Sage Releases Peachtree by Sage 2009

Sage Software has announced the availability of the Peachtree by Sage 2009 product line, offering new features and improvements that assist small businesses in the long-term management of their operations through enhanced analysis, reporting and payroll management, real-time alerts, and time and expense tracking.

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“Small businesses that select Peachtree are laser focused on their numbers, and how they can better manage those numbers to improve their operations,” said Connie Certusi, general manager of small business accounting solutions, Sage Software. “That focus is crucial in the current economic climate, and with Peachtree 2009, we’re providing even more customer-driven features to facilitate careful analysis and business planning for long-term success.”

Sage Software worked closely with small businesses through its Customer-Connected Design Center to identify opportunities to enhance functionality and introduce new features in Peachtree 2009. Business planning and analysis capabilities were foremost among owner requests. Highlights include:

Cash management tools that improve ability to project cash flow: Peachtree 2009 expands the product line’s already powerful cash flow analysis capabilities to bring even more critical analysis capabilities to small firms. With the new Cash Manager Tool, small businesses can easily anticipate cash needs by seeing what they have now, and what they should have in the future. They can also run “What If” scenarios to see the impact of certain activities such as addition or elimination of inventory, pricing changes, the addition of staff or other investments on the business, without running actual transactions, and can customize cash flow projections based on historical transactions or other activity. All of those scenarios can be exported to Microsoft ® Excel for more in-depth analysis.

New multi-year reporting for richer budgeting, trend analysis and more accurate forecasting: Multi-Year Reporting allows small companies to report on General Ledger and Financial Statement data outside of two open years, allowing them to easily compare budgets and financial results using more comprehensive historical trends.

Easier payroll management: Accurate payroll is vital to any small business, and in 2009, payroll management is even easier with an improved Payroll Setup Wizard, which walks small businesses through payroll setup and maintenance with a series of simple questions. The expanded payroll also supports many additional benefits, such as multiple retirement and insurance plans, as well as flexible spending accounts and additional state taxes, vacation and sick time tracking, and more secure presentation of employee data. All Peachtree reports now display only the last four digits of Social Security numbers to help prevent identity theft, comply with state laws, and help small businesses get a handle on the potential for fraud within their firms.

Real Time Alerts anticipate problems and reduce errors: With Real Time Alerts, firms receive a warning when they use a non-standard A/P or A/R account on Purchase and Sales Invoices, as well as when they use non-Cash accounts on Receipts and Payments. This alert feature takes the existing Internal Accounting Review feature a step further by warning small businesses as problems occur, so there’s less likelihood of mistakes continuing and causing problems in the long term.

Streamlined Time and Expense tracking for professional services firms: Firms that track time can now set the first day of the work week for weekly timesheets, and to save time, they can also copy timesheets from the previous week, as well as see new Time and Expense Ticket List Views, for better analysis.