Peachtree 2012: New Tools You Should Know About

One of the problems with getting the average user to adopt new technology is an unnatural fear that they will somehow make a mistake and cause a cataclysmic event that destroys Western civilization as we know it. Although that’s probably a slight exaggeration of the fears that prevent them from trying new features and functions, there’s more than a grain of truth in the statement, as well. Our review of Sage Peachtree 2012 (www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com/10248081) in the April/May 2011 issue discussed Sage Peachtree Business Intelligence, which enables creation of sophisticated management reports in Microsoft Excel.

One of the new features in Sage Peachtree 2012 is a tool called The Sage Advisor. This tool monitors the features and commands utilized in the Peachtree application, and provides tips and tricks to end users based on the menu options selected. These tips may highlight features not currently used in the product, and make it possible for support engineers to better understand the processes used by the users who access a Company file in Peachtree. This feature includes video tips that are installed with the application, which reinforce key features to end users, as well as context-sensitive on-screen Help messages.

In the unlikely event that there are issues with your computer, which could affect the performance of Sage Peachtree, a new tool called Sage Peachtree System Check can help identify and correct issues. This tool also checks for computer problems that could cause performance issues such as low available memory and a full hard drive. (It will even warn you if you haven’t made a backup in a while.)

Sage Peachtree 2012 has a number of other enhancements, which make a big impact on the ability of users to get more done, including the following:

The new Copy Transactions feature makes it possible to create a new transaction based on a Previously Saved Transaction. This feature is available for most non-posting transaction types (Quotes, Sales Orders, Proposals and Purchase Orders) as well as a select group of posting transactions (Sales Invoices, Purchase Invoices and Journal Entries). While it has been possible to configure recurring transactions for some time, this new feature should reduce the amount of repetitive data that must be keyed for common transactions.

There are eleven new modules for the My Dashboard screen, which presents a personalized view of the business to each user. Some of these new modules include General Journal Entries, Inventory Adjustments, Payroll Summary, Assemblies, Purchases Received, Top Vendors, and Item Purchase History by Vendor.

The new Vendor Management Center is a customizable dashboard that shows a summary of all activity for a selected vendor.

The Management Centers have been enhanced to provide column totals for amounts selected, and the number of rows can be customized for optimal presentation.

INSERT Figure 1- The new Vendor Management Center in Sage Peachtree 2012

Sage Peachtree Quantum 2012 also includes a powerful workflow management engine, which allows detailed tracking of transactions through customizable business process flows with attached documentation. While this tool has been included in Sage Peachtree Quantum for the last few years, the tool has been optimized to allow organizations to set default employees to receive certain types of work assignments, as well as enable better customer tracking in the Customer Management Center. These statuses appear in a Track It window on the right-hand side of each transaction screen, and the related status information fields can be added to most list view tables in the application.

For more information on Sage Peachtree 2012, visit www.peachtree2012.com.

INSERT Figure 2 – Workflow status tracking in Sage Peachtree Quantum 2012