balances

Entering General Ledger Transactions

Posting Modules To General Ledger

Fiscal End Of Year Closing

Temporarily Closing Accounting Periods

Creating A Chart Of Accounts

You will need to create a Chart of Accounts that consists of 5 Account Types. These Account Types are the following:

Assets Accounts
The tracking of Assets includes many things such as Current Assets such as cash in bank, Accounts Receivables, Inventory, Prepaid Expenses, Fixed Assets and Other Assets such as deposits.

Liabilities Accounts
Liabilities accounts would include accounts to whom you would owe monies to. These liabilities could be short term and/or long term liabilities. If you are using the Accounts Payable module you will need to include an account for the Accounts Payable module to post to. Other liabilities accounts that you may wish to include might be:

· Any bank loans both short and long term
· Customer Deposits
· Payroll type taxes
· Sales tax payables
· Mortgages
· Dividends
· Any investor loans

Capital / Equity Accounts
Capital accounts would include any type of stock owned by the company and any retained and current earnings accounts. If you wish to track your retained earnings on a year by year basis you would create a General type Retained Earnings account and then break it down into detailed accounts for each year which would post into the Retained Earnings General account.

Revenue Accounts
Revenue Accounts to include would be any accounts that you wish to track any type of revenue that the business would be receiving. You may wish to break the Revenue accounts up into different departments according to the type of customer or type of product. If you are using the Sales Module then you will need at least one Detail Sales account to allow for the Sales Module to post to. You may want to break down the Sales Account into departments such as Software Sales, Hardware Sales, Consulting Sales and such according to the type of products that your company sells. Or, you may wish to break down the Sales Accounts into the type of customer that you are selling to such as End Users, Consultants, and Resellers. Depending on the way that you plan to track your Revenues will determine how you will mark the customers accounts for posting into.

Expense Accounts
Expense Accounts are used to break out the expenses for your company. The Expense Accounts will most likely require the highest level of detail for your company. These accounts will be used to track the various expenses that you have within your business. You can break the accounts down into several general categories without much detail or you could decide to track many of the accounts in great detail. For example, utilities which you pay could be broken down by each type of utility such as water, gas, electric and phone or you may decide to lump all of the utilities into one utility expense account. If you plan to track several different accounts and maybe plan to add more later you will want to number your accounts so you can leave some room for expansion. In other words when you are creating account numbers leave numbers open between the accounts in order to allow for future expansion without having to generate long account numbers.

These accounts must consist of at least one of the above account types. You may create a very flat structured Chart of Accounts with very little details or you may want to have a lot of detail with a very detailed hierarchy structure for your business. It does not make very much sense to have a chart of accounts with just 5 accounts since it would make it difficult to understand how your business is really functioning. It is highly recommended that you discuss the setting up of your Chart of Accounts with your accountant or bookkeeper. We have provided a sample Chart of Accounts with the software to help you get started with setting up your own Chart of Accounts. The detail with which you want to track your business will directly affect the structure of your chart of accounts. If you want to have a lot of detail you will need to create several levels of accounts to provide detailed posting and tracking information.

The essence of the Chart of Accounts is that for each of the 5 account types listed above all of the detail records that you record in your Journals will be posted to one of the 5 account types. Also note that all of your Journal entries are posted as Double Entry transactions just as in a manual accounting system would be. However, most of the Double Entry work is hidden from the user in the way of simple to use transaction entries. To create a good chart of accounts you must first understand what information you wish to track in detail about your business. There are many items that you will want to track in great detail and then other items you may wish to just lump together. Below is an explanation of some of the things that you may wish to track in your accounting system and the way that you may wish to structure your Chart of Accounts in order to show that detail.

Creating Your General Ledger Chart of Accounts
You will need to setup your Chart of Accounts before entering any transactions, customers, products or any other information. The Chart of Accounts is the heart of your accounting software. This is where all of the modules eventually have their data posted to. All of the outer modules such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales and such post their transactions to General Ledger transactions and finally all General Ledger transactions are posted to the Chart of Accounts. The Chart of Accounts holds the sum totals of all individual transactions that have been posted to the individual accounts for each period. Whenever a transaction is entered into the system the date of that transaction corresponds to an accounting period for the software to post the transaction to. The Chart of Accounts can track up to 24 periods. Each period is defined as a month. If your fiscal year begins on January 1 then the first period in your Chart of Accounts would contain the postings of all transactions that occured within the month of January. Then period 2 in the Chart of Accounts would contain any transactions that were posted during the month of February. This holds true for all of the periods that the system tracks.

Note: You can continue to enter in accounting transactions for up to 2 years without having to close the accounting year and posting it to the year end totals.

Your Chart of Accounts are defined by accounting codes. Each account ID can be up to 14 characters long consisting of any number, letter or dashes combination. It is recommended that these account codes be consistent in number sequence. When printing reports of the Chart of Accounts the report sorts them by Account ID. The recommended format for the accounting sequence codes is as follows:

Account Type	Account ID Number Range
Assets	1 - 19999999999999
Liabilities	2 - 29999999999999
Equity	3 - 39999999999999
Revenues 	4 - 49999999999999
Expenses	5 - 59999999999999
Other	6 - 69999999999999

By numbering your accounts using the above account ranges helps you to visually see the logic behind your account layout when printing journals and trial balances.

The Chart of Accounts structure has a hierarchic structure to it for posting purposes. Whenever you are entering accounts into your Chart of Accounts remember that each account posts to the level above that account until it reaches the main account for that type of account. For example each of the account types defined above are the major accounts for all of the Chart Of Accounts. This means that any asset type accounts will post to the major category of Assets. This means that each individual account below the Assets major account number will be summed together to calculate the value for the Asset major account value.

Accounting Levels
The Chart of Accounts must contain at least one Level 1 account for each of the above 6 Account Types. The Chart of Accounts Wizard will automatically create at least one account containing each of the Account Types listed above as a Level 1 account. Therefore your structure will be cascading by levels. For example to create your accounting structure you will want to leave some gap in your numbering scheme to allow for future expansion within your Chart of Accounts if you decide to add more detail accounts or if you need more breakout in your accounting structure. Each account type can be divided up into multiple levels to support account groupings or account consolidations which can help you visualize the breakout of your business easier. For example you may wish to break your Assets type accounts up into the following categories:

· Current Assets
· Fixed Assets
· Deferred Assets

In order to do this you will need to enter 3 separate accounts with the above descriptions as Level 2 General accounts. Each of these accounts will then point to the Assets Level 1 General account. These 3 accounts are created as general accounts in order to allow for more detailed accounts to be placed underneath their hierarchy to show more detailed account breakout.

10-00000 - Assets
11-00000 - Current Assets
11-10000 - Petty Cash
11-20000 - General Checking Account
11-40000 - Accounts Receivable Module
11-50000 - Current Inventory Value
12-00000 - Fixed Assets
12-10000 - Office Furniture Original Value
12-11000 - Office Furniture Depreciation
13-00000 - Deferred Assets
20-00000 - Liabilities
21-10000 - Short Term Notes
21-20000 - Accounts Payable Module

This total value is used in the General Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) in the following formulas.

Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Income - Expenses = Profit / Loss

Accounting Periods
You must setup the beginning date for your accounting periods in the company setup form. This defines the periods for posting General Ledger transactions to. By entering in a starting date this defines the start of the first period to begin tracking. Each period is done by month. Therefore if your starting period date is 01/01/1997 this would define January 1997 as the first accounting period for your company. This means that the any transactions dates that are dated from 01/01/1997 - 01/31/1997 would be posted to the first period in your Chart of Accounts.

Note: Once you close an accounting period this locks the software from allowing anymore entries with transaction dates that fall within the Closed accounting period. For example if you have entered all of the transactions for the month of January and you do not want any changes made to that month you can close the accounting period to keep other users from editing or creating any new transactions that fall within the month of January for that period. It is a good idea to close your period out as soon as you are done checking the data to prevent any changes to your accounting data.

Closing Accounting Periods
You will want to close accounting periods once you have entered all of the transactions for that period. This will prevent users from making any changes to your accounting data.

Beginning Of Fiscal Balances
The first numbers you will need to enter are the beginning balances for the fiscal calendar. These numbers would be carried over from your existing balance sheets and entered into the beginning of year balances for the accounts. Since it is the beginning of the year balances you will only be entering in balances into the Assets, Liabilities and Equity type accounts. At the beginning of the Fiscal Calendar you will not have any current Income or Expenses. These balances should only be entered before any postings are done. After you begin posting transactions into the system you will not want to modify the beginning balances because it will affect your financial data directly. However, you can make changes to the numbers as long as you are aware how the changes will be affecting your data.

To enter in your beginning balances you should have already created all of the accounts that you plan to use for your company. You can always add accounts later however, you will only be able to add in accounts between other accounts or at a lower level than existing accounts.

After you have entered your Beginning balances you will want to print a trial balance for the first period within your Chart of Accounts to verify the balances. The following accounting rule should hold true:

Assets - Liabilities = Equity

You will need to create a Retained Earnings account and a Current Earnings account into the


Accounts Payable Module Overview

The Accounts Payable Module is used to enter Vendor Invoices and Invoice adjustments as well as applying payments towards those invoices or General Ledger accounts. Use Accounts Payable Entry transactions to create an open invoice for a vendor which you intend to pay at a later point in time. Use Accounts Payable Payments to apply a payment to a Vendor's Open Invoice or to record payments directly against a General Ledger Account.

Accounts Payable Module Menu

To access Accounts Payable select the Applications from the main menu and then select Accounts Payable to view all of the menu items available for Accounts Payable as show below.

Vendor Information

Use the Vendor Information form to enter in vendors into the database. To enter a Vendor select Applications => Accounts Payable => Vendor Information from the System Menu. You will notice the tabs at the top of the form. These tabs allow you to see more information about the Vendor. You can see history information for Purchase Orders, Accounts Payable Entries and Accounts Payable Payments. The List Tab is used to list all of the vendors so you can quickly scroll through to a particular vendor and then view their information by clicking back on the Information Tab.

Accounts Payable Entry

This is the Accounts Payable Entry form. This is where you would enter in A/P Vendor Invoices to be paid. You select a Vendor from the Vendor file, Enter in an Invoice Number, an Amount and an Invoice Date. The software will automatcally distribute your invoice amount up to 5 accounts for you. All you have to do is enter in the amount on the line item for the current account and if there is still an amount remaining to be distribute it. It will automatically add a new line item for you to distribute the amount to. You just enter in the Account number and it will automatically fill in the remaining Open Amount for you.

The A/P Entry form automatically knows if you have already entered in the invoice number for this vendor. If it finds an invoice that has already been entered. It will change the type of your entry to an Adjustment rather than an invoice. It will then apply any amount you enter in for this transaction against the already existing invoice.

Accounts Payable Payments

Use Accounts Payable Payments to apply payments against Vendor Open Invoices or to apply payments directly against General Ledger Accounts. You can also print checks from the Accounts Payable payments as well. To enter an Accounts Payable Payment select Applications => Accounts Payable => Accounts Payable Payments from the system menu.

''Vendor Open Invoice Payments

The Accounts Payable Payments form will appear on the screen as shown below. Note: A Vendor ID has already been entered into the Vendor ID field. Once you enter a Vendor ID from the Vendor database all of the information for that Vendor will be automatically filled in and any Open Invoices will be displayed for you to apply payments to. Note that an Open Invoice is displayed on the form for this vendor. You enter the date of the payment and then select the Account to apply the payment from. The Payment Type and Payment Account has already been defined when you setup your payment account types. If you select a Payment Account that is a Check type you will be prompted to enter a check number. You must enter a check number that has not been used by that account. If you enter a check number that has previously been used, a message box will popup and display the information for that check. Next you will need to enter in the Amount of the payment to apply to the invoices. Once you have applied the entire amount of the payment against the invoices you will post the payment to the database. When you post the payment, the software will automatically assign the next payment number to the payment transaction. This transaction number is unique to this transaction and you can then come back later to edit the transaction if you need to.

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General Ledger Payments

This Form shows entering a payment against General Ledger Accounts. This is the same Form as the Vendor Payments however we did not enter a Vendor ID. Therefore, the software considers it a General Ledger Payment. You can fill in all of the information you wish. If you enter the address information you can print the check and use a windowed envelope to mail it. You will enter the same data as you did for a Vendor Payment however you will be entering G/L Accounts for the payment to be distributed to instead of applying the payment against open invoices.

When you are entering payments against Open Invoices during a Vendor Payment the G/L Accounts are automatically recorded as the Accounts Payable Account for you in the background.

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Entering Accounts Payable Transactions
Accounts Payable Entry

This is the Accounts Payable Entry form. This is where you would enter in A/P Vendor Invoices to be paid. You select a Vendor from the Vendor file, Enter in an Invoice Number, an Amount and an Invoice Date. The software will automatcally distribute your invoice amount up to 5 accounts for you. All you have to do is enter in the amount on the line item for the current account and if there is still an amount remaining to be distribute it. It will automatically add a new line item for you to distribute the amount to. You just enter in the Account number and it will automatically fill in the remaining Open Amount for you.

The A/P Entry form automatically knows if you have already entered in the invoice number for this vendor. If it finds an invoice that has already been entered. It will change the type of your entry to an Adjustment rather than an invoice. It will then apply any amount you enter in for this transaction against the already existing invoice.

Accounts Payable Payments

Use Accounts Payable Payments to apply payments against Vendor Open Invoices or to apply payments directly against General Ledger Accounts. You can also print checks from the Accounts Payable payments as well. To enter an Accounts Payable Payment select Applications => Accounts Payable => Accounts Payable Payments from the system menu.

''Vendor Open Invoice Payments

The Accounts Payable Payments form will appear on the screen as shown below. Note: A Vendor ID has already been entered into the Vendor ID field. Once you enter a Vendor ID from the Vendor database all of the information for that Vendor will be automatically filled in and any Open Invoices will be displayed for you to apply payments to. Note that an Open Invoice is displayed on the form for this vendor. You enter the date of the payment and then select the Account to apply the payment from. The Payment Type and Payment Account has already been defined when you setup your payment account types. If you select a Payment Account that is a Check type you will be prompted to enter a check number. You must enter a check number that has not been used by that account. If you enter a check number that has previously been used, a message box will popup and display the information for that check. Next you will need to enter in the Amount of the payment to apply to the invoices. Once you have applied the entire amount of the payment against the invoices you will post the payment to the database. When you post the payment, the software will automatically assign the next payment number to the payment transaction. This transaction number is unique to this transaction and you can then come back later to edit the transaction if you need to.

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General Ledger Payments

This Form shows entering a payment against General Ledger Accounts. This is the same Form as the Vendor Payments however we did not enter a Vendor ID. Therefore, the software considers it a General Ledger Payment. You can fill in all of the information you wish. If you enter the address information you can print the check and use a windowed envelope to mail it. You will enter the same data as you did for a Vendor Payment however you will be entering G/L Accounts for the payment to be distributed to instead of applying the payment against open invoices.

When you are entering payments against Open Invoices during a Vendor Payment the G/L Accounts are automatically recorded as the Accounts Payable Account for you in the background.

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Entering Accounts Payable Payments

Accounts Payable Payments

Use Accounts Payable Payments to apply payments against Vendor Open Invoices or to apply payments directly against General Ledger Accounts. You can also print checks from the Accounts Payable payments as well. To enter an Accounts Payable Payment select Applications => Accounts Payable => Accounts Payable Payments from the system menu.

Vendor Open Invoice Payments

The Accounts Payable Payments form will appear on the screen as shown below. Note: A Vendor ID has already been entered into the Vendor ID field. Once you enter a Vendor ID from the Vendor database all of the information for that Vendor will be automatically filled in and any Open Invoices will be displayed for you to apply payments to. Note that an Open Invoice is displayed on the form for this vendor. You enter the date of the payment and then select the Account to apply the payment from. The Payment Type and Payment Account has already been defined when you setup your payment account types. If you select a Payment Account that is a Check type you will be prompted to enter a check number. You must enter a check number that has not been used by that account. If you enter a check number that has previously been used, a message box will popup and display the information for that check. Next you will need to enter in the Amount of the payment to apply to the invoices. Once you have applied the entire amount of the payment against the invoices you will post the payment to the database. When you post the payment, the software will automatically assign the next payment number to the payment transaction. This transaction number is unique to this transaction and you can then come back later to edit the transaction if you need to.

General Ledger Payments

This Form shows entering a payment against General Ledger Accounts. This is the same Form as the Vendor Payments however we did not enter a Vendor ID. Therefore, the software considers it a General Ledger Payment. You can fill in all of the information you wish. If you enter the address information you can print the check and use a windowed envelope to mail it. You will enter the same data as you did for a Vendor Payment however you will be entering G/L Accounts for the payment to be distributed to instead of applying the payment against open invoices.

When you are entering payments against Open Invoices during a Vendor Payment the G/L Accounts are automatically recorded as the Accounts Payable Account for you in the background.


ENTERING VENDOR INFORMATION

Vendor Information

Use the Vendor Information form to enter in vendors into the database. To enter a Vendor select Applications => Accounts Payable => Vendor Information from the System Menu. You will notice the tabs at the top of the form. These tabs allow you to see more information about the Vendor. You can see history information for Purchase Orders, Accounts Payable Entries and Accounts Payable Payments. The List Tab is used to list all of the vendors so you can quickly scroll through to a particular vendor and then view their information by clicking back on the Information Tab.


Purchase Order Module Overview
Purchasing Module Overview

Purchasing Module Menu

Purchase Order Entry Form


Entering Purchase Orders

Entering Purchase Order Header Information
To enter a Purchase Order, select Purchase Order from the Purchasing menu. You must enter a Vendor ID for the Purchase Order from a Vendor in the Vendor database. Once you enter in a Vendor ID that Vendor's information will automatically be filled into the Purchase Order form for you. The date of the Purchase Order will default to your computer's date. You may change this date by simply clicking into the date field and changing the date to any date within an Open Accounting Period.

Entering Purchase Order Line Items
For speed of entry the software will automatically advance the cursor to the Part Number field after you have entered a valid Vendor ID. Now you are ready to begin entering in line items into the Purchase order. You may enter in any Part Number that is contained in the Products database. When you enter in a valid Part Number the description will automatically be copied into the Description field and the cursor will be advanced to the Qty Ordered field for you to enter the quantity you wish to order for this line item. You can change the cost for the line item if allowed. The Extended Cost is automatically calculated by the software by multiplying the Qty Ord by the Cost.

Saving Your Purchase Order
To Save your Purchase Order to the hard drive press the Post button or press CTRL+S using the keyboard to save your new Purchase Order. Saving a Purchase Order only affects the Products On Order Quantity for each of the line items in the Purchase Order if they are Stock Items. Non-Stock Items are not affected by Purchase Order entries.

Purchase Order Popup Menu

Purchase Order Receipts

To receive a Purchase Order you must click on the Receive button at the bottom of the Purchase Order form. Once you click on the Receive button the Purchase Order will automatically be placed into the edit mode with the Qty Rec field available for you to enter in the quantities received for each of the products on the Purchase Order. If no items have been received yet for this Purchase Order then the total amounts receieved for this Purchase Order will be zero. You must supply the Received Date for this particulare Purchase Order Receipt. This date should be the date that the products were actually received into your inventory. This date will be checked against the Open Accounting Periods as well as the Fiscal Calendar dates for your company. After you have entered in a Received Date you can begin entering in the Quantity Received for each of the individual line items for this Purchase Order Receipt.

If you DID NOT receive all of the inventory for this particular Purchase Order, you may come back at a later time to receive the remainder of the open items for this PO. You may also make changes to the Cost of each item on this Purchase Receipt. So, if the Vendor shipped the product to you at a different cost than was on the original Purchase Order you can change the cost now. In fact, each Purchase Receipt for the same line item can have different costs associated with them.


Inventory Control Module Overview

The Inventory Control Module is used to manage your products and inventory items. It is used mostly to enter in adjustments to your inventory such as breakage or loss. It can also be used to manage Purchase Receipts of goods that are puchased through the Purchasing Module. Every Purchase Order receipt generates an Inventory Control batch transaction. Therefore each Purchase Order Receipt is recorded into an Inventory Control transaction which can be later edited after it has been received. This has been done to accomodate the receipt of Inventory into the database to make it available for immediate shipment on a Sales Order. Since most distributors and vendors do not ship an invoice with the cost of the goods on it with an order you must correct the prices that the products were recieved at a later time. You can also quickly and easily generate an Accounts Payable Invoice from an Inventory Control Transaction by simpy entering in the Vendors ID and an Invoice Number and date information for the invoice into the Inventory Control Transaction.

Inventory Conrol Menu

To access the Inventory Control Module menu items, select Applications from the main menu and then select Inventory to display the menu items as shown below.


Sales Order Module Overview
Sales Module Overview

The Sales Module is used to enter in Customers, Invoices, Orders, Quotes and Customer Receipts. You will find this to be The Most Powerful sales tool available today as far as data entry and information retrieval is concerned. The forms in this module have been optimized after years of use in our own company to help us do our job quickly and efficiently. You will love the Drag and Drop features of our application. You will wonder how you ever did without it. Plus for those people that have to do a lot of Sales Quotes and are always having to update and make changes to those Quots, this is for you. Please try clicking the Right Mouse button over different objects on the screen to see what Popup Menus are available. There are so many options that you will be wondering what's available.

Sales Order Menu

The Sales Order Menu is accessed from the Applications menu under the Sales menu bar option. Below you can see the options available to you under the Sales Menu. Access to the different options may vary depending on each particular user and what security access rights they have been granted.

Getting Started

Before any Sales Transactions can be entered you must enter customers into the customer database and products into the products database. Once you have entered customers and products you can enter in Quotes, Orders and Invoices. The Sales Module allows you to enter Quotes for specific customers and then convert them to an Open Order with one click of the mouse. You can convert Open Orders to Invoices to be shipped and billed to your customers with one click of the as well. The Sales Module updates Customer's Balances and Deposits as you take Orders and ship Invoices. It also maintains a sales log of past purchases for each customer that is accessable at anytime from the Customer Information form. Sales and Purchase History is available as well for each Product from the Product Information form as well.

Entering Customers

Entering Products

Entering A Customer Quote

Entering A Customer Invoice


Accounts Receivable Module Overview


Entering Customer Receipts

To Enter a Customer Receipt select Customer Receipts from the Accounts Receivable menu or the Sales menu. Once selected the Customer Receipts Form will be displayed on the screen.

1. Enter The Customer ID
Enter in the Customer ID for the receipt you are entering. You may also drag and drop the Customer ID from a Customer Form onto the Customer Receipts Form to automatically fill in the Customer ID.

2. Enter The Date
Once you have entered in a Customer ID, all of the Open Invoices for that customer will be displayed. Now enter in the date that the payment from the customer was received.

3. Enter the Amount of The Receipt

4. Select the Form of Payment
The Form of Payment will determine what Cash Account the monies will be posted to when the Cash Receipts are posted. The Form of Payment choices are configurable. You will see the G/L Pmt Account displayed when the Form of Payment is selected.

5. Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number Information
Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number information if a CHECK or CARD form of payment was selected.

6. Enter any Remarks This Receipt.

7. Apply the Customer Receipt to the customer's Open Invoices.
Now apply the Customer Receipt to any of the customer's Open Invoices by moving the cursor to the Payment field for any of the open invoices and entering in a payment amount. You DO NOT have to enter in the full Open Amount of the invoice. You may apply partial payments to invoices. Invoices that are not fully paid will remain open until paid in full.

As you enter the payment amounts for the open invoices the Amount for the receipt will be updated as to the total amount that you have applied for this receipt.

8. Save The Receipt.
Once you have entered all of the payments for the open invoices you need to save the receipt. You can press CTRL+S or click on the Save button to save the receipt. You will then be prompted to Save the Receipt transaction.

When the transaction is saved to the disk, the customer's balance will be updated to reflect the Customer Receipt entered. Other users can be entering Receipts at the same time for the same customer without conflicts.

You may also enter in a General Ledger Receipt by not entering in a Customer ID. This will allow you to post receipts directly to General Ledger Cash Accounts and then distribute the monies to any General Ledger Accounts.


Entering General Ledger Receipts
Entering A General Ledger Receipt

You can enter in Cash Receipts and apply them directly to a General Ledger accounts without posting them against a Customer's Balance. This allows you to enter in any monies that may come in to your business towards some G/L Account that is not to be applied to a Customer's Open Invoices.

In order to enter in a General Ledger Receipt do the following:

1. DO NOT enter in a Customer ID.
By NOT entering in a Customer ID you are telling the software that this is to be a General Ledger type receipt and that you will be distributing this Cash Receipt against any General Ledger accounts.

2. Enter The Date
Once you have entered in a Customer ID, all of the Open Invoices for that customer will be displayed. Now enter in the date that the payment from the customer was received.

3. Enter the Amount of The Receipt

4. Select the Form of Payment
The Form of Payment will determine what Cash Account the monies will be posted to when the Cash Receipts are posted. The Form of Payment choices are configurable. You will see the G/L Pmt Account displayed when the Form of Payment is selected.

5. Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number Information
Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number information if a CHECK or CARD form of payment was selected.

6. Enter any Remarks This Receipt.

7. Distribute the General Ledger Receipt to General Ledger Accounts.
Now apply the Cash Receipt to any General Ledger Accounts in your Chart of Accounts. Typically you will be distributing this type of receipt to a Revnue type account. You may Right Click over the G/L Account field to display a drop down list of all of the Detail G/L Accounts from your Chart of Accounts that you may apply this receipt toward.

8. Save The Receipt
Once you have distributed the Cash Receipt to the General Ledger Accounts, you need to save the receipt. You can press CTRL+S or click on the Save button to save the receipt. You will then be prompted to Save the Receipt transaction. Since this is a General Ledger Receipt, NO customer balances will be updated.


Fiscal End Of Year Closing
End Of Year Closing

At the End of The Fiscal Accounting Year, you must close your books. All of the modules have been posted for all of the periods to this point. Closing the End of Year books, sums all of the Chart of Accounts for the first 12 periods in the Chart of Accounts. Then the Total Revenue minus the Total Expenses for the year is calculated as the Total Earnings for the 12 periods posted. This Total Earnings amount is the Current Earnings for the year. This total is then posted to a designated Current Earnings account for the year which must be an Equity Account. Then the 12 period sum totals for all of the Chart Of Accounts are then posted to the Beginning Of Year Balances for each of the Chart of Accounts. All Revenue and Expense Chart Of Account balances are zeroed out and any Chart Of Account balances in periods 13 - 24 are moved into periods 1 - 12. Periods 13 - 24 are then zeroed out.

After all of the Chart of Accounts have been totalled and moved, you are now ready to begin processing periods 1 - 12 as the beginning fiscal Year. If you wish to move the Current Earnings account from a Current Earnings account to a Retained Earnings Account for the current year, you must enter in a General Ledger transaction. You may also bypass moving the total and posting the Current Earnings directly to a newly created Retained Earnings account.

A Retained Earnings Account would have a description such as:
1997 Profit/(Loss) Retained Earnings

This Retained Earnings Account holds the Profit or (Loss) for that Fiscal Calendar year.


Entering Chart Of Account Beginning Balances

After you have entered your Chart of Accounts you will need to enter the beginning balances for your accounts. You will need to approach this one of two ways. If you are planning to consolidate data from a previous accounting system you may or may not want to enter in historical information. If you are not planning to enter in any historical information, which is the easiest route to take. You may be starting to use this accounting software in the middle of your fiscal year. If you are wanting to start in the middle of the fiscal year you will need to enter in balances for each of the fiscal periods as well as beginning balances for the year into the Chart of Accounts.


Temporarily Closing Accounting Periods

You may want to Close an Accounting Period to keep users from entering or modifying transactions in a particular period. This will keep your accounting data from being changed after you have closed the period but have not yet posted the data. This is a way of freezing the transactions for those periods that are closed. You can re-open any periods after they have been closed at any time. However, you will only be able to make modifications to transactions that HAVE NOT been Posted to the General Ledger.


Printing Vendor Checks

Printing checks to vendors are done using Laser Printer Checks. All checks are numbered so you want to print them onto the correct checks for your records. Checks are printed from the Accounts Payable Module. Checks are first entered into the system using either a Manual Check Payment Entry or by Approving A/P Invoices for payment and then generating checks for those approved payments.


Adjusting Your Check Layout


Entering A Customer Return
Entering A Customer Refund

Customer Refunds are entered when a customer has purchased a product and has decided to return the product for a refund. You will first need to enter in the Invoice for the products the customer is returning. Then you will enter in the payment for the Invoice as a negative number into the Sales Payment form.

Entering The Customer Return

Begin by entering in the invoice.

1. Enter in an invoice and select the customer for the invoice.
2. Enter in the product part number that the customer is returning.
3. Enter a Negative Qty into the Qty Ordered field for the product and verify that the price of the product is correct.
4. Once you have entered all of the products that the customer is returning save the invoice.

1. Right Click over the Invoice Header information area to bring up the popup menu and select Enter Payment.
2. In the Sales Payment window you will have the option to select the form of payment to be used to return the monies to the customer.
3. If the customer has paid with Cash or Credit Card then you can directly refund the customer the money. However, if the customer had paid with a check and you have already deposited the check you will want to issue a credit to the customer.
4. Enter a negative amount into the Tendered field to issue the payback to the customer.
5. If you select CREDIT this negative amount will be placed onto the Customer's Deposits so you can then issue a Customer Payment from the A/P Manual Check Payments form to write the refund check to the customer.
6. After you have entered the Payment Type and the Tendered amount you may hit the Apply button to post the payment against the invoice.
7. If the Payment Type is a CREDIT then you will be prompted to print a Credit Memo for the customer as a receipt showing that the credit has been applied to the Customer's Deposits.


Entering A Customer Deposit


Entering Customer Information

Entering customer information is done by selecting the Customer Information menu option from the Applications menu under both the Sales Order or Accounts Receivable menu.

There are several tabs on the Customer Information form. Each tab contains different information that must be entered or can be queried to find out information for the customer currently selected. When User Security is enabled, you may not see all of the tabs as displayed below due to your user access settings.

The List Tab can be selected to view all of the customers in the customer database. You can scroll to the customer you wish to view information on and then clicking back on any of the information tabs.

Customer Information Tab

Customer Ship To Information Tab

Customer Contact Manager Information Tab

Customer Credit Information Tab

Customer Sales History Tab

Customer A/R History Information Tab


Entering Product Information

Product Information Form

The Product Information form is used to enter products and services into the products database. Before you can enter in a Sales Transaction you must enter in a product or service into the products database. You can create assemblies out of various component products to form a complete product to be placed onto a Sales Transaction. Part Number ID's can be up to 14 characters in length. The program automatically converts all characters to upper case to eliminate case sensitivity. The description field can be up to 40 characters in length. You may categorize products by assigning a product class to each product so they can be organized for searches and reports. Items that are flagged as a Stock Item will be tracked by the software as to On Hand, Committed, Required and On Order quantities. If you DO NOT wish to track the inventory quantities of a product do not flag it as a stock item. You will notice that there are several tabs as well for the Product Information form as well.

Product Information Tab

The Product Information Tab is where you enter most of the data for a particular product into the database. You need to assign each product a unique Part Number as well as enter a description for each product in the database. Each of the individual fields are described below each of the form's tabs below.

To enter Product Information select the Applications Menu and then select the Edit Product Information from the Sales Order or Inventory Control or Purchasing Menus.

Part Number
You must enter in a unique Part Number for each product in the database. A Part Number can be up to 14 characters in length and is automatically capitalized for you when you enter in the Part Number. If you enter in a Part Number that already exists in the database when you go to save the part you will be prompted to change the Part Number.

Description
You must enter in a Description for the product to be displayed when putting products onto Sales Orders, Purchase Orders and Inventory Control transactions. The Description can be up to 40 characters in length.

Class
You may choose to assign a Class to each product to help you organize your products be a particular class or category for easier lookups. There is a Product Search form that allows you to find and select products be product class. When you select a Product Class on the Product Search form it will filter all of the products displayed to just that individual Product Class. You can then sort the products by Price or Part Number.

Product Purchasing Information Tab

Product Sales History Tab

Product Purchase History Tab

Product Assembly Tab


Entering A Sales Invoice

A Sales Invoice is used to ship products or services to your customers and bill them for those products or services. You may enter both product based items and time based items on an Invoice. The customer you wish to Invoice must already be in the Customer database, before you can enter in a Sales Invoice. However, you can launch the Customer Entry Form while the Invoice screen is open as well.

An Invoice will create an Open Invoice and a positive Customer Balance when saved. Please note that you must have On Hand Quantities of Products before you can ship Products that are Stock Items. Therefore, you must have received Products using either a Purchase Order or an Inventory Control transaction in order to have Products On Hand. You WILL NOT be able to ship any product that DOES NOT have a Positive On Hand Quantity.

HOT TIP!!!
More than one user can be working with the same Customer at the same time. This means that two users can be simultaneously invoicing the same customer at the same time without being locked out from that user.

Sales Order Menu

To enter a Sales Invoice, select Sales from the Application menu and then select Invoice. The Sales Invoice Form will then be displayed as shown below the Sales Menu diagram.

Entering The Sales Invoice

Once the Sales Invoice Form is displayed on the screen, you will be prompted to enter in a Customer ID.

Sales Invoice Header Popup Menu

Right Clicking over the Invoice anywhere other than the Line Items grid will display the Invoice Shortcut Menu shown below. This menu provides shortcuts for the transaction shown. Some menu option will be disabled depending on the type of transaction and whether or not the transaction is being edited or has not yet been saved.

Invoice Line Items Shortcut Menu

Right Clicking anywhere over the Line Items Grid on the Invoice will display the Line Items Shortcut Menu. This menu provides shortcuts for the line items on that transaction. Some menu option will be disabled depending on the type of transaction and whether or not the transaction is being edited or has not yet been saved.

Entering Line Item Notes

You can enter in notes for each line item within a Quote, Order or Invoice by Right Clicking over the Line Items and selecting the Line Item Notes menu option from the Shortcut Menu. The Line Item Notes entry field is a memo field which allows you to enter in any amount of text. Line Item Notes are printed on Sales Transactions below each line item.

Entering Line Item Serial Numbers

You can enter in Serial Numbers for each line item in an Order or an Invoice by Right Clicking over the Line Items in the Order or Invoice and selecting the Serial Numbers menu option from the Shortcut Menu. The Serial Number entry field is a memo field which allows you to enter in any amount of text. Serial Numbers are printed below each line item on Sales Order Transactions.


Maintaining Your Chart Of Accounts

Chart of Accounts Maintenance

To create and maintain your Chart of Accounts you will need to use the G/L Chart of Accounts Maintenance Form. To access the G/L Chart of Accounts Maintenance form select Applications => General Ledger => Chart of Accounts Maintenance from the System menu. The following form will appear on the screen which will allow you to make changes to your Chart of Accounts.


Entering General Ledger Transactions

General Ledger Transaction Entry

The General Ledger Transaction Entry form is used to create G/L transactions to be posted directly to your Chart of Accounts. You will typically enter in transactions to make adjustments to your Chart of Accounts totals that would normally be done in any of the other accounting modules. For example you may want to transfer funds from your Petty Cash account into your Checking Account by a bank deposit. Therefore you would apply the funds from the Petty Cash account the Credit amount and deposit it into your Checking Account the Debit amount. All General Ledger Transactions must balance before they can be saved to disk. This is the heart of double entry accounting. The G/L Account used for the transaction can only be a Detail type account.


Creating A Chart Of Accounts

You will need to create a Chart of Accounts that consists of 5 Account Types. These Account Types are the following:

Assets Accounts
The tracking of Assets includes many things such as Current Assets such as cash in bank, Accounts Receivables, Inventory, Prepaid Expenses, Fixed Assets and Other Assets such as deposits.

Liabilities Accounts
Liabilities accounts would include accounts to whom you would owe monies to. These liabilities could be short term and/or long term liabilities. If you are using the Accounts Payable module you will need to include an account for the Accounts Payable module to post to. Other liabilities accounts that you may wish to include might be:

· Any bank loans both short and long term
· Customer Deposits
· Payroll type taxes
· Sales tax payables
· Mortgages
· Dividends
· Any investor loans

Capital / Equity Accounts
Capital accounts would include any type of stock owned by the company and any retained and current earnings accounts. If you wish to track your retained earnings on a year by year basis you would create a General type Retained Earnings account and then break it down into detailed accounts for each year which would post into the Retained Earnings General account.

Revenue Accounts
Revenue Accounts to include would be any accounts that you wish to track any type of revenue that the business would be receiving. You may wish to break the Revenue accounts up into different departments according to the type of customer or type of product. If you are using the Sales Module then you will need at least one Detail Sales account to allow for the Sales Module to post to. You may want to break down the Sales Account into departments such as Software Sales, Hardware Sales, Consulting Sales and such according to the type of products that your company sells. Or, you may wish to break down the Sales Accounts into the type of customer that you are selling to such as End Users, Consultants, and Resellers. Depending on the way that you plan to track your Revenues will determine how you will mark the customers accounts for posting into.

Expense Accounts
Expense Accounts are used to break out the expenses for your company. The Expense Accounts will most likely require the highest level of detail for your company. These accounts will be used to track the various expenses that you have within your business. You can break the accounts down into several general categories without much detail or you could decide to track many of the accounts in great detail. For example, utilities which you pay could be broken down by each type of utility such as water, gas, electric and phone or you may decide to lump all of the utilities into one utility expense account. If you plan to track several different accounts and maybe plan to add more later you will want to number your accounts so you can leave some room for expansion. In other words when you are creating account numbers leave numbers open between the accounts in order to allow for future expansion without having to generate long account numbers.

These accounts must consist of at least one of the above account types. You may create a very flat structured Chart of Accounts with very little details or you may want to have a lot of detail with a very detailed hierarchy structure for your business. It does not make very much sense to have a chart of accounts with just 5 accounts since it would make it difficult to understand how your business is really functioning. It is highly recommended that you discuss the setting up of your Chart of Accounts with your accountant or bookkeeper. We have provided a sample Chart of Accounts with the software to help you get started with setting up your own Chart of Accounts. The detail with which you want to track your business will directly affect the structure of your chart of accounts. If you want to have a lot of detail you will need to create several levels of accounts to provide detailed posting and tracking information.

The essence of the Chart of Accounts is that for each of the 5 account types listed above all of the detail records that you record in your Journals will be posted to one of the 5 account types. Also note that all of your Journal entries are posted as Double Entry transactions just as in a manual accounting system would be. However, most of the Double Entry work is hidden from the user in the way of simple to use transaction entries. To create a good chart of accounts you must first understand what information you wish to track in detail about your business. There are many items that you will want to track in great detail and then other items you may wish to just lump together. Below is an explanation of some of the things that you may wish to track in your accounting system and the way that you may wish to structure your Chart of Accounts in order to show that detail.

Creating Your General Ledger Chart of Accounts
You will need to setup your Chart of Accounts before entering any transactions, customers, products or any other information. The Chart of Accounts is the heart of your accounting software. This is where all of the modules eventually have their data posted to. All of the outer modules such as Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Sales and such post their transactions to General Ledger transactions and finally all General Ledger transactions are posted to the Chart of Accounts. The Chart of Accounts holds the sum totals of all individual transactions that have been posted to the individual accounts for each period. Whenever a transaction is entered into the system the date of that transaction corresponds to an accounting period for the software to post the transaction to. The Chart of Accounts can track up to 24 periods. Each period is defined as a month. If your fiscal year begins on January 1 then the first period in your Chart of Accounts would contain the postings of all transactions that occured within the month of January. Then period 2 in the Chart of Accounts would contain any transactions that were posted during the month of February. This holds true for all of the periods that the system tracks.

Note: You can continue to enter in accounting transactions for up to 2 years without having to close the accounting year and posting it to the year end totals.

Your Chart of Accounts are defined by accounting codes. Each account ID can be up to 14 characters long consisting of any number, letter or dashes combination. It is recommended that these account codes be consistent in number sequence. When printing reports of the Chart of Accounts the report sorts them by Account ID. The recommended format for the accounting sequence codes is as follows:

Account Type	Account ID Number Range
Assets	1 - 19999999999999
Liabilities	2 - 29999999999999
Equity	3 - 39999999999999
Revenues 	4 - 49999999999999
Expenses	5 - 59999999999999
Other	6 - 69999999999999

By numbering your accounts using the above account ranges helps you to visually see the logic behind your account layout when printing journals and trial balances.

The Chart of Accounts structure has a hierarchic structure to it for posting purposes. Whenever you are entering accounts into your Chart of Accounts remember that each account posts to the level above that account until it reaches the main account for that type of account. For example each of the account types defined above are the major accounts for all of the Chart Of Accounts. This means that any asset type accounts will post to the major category of Assets. This means that each individual account below the Assets major account number will be summed together to calculate the value for the Asset major account value.

Accounting Levels
The Chart of Accounts must contain at least one Level 1 account for each of the above 6 Account Types. The Chart of Accounts Wizard will automatically create at least one account containing each of the Account Types listed above as a Level 1 account. Therefore your structure will be cascading by levels. For example to create your accounting structure you will want to leave some gap in your numbering scheme to allow for future expansion within your Chart of Accounts if you decide to add more detail accounts or if you need more breakout in your accounting structure. Each account type can be divided up into multiple levels to support account groupings or account consolidations which can help you visualize the breakout of your business easier. For example you may wish to break your Assets type accounts up into the following categories:

· Current Assets
· Fixed Assets
· Deferred Assets

In order to do this you will need to enter 3 separate accounts with the above descriptions as Level 2 General accounts. Each of these accounts will then point to the Assets Level 1 General account. These 3 accounts are created as general accounts in order to allow for more detailed accounts to be placed underneath their hierarchy to show more detailed account breakout.

10-00000 - Assets
11-00000 - Current Assets
11-10000 - Petty Cash
11-20000 - General Checking Account
11-40000 - Accounts Receivable Module
11-50000 - Current Inventory Value
12-00000 - Fixed Assets
12-10000 - Office Furniture Original Value
12-11000 - Office Furniture Depreciation
13-00000 - Deferred Assets
20-00000 - Liabilities
21-10000 - Short Term Notes
21-20000 - Accounts Payable Module

This total value is used in the General Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) in the following formulas.

Assets = Liabilities + Equity
Income - Expenses = Profit / Loss

Accounting Periods
You must setup the beginning date for your accounting periods in the company setup form. This defines the periods for posting General Ledger transactions to. By entering in a starting date this defines the start of the first period to begin tracking. Each period is done by month. Therefore if your starting period date is 01/01/1997 this would define January 1997 as the first accounting period for your company. This means that the any transactions dates that are dated from 01/01/1997 - 01/31/1997 would be posted to the first period in your Chart of Accounts.

Note: Once you close an accounting period this locks the software from allowing anymore entries with transaction dates that fall within the Closed accounting period. For example if you have entered all of the transactions for the month of January and you do not want any changes made to that month you can close the accounting period to keep other users from editing or creating any new transactions that fall within the month of January for that period. It is a good idea to close your period out as soon as you are done checking the data to prevent any changes to your accounting data.

Closing Accounting Periods
You will want to close accounting periods once you have entered all of the transactions for that period. This will prevent users from making any changes to your accounting data.

Beginning Of Fiscal Balances
The first numbers you will need to enter are the beginning balances for the fiscal calendar. These numbers would be carried over from your existing balance sheets and entered into the beginning of year balances for the accounts. Since it is the beginning of the year balances you will only be entering in balances into the Assets, Liabilities and Equity type accounts. At the beginning of the Fiscal Calendar you will not have any current Income or Expenses. These balances should only be entered before any postings are done. After you begin posting transactions into the system you will not want to modify the beginning balances because it will affect your financial data directly. However, you can make changes to the numbers as long as you are aware how the changes will be affecting your data.

To enter in your beginning balances you should have already created all of the accounts that you plan to use for your company. You can always add accounts later however, you will only be able to add in accounts between other accounts or at a lower level than existing accounts.

After you have entered your Beginning balances you will want to print a trial balance for the first period within your Chart of Accounts to verify the balances. The following accounting rule should hold true:

Assets - Liabilities = Equity

You will need to create a Retained Earnings account and a Current Earnings account into the


How To Add New Customers, Products, Etc.
How To Add New Customer, Products, Etc. to the Database.

Keyboard Shortcuts

To Add New Customers, Products or Vendors simply press the CTRL+N keyboard shortcut to create a New record in the database. Once you have entered all of the information for that record and you want to save it, press CTRL+S. You can also use the CTRL+N and CTRL+S keyboard shortcut as well to create new transactions such as Invoices, Orders, Quotes and Purchase Orders.

Right Mouse Click Shortcuts

You can also click on the Right Mouse Button while over a form to display the Shortcut Menu for that form. Most forms have Shortcut Menus which displays a popup menu as shown below.

A Popup Menu


How To Generate a Customer Invoice


Does Visual Business Work On A Network?
YES! VERY WELL!

Visual Business was designed to work on any Windows 95 or Windows NT compatible network. It will work with a Windows 95 peer to peer network as well as a Windows NT or Novell File Server based network. It does not require any additional software such as SQL Server and such. You will also be pleased to know that multiple people can view the same customer at the same time across the network. Multiple people can even be entering transactions for the same customer at the same time without locking others out.


Can two or more people be on the same customer at the same time?
YES!

Multiple Users can view the same customer at the same time.

In fact multiple users can be entering in transactions such as Quotes or Invoices for the same customer at the same time across the network. This is probably one of our software's strongest features. Most other accounting applications only allow one user to be working with a particular customer or product record at a time. Customer balances are even kept up to date across the network as well.


How Do I Register My Software?
Our software is copy protected and therefore is protected at run time to avoid software piracy. We appreciate your support and hope that you like our software and we encourage you to register your copy.

So If you haven't registered the software yet you may see an error message when you enter in more records than the software allows.


Entering an Inventory Control Transaction
Entering Inventory Control Transaction

To enter in an Inventory Control Transaction, select the Inventory Control Transaction menu item from the menu as shown above. This will launch an Inventory Control Transaction form as shown below. If an Inventory Control Transaction has been created from a Purchase Order Receipt you will see a PO in the Transaction Type field. When entering a new IC Transaction you must enter the date of the transaction as well as the products that the IC Transaction is to affect. You can enter up to 999 products per IC Transaction. Each product receieved or disbursed on the transaction will need to have the Unit Cost and the Quantity entered. A positive Quantity will place products into your inventory and a negative Quantity will remove products from your inventory. The Extended Cost for each of the line items entered is automatically calculated by multiplying the Unit Cost X the Qty field. The Subtotal, Tax and Total for each transaction is automatically calculated as well for you.

If you wish to Post an IC Transaction to an Accounts Payable Open Invoice you must enter in a Vendor ID as well as an Invoice Number for the transaction as well in the right side of the form. When a Vendor ID is entered, the Vendor's name and address will automatically be displayed in the edit box to the right of the Vendor ID. Next you will need to enter in an Invoice Number from the Vendor as well as the Due Date for the Invoice for aging purposes. If an Invoice already exists in the database for this Vendor, then this transaction will be making adjusting entries to that invoice. If this is a new invoice then the totals from this transaction will be used as the Purchase Amount for the A/P Invoice.


Entering Customer Receipts

To Enter a Customer Receipt select Customer Receipts from the Accounts Receivable menu or the Sales menu. Once selected the Customer Receipts Form will be displayed on the screen.

1. Enter The Customer ID
Enter in the Customer ID for the receipt you are entering. You may also drag and drop the Customer ID from a Customer Form onto the Customer Receipts Form to automatically fill in the Customer ID.

2. Enter The Date
Once you have entered in a Customer ID, all of the Open Invoices for that customer will be displayed. Now enter in the date that the payment from the customer was received.

3. Enter the Amount of The Receipt

4. Select the Form of Payment
The Form of Payment will determine what Cash Account the monies will be posted to when the Cash Receipts are posted. The Form of Payment choices are configurable. You will see the G/L Pmt Account displayed when the Form of Payment is selected.

5. Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number Information
Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number information if a CHECK or CARD form of payment was selected.

6. Enter any Remarks This Receipt.

7. Apply the Customer Receipt to the customer's Open Invoices.
Now apply the Customer Receipt to any of the customer's Open Invoices by moving the cursor to the Payment field for any of the open invoices and entering in a payment amount. You DO NOT have to enter in the full Open Amount of the invoice. You may apply partial payments to invoices. Invoices that are not fully paid will remain open until paid in full.

As you enter the payment amounts for the open invoices the Amount for the receipt will be updated as to the total amount that you have applied for this receipt.

8. Save The Receipt.
Once you have entered all of the payments for the open invoices you need to save the receipt. You can press CTRL+S or click on the Save button to save the receipt. You will then be prompted to Save the Receipt transaction.

When the transaction is saved to the disk, the customer's balance will be updated to reflect the Customer Receipt entered. Other users can be entering Receipts at the same time for the same customer without conflicts.

You may also enter in a General Ledger Receipt by not entering in a Customer ID. This will allow you to post receipts directly to General Ledger Cash Accounts and then distribute the monies to any General Ledger Accounts.


Entering Customer Receipts

To Enter a Customer Receipt select Customer Receipts from the Accounts Receivable menu or the Sales menu. Once selected the Customer Receipts Form will be displayed on the screen.

1. Enter The Customer ID
Enter in the Customer ID for the receipt you are entering. You may also drag and drop the Customer ID from a Customer Form onto the Customer Receipts Form to automatically fill in the Customer ID.

2. Enter The Date
Once you have entered in a Customer ID, all of the Open Invoices for that customer will be displayed. Now enter in the date that the payment from the customer was received.

3. Enter the Amount of The Receipt

4. Select the Form of Payment
The Form of Payment will determine what Cash Account the monies will be posted to when the Cash Receipts are posted. The Form of Payment choices are configurable. You will see the G/L Pmt Account displayed when the Form of Payment is selected.

5. Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number Information
Enter Check Reference or Credit Card Number information if a CHECK or CARD form of payment was selected.

6. Enter any Remarks This Receipt.

7. Apply the Customer Receipt to the customer's Open Invoices.
Now apply the Customer Receipt to any of the customer's Open Invoices by moving the cursor to the Payment field for any of the open invoices and entering in a payment amount. You DO NOT have to enter in the full Open Amount of the invoice. You may apply partial payments to invoices. Invoices that are not fully paid will remain open until paid in full.

As you enter the payment amounts for the open invoices the Amount for the receipt will be updated as to the total amount that you have applied for this receipt.

8. Save The Receipt.
Once you have entered all of the payments for the open invoices you need to save the receipt. You can press CTRL+S or click on the Save button to save the receipt. You will then be prompted to Save the Receipt transaction.

When the transaction is saved to the disk, the customer's balance will be updated to reflect the Customer Receipt entered. Other users can be entering Receipts at the same time for the same customer without conflicts.

You may also enter in a General Ledger Receipt by not entering in a Customer ID. This will allow you to post receipts directly to General Ledger Cash Accounts and then distribute the monies to any General Ledger Accounts.


Entering A Sales Quote
Entering A Customer Sales Quote

This is the Sales Quote form for entering customer quotes. Multiple Quotes can be entered at the same time on the screen. Therefore making it easy to Drag and Drop items from one quote to another. In order to enter a Sales Quote, select Applications => Sales => Quotes from the System Menu.


What Other Amazing Software Packages Do You Offer?
More Amazing Software From Mind's Eye, Inc.

We currently offer the following other software packages:

School Management Package

An easy to use K - 12 School Management package for tracking all of your Students, Teachers and Course offerings. It also tracks library books as well.

For more information on our School Management Software Products please visit our web site at:

http://www.mindseyinc.com/school

Medical Office Manager

An easy to use Medical Management package for tracking Patient Information and Medical Claims processing.

For more information on our Medical Office Software Products please visit our web site at:

http://www.mindseyeinc.com/medical


Setting Up Your Business

The software must be configured for your company to use it. You must setup checking accounts for your company to use and print checks with. You must also configure your accounting period and fiscal calendar year for you company as well.

To setup your company you must select Applications, then Administrative and then Company Setup from the system menu. There are several tabs to setting up your company.

The General Tab is used to set your Fiscal Calendar Year Start Date. The Fiscal Year start date actually only uses the month and year of the date for calculating your accounting periods.

Fiscal Year

Enter any date within the starting month and year of the beginning date of your Fiscal Calendar Year. This month and year will be calculated as the first period. The software supports the tracking of up to 24 periods at once.


Setting Up Accounts Payable Defaults


Setting Up Accounts Payable Defaults

The Accounts Payable module needs to know what General Ledger Account to use for posting Accounts Payable Transactions to as well as where to post Accounts Payable Deposits.


Setting Up Accounts Receivable Defaults


Setting Up Sales Order Defaults


Setting Up Purchase Order Defaults


Setting Up Inventory Control Defaults


Setting Up General Ledger Defaults