Accountant’s Relief PLUS is
a comprehensive accounting, auditing
and financial reporting program
that provides engagement management
features along with full write-up,
trial balance, compilation, review,
audit, financial statement and check
writing capabilities, and an accounts
receivable link. The program supports
workpapers, departmental accounting,
multiple journals, consolidation,
leadsheets and bank reconciliation.
Accountant’s Relief has an
initial cost of $995 for a three-user
license, with annual upgrade fees
of $595, which covers software license
renewal and tech support. A single-user
license costs $695 with $395 annual
upgrade. A bundled package that
includes Accountant’s Relief
PLUS, Fixed Assets Relief and PFP
Relief (Personal Financial Planning)
costs $1,495.
PROGRAM USE/NAVIGATION – 4.5 Stars
Accountant’s Relief uses an
intuitive Windows interface that
provides simplified access to primary
program features and data entry,
and shortcuts to journals accessible
through tabs at the top of the screen.
The program provides an on-screen
checklist that guides users through
client setup and data entry, including
defining default reports and client
preferences, and allows copying
charts of accounts and other setup
information from one client to another,
easing the process of setting up
new clients. A Speed Entry feature
further aids in data entry, helping
to reduce transaction entry, and
the system automatically balances
journal entries to default offsetting
accounts. Customizable tickmarks
further enhance the program’s
ease-of-use. Accountant’s
Relief includes right-click pop-up
help menus and folder-level password
security.
The Accountant’s Relief trial
balance module is displayed as a
spreadsheet that displays accounts
and descriptions, with columns for
beginning balances, adjustments
and other entry effect. It allows
five types of adjusting entries:
adjusting, reclassifying, federal,
other and potential, and allows
users to customize the trial balance
screen to display selected columns
and adjustments, as well as showing
details such as transactions entry
adjustments for accounts. The trial
balance function can also generate
leadsheets that provide a summary
of financial statement information,
and the system can automatically
post reversing and recurring adjusting
entries. Navigation tabs enable
users to switch the trial balance
view for adjusting entries, federal
tax entries and other entries.
The system provides four methods
for creating the chart of accounts
for a client, including creating
it from scratch, copying the chart
from another company, using a standard
template chart or importing from
a general ledger. Write-up capabilities
allow entry of transactions for
following years while the current
year is still open and lets authorized
users change or delete transactions
for any period during the current
year. The system can post offsetting
entries automatically to a default
account, calculates sales taxes
and simplifies bank reconciliation.
Review and audit processes are enhanced
by the program’s 30 financial
ratios and the ability to perform
comparisons with industry standards.
The system’s analytical capabilities
also include a variance report and
preliminary financial reviews. The
system can perform departmental
analyses and GL breakouts, as well
as consolidate multiple companies
without adjusting entries and prepare
consolidation reports and financials.
IMPORT/EXPORT CAPABILITIES – 5 Stars
Accountant’s Relief integrates
with AccountantsWorld’s line
of Accountant’s Office products
as well as many other accounting
and tax products. It can import
data directly from most popular
accounting programs as well as from
user-defined files. Likewise, the
program can export directly to most
tax programs. The program’s
Tax Link feature enables transfer
of federal adjusted balances to
any tax product, and the system
can compute state and local taxes
that can integrate with the company’s
Sales Tax program to generate the
appropriate forms. Additionally,
payroll journal details can be transferred
to AccountantsWorld’s After-the-Fact
Payroll to create 941s and W-2s.
REPORTING – 4.5 Stars
Accountant’s Relief includes
more than 90 reports and financial
statements, along with 85 compilation,
review and audit letters, cover
sheets, contents pages, footnotes
and headers, all of which can be
customized and edited using a built-in
word processing program that provides
presentation quality graphs and
images. The system allows previewing
reports and documents prior to printing.
PAPERLESS MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES – 4 Stars
Accountant’s Relief provides
an included feature called eCabinet,
geared toward the promotion of a
paperless engagement. eCabinet is
a function available to all users
in which Financial Statements, General
Ledgers, Trial Balances, Workpapers,
Leadsheets, Bank Reconciliations
and five other reports are saved
using *.PDF format in a client-specific
directory specified by the user.
The document can be printed or e-mailed
as an attachment independently of
the program at a later date. Saving
the documents occurs behind the
scenes and requires no additional
effort by the user. Different generations
of the same report are saved independently
by appending the period ending date
to the report title. Additionally,
the eCabinet module allows users
to save files from spreadsheet,
word processor and other utility
programs in the same client directory.
RELATIVE VALUE – 4 Stars
Accountant’s Relief is quite
comprehensive, offering trial balance,
client write-up, financial statement
preparation, transaction journals,
bank reconciliation and several
other functions, packaged in an
easy-to-learn interface that has
a very good array of customizable
reports and supporting documents.
The program offers basic paperless
management capabilities, and firms
starting to take this step will
benefit in the program’s array
of features and mid-range price.
2004 OVERALL RATING: 4.5 Stars
Program Use/Navigation covers ease-of-use; number of clients and form recipients; primary navigation tools; and general operation of
the program, including data entry.
Workflow Management addresses how the program streamlines engagement processes via workflow and communication tools, customization and other features.
Integration with Other Software is considered a very significant factor since drawing information from GL accounts is an integral
part of the trial balance process,
and the ability to export the data
into a tax program greatly reduces
preparation time.
Reporting functions of the software, including analysis and client deliverables such as financial statements is essential. This section looks at the availability of standard reports, customization capabilities and integration with word processing and spreadsheet applications for preparation of the final product.
Relative Value provides the reviewer’s subjective opinion of what the user gets for the price. There is some variance
in the pricing of the programs in
this review, but it is not very
wide.Value,
of course, is not exclusively related
to cost. Sometimes the best deal
is not the cheapest, and sometimes
the most expensive option does not
provide the best function.
Thanks for reading CPA Practice Advisor!
Subscribe Already registered? Log In
Need more information? Read the FAQs
