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ACCPAC Pro Series

800-945-8007
www.accpac.com

Targeting mid-market enterprises with five to 100 users, ACCPAC Pro Series 7.2 supports all industries, with emphasis primarily in distribution and manufacturing. Multi-currency transactions are supported. Pro Series is written in Visual FoxPro, and source code is available.

Financial and statistical accounts in the General Ledger (GL) may be up to 24 characters with six segments. Allocation options include dollar amount, period-to-date net activity of an account, and statistical account values. Recurring entries offer start/end dates and frequency features. Budgets can be imported from a spreadsheet. Users can define headers, footers, sub-totaling and column contents using the built-in financial statement generator. Pro Series also integrates with F9 Financial Reporter. Multi-company consolidation is supported.

Accounts Receivable (AR) supports recurring billings with start/end dates and an amount to be distributed. A nice feature is the automatic reinstatement of not only the invoice when a payment is reversed, but also reversal of the sales commission. AR includes the ability to flag customers as Shop Online, indicating they can place an order through ACCPAC eTransact (B2B and B2C e-commerce solution). AR allows you to create marketing and dunning letters for customers via a DDE link to various office suites, and you can e-mail invoices and statements one at a time or in batches (this utilizes the Message Master module).

Accounts Payable (AP) mirrors AR, plus it tracks credit card purchases to both the credit card company and the vendor. Vendors may be put on payment hold and/or purchase hold. Payment features include 14 ways to prioritize invoices as well as the ability to display total payable and approved-to-pay amounts. MICR checks are supported, and Pro Series also supports low-cost EDI processing through ACCPAC Exchange.

The robust Inventory module supports typical features like multiple locations, multiple bins, serialization, lots, images for items, stock, purchase and selling units of measure, bar codes, notes, and attaching a file to an item. Items can be flagged for inclusion in eTransact. Pro Series is one of the few packages to forecast (estimate) new order points and order quantities by location. It employs multiple methods, including simple average, weighted average, exponential smoothing, and exponential smoothing with trend, seasonal and manual. For inventory valuation, Pro Series supports LIFO, FIFO, average weighted and standard cost. Extensive pricing options range from list price, matrix pricing and customer group pricing to automatic expiration of promotion prices, dollar and percent markup from cost, and more.

Sales Order supports blanket sales orders, drop shipments, recurring orders, quotes (bids, estimates) and more. Drop-ship orders automatically generate a purchase order. Also, multiple orders are combined by vendor. Staff can check on-hand and on-order availability. Credit limit warnings display, but insufficient inventory warnings could be better. Invoices, order acknowledgments and shipping notices can be e-mailed individually or in batches. Sales rep and product line commission rates are supported. Pro Series supports only entire order commissions, but this can be calculated on net sale or gross margin. Commissions can be paid on booked order or paid invoices, and they can be split among as many sales reps as desired.

Purchase Orders (PO) supports blanket, recurring and drop-ship orders. Unlimited notes may be added to any line item, and you can e-mail purchase orders to vendors. PO supports schedules for material receipt, and items can be flagged for required inspection prior to receipt.

Reports are plentiful. Custom reports can be created using ACCPAC Pro Query. It reads meta data and allows you to create detail and cross-tab reports across all modules. Through the report writer (and in the GL and Payroll modules), you can stack reports, save them with parameters, and schedule for a date/time. Output options include e-mailing and faxing reports. History information (with graphs) is available.

Pro Series offers a unique ‘business thermometer’ called Business Status Report. These snapshot benchmarks include tabs for Current, Daily and Statistics information. The Current tab shows period-to-date and year-to-date AR, AP, Sales Order and PO activity. The Daily tab shows Days AR, AR Turns, Days Inventory and Inventory Turns. Finally, the Statistics tab lists AR Billings, AR Receipts, Non-AR Receipts, PO Receipts, Payments, Cost of Goods Sold, Dollars Sales to New Customers, Orders Entered, Line Items Shipped, Payables, and Purchase Orders. Pro Series also integrates with ACCPAC Business Analysis Suite, which includes CFO, KPI and Business Advisor.

Another valuable module is ProAlert. Users identify data to monitor as well as indicate a person to notify via e-mail or displayed message window when the alert triggers. User-defined alerts can be simple or involved. For example, ProAlert can check inventory safety levels (a simple job), or it can constantly recalculate profit margin for the sales of lumber, which is more involved. The setup process is technical, but time savings, problem abatement and customer relationship building benefits are worth the effort.

Pro Series lists the modules in a drop-down menu on the toolbar. Selecting a module changes the drop-down menu bar. The program also supports a favorites list. Data-entry screens are laid out cleanly, utilizing tabs to organize data. Forms, menus and other elements can be customized, and you can add new forms with rules for when they should launch.

Help is fair. It is sparse at times and needs more screen shots for visual reference. Doc-on-disk (*.PDF manuals) can be launched from the Pro Series Toolbar, and provides detailed information about all modules.

2004 Overall Rating: 5

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