Dear AccountMate Clients,
Excelitis is as common as… well, the common cold, in that every company suffers with it to some degree. But sometimes it can be completely debilitating.
The condition is one where vast amounts of data and business intelligence is maintained in Microsoft Excel – a product which I believe should be in the “business and financial management hall of fame” (if such a thing existed), but is often used in lieu of better solutions and thus becomes a monster that has to be fed!
Here at NexLAN, we support hundreds of businesses running AccountMate in various versions and platforms – and regularly meet new clients with varying degrees of AccountMate experience under their belts. Too often, what we hear is that their organization is un-manageable – which is often the result of numerous, disjointed, Excel spreadsheets forming a major piece of the business management process.
Again, while Excel is a great tool, Excel spreadsheets are almost always static documents that have to be manually updated – often by a key person, so when that person is out (here comes summer vacations!) the information isn’t available. Additionally, the “intelligence” of what and how to update them is often undocumented, so ensuring correct and consistent data entry can be problematic – plus the logic is usually easily changeable by anyone and everyone that has access to the document – both of which can make the results erroneous.
So, you’re basing business decisions on often outdated information created with unauthenticated input and spurious calculation methods?!
AccountMate is a full-featured Enterprise Resource Planning system that natively or with 3rd party add-ons covers many (all?) of the things for which we commonly see major efforts concocted in Excel:
- Reconciling your bank accounts in Excel spreadsheets? There’s an AccountMate module for that – and the latest version of the Bank Reconciliation Module can even import a file and mark matching transactions as cleared, greatly accelerating the process.
- Amortizing expenses in Excel spreadsheets, then making journal entries? The latest version of AccountMate’s Accounts Payable Module includes the ability to “Schedule Expense Amortization” – so the entire process in handled in AP and you don’t have to make all those journal entries (the system posts them for you from AP).
- Tracking Fixed Assets in Excel spreadsheets? The Bassets Fixed Asset System is a fully featured tool, which creates the correct depreciation entries in a format that’s importable to AccountMate in, literally, three mouse-clicks. It’s sized/priced by the number of assets you have to track and is thus reasonably priced even for small operations.
- Creating sales quotes in Excel? The ability to enter quotes is built-in to the AccountMate Sales Order Module, automatically pulling in item pricing defined in your system and then easily converted into shippable sales orders. Alternatively, if you don’t want to populate prospects into your customer database, then AccountMate’s CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) Module can cover this same base.
- Tracking sales follow-ups, and the quotes we just mentioned, in Excel spreadsheets? Then let me point you right back to AccountMate’s CRM (Customer Relationship Manager) Module where this is completely automated, and management has visibility into the sales pipeline as well!
- Trying to keep your inventory on-hand quantities in Excel? Yes, we still see this occasionally – most often by companies that do an inventory count every month and then make journal entries to effect their inventory and cost-of-goods-sold accounts – and I have to say YIKES! What a LOT of effort!!! The Purchase Order Module receives the goods or raw material, then if you turn raw material into finished goods the Manufacturing Module handles that conversion, then the Sales Order or Accounts Receivable Module relieves the items – and inventory just “takes care of itself”, including proper costing flowing through to the AR Profit Margin Report (one of the best reports for managing your business if you haven’t taken a good look at it).
- Going through the effort of creating custom financial statements in Excel? Nobody ever said you had to throw Excel completely out the window! AccountMate’s Business Analysis Module Powered by F9 provides a real-time interface from Excel into your GL data – so the data is always up-to-date and complete.
- Tracking sales commissions in Excel spreadsheets? AccountMate has built-in functionality to track “commissionable sales” which, admittedly, isn’t quite the same as complete commissions but is often enough to take a huge burden off your staff. And if you want complete calculations then we’re happy to chat as this is one of the most common areas of custom reporting we construct.
Excelitis is the disease, NexLAN has the cure – contact us for the prescription!
Regards,
Kevin E. Stroud
NexLAN, LLC
https://nexlan.com
AccountMate/LAN V8.3 Released!
While the LAN product line doesn’t get as much press as its big brother, AccountMate/SQL, it continues to support tens of thousands of smaller businesses and receive regular program updates. AccountMate/LAN V8.3 has now shipped and, as a “build release” (as opposed to a “version release”) there aren’t a lot of new features, but here are a few:
- Enhanced Executive Summary – now supports drill down via a “Detail Analysis” button next to each field
- Apply Payments to Advanced Bills – some companies issue “advanced billing” (also called pro-forma invoices) if they require a down payment before shipping an order. Previously, that prepayment had to be recorded as only an open credit on the customer account; now it may be applied to the advanced billing.
- Process AP Checks and Electronic Payments Separately – so you have better control over the check stock used.
We’re in the process now of sending out the media to our clients with an active software maintenance plan, so please contact us when this important update arrives so we can schedule its installation.
For clients without an active software maintenance plan, we’re happy to chat about the HUNDREDS of productivity enhancing features that have been added in the last few years.
Tech Note: Understanding the Expense Amortization Feature
AccountMate 8.3 for SQL/Express and higher versions implement the Expense Amortization feature that provides users the ability to record and amortize prepaid expenses. Implementation of this feature helps businesses comply with US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on proper recognition of prepaid expenses.
This Technical Note discusses the procedures for activating, setting up, and using the Expense Amortization feature. It also lists the reports that show the expense amortization transactions. Click on the article’s title below to access the document.
Article 1329: Understanding the Expense Amortization Feature
Tech Note: How to Reverse or Adjust Sales Taxes on a Customer Invoice
When creating AR invoices, it is possible that you unintentionally entered the wrong sales tax code. Prevailing sales tax rates also change over time. These situations may require either adjustment or reversal of the sales taxes previously charged to the AR invoices. How do you record the sales taxes reversal or adjustment? Today’s Technical Note discusses the possible ways to reverse or adjust the sales taxes previously applied to AR invoices. Click on the article’s title below to access the document.
Article 1162: How to Reverse or Adjust Sales Taxes in an Invoice
Technical Tips
Versions: AM9 for SQL and Express
AM8 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM7 for SQL, Express, and LAN
Module: AR
Tip: To generate a report that lists the AR invoices that have been paid by a particular cash receipt or a range of cash receipts, use the Payment Distribution Report function.
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Version: AM9 for SQL and Express (AM9.2 or higher)
Module: IC
Tip: Starting in AccountMate 9.2 for SQL and Express, the Entry Date column is included in the Inventory Transaction Log report to provide the actual date and time the transaction was recorded. AccountMate takes the server UTC date and time that is stored in the Inventory Transaction Log File, translates it to the user’s time zone; then, provides the resulting value in the Entry Date field.
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Versions: AM9 for SQL and Express
AM8 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM7 for SQL, Express, and LAN
Module: SO
Tip: Marking the On Hold checkbox in the Create Sales Order ► Information tab prevents the sales order from being shipped. To release the hold, you must amend the sales order transaction and unmark the checkbox.
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Version: AM9 for SQL and Express (AM9.2 or higher)
Modules: SO, AR, RA
Q: When I create transactions for a particular customer (e.g., Create Sales Order or Create Invoice) why do some values not match the values that I supplied in the Customer Maintenance ► Information tab?
A: The default values that are provided in the Ship Via and F.O.B. fields each time you create transactions for a customer (e.g., Create Sales Order, Create Invoice or Create RMA) come from the following sources:
1st – If an Address # is provided in the Customer Maintenance ► Information ► Ship To field, the default Ship Via and F.O.B. values come from the Customer Address Maintenance ► Ship Via and F.O.B. fields of that address.
Note: The Customer Address Maintenance function is displayed when you click the underlined Bill To or Ship To field label in the Customer Maintenance ► Information tab.
2nd – If an Address # is not provided in the Customer Maintenance ► Information ► Ship To field but Ship Via and F.O.B. information is entered in the Customer Maintenance ► Information ► Ship Via and F.O.B. fields, the default values come from these fields.
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