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Contents

Pastel Partner Version 4

What's in This File

General

General Ledger

Job Costing

Inventory

Customers

Suppliers

Control Centre

Manufacturing

Point of Sale


What's in This File

This file contains information which will help you decide whether to move up from Pastel SOHO Accounting to Pastel Partner Accounting version 4.

We assume that you know Pastel SOHO Accounting, and we will explain in detail some additional features which you have available in the Partner range.

Note  We do not, in this document, show all the differences between Pastel SOHO Accounting and Pastel Partner Accounting version 4. If you need a specific feature which is not mentioned in this document, please consult your Pastel dealer or distributor.

Because Pastel Partner Version 4 is a "big brother" of Pastel SOHO Accounting, you have very little to learn when you move to it. Menu items and data entry screens are the same, except for the new or enhanced features.

Another feature of Pastel Partner version 4, is that we have designed the more sophisticated features to be as unobtrusive as possible. This means that if you do not need a particular feature, you can ignore it completely most of the time - you will not have to enter through extra columns or fields which you do not need.

For example, as you will see in more detail, Pastel Partner version 4 supports multiple currencies. However, if you do not need this feature, you can turn it off completely. Columns in the processing screens  which should display for multi-currency processing do not appear at all.

More:

Even More Functionality


Even More Functionality

Once you upgrade to Pastel Partner version 4, you have the possibility of further upgrading into three packages:

•	Pastel Manufacturing  This lets you manufacture items by creating "recipes". You can also link items to one code, enter the link code when you invoice, and Pastel will display all the linked items on the invoice.

•	Pastel Point of Sale  You can control cash payments which arrive at your company. Each operator is controlled on a shift basis. You can control COD processing, and you can also control a cash drawer if it is attached to your computer.

•	Pastel Ultra  This combines the manufacturing and point of sale packages into one system.

Once again, the learning curve for these packages is minimal - they only add functionality to Pastel Partner Accounting version 4.


General

Multi-Currency Processing

Improved Export Facilities

Controlling Access

Multi-User Capabilities

Icons


Multi-Currency Processing

Pastel Partner version 4 lets you process in different currencies if you need to. You can create up to 16 currencies besides your home currency.

Setting Up Multi-Currency Processing

You can create up to 16 different currencies. Each currency has its own format:

Exchange Rates

For each currency, you can enter exchange rates per period:

Assigning Currencies to Accounts

You can set a currency for each of:

•	Customers

•	Suppliers

•	Cash Books.

Using Multi-Currency

Pastel uses the exchange rate table as a default whenever you process, but you can override it. In journal / cash book processing, Pastel opens extra columns for multi-currency processing:

In invoice processing, you enter the currency rate for the invoice on the invoice header.

Multi-Currency Reporting

Customer, supplier, and cash book reports can print in either foreign currency or home currency.

In addition, you can produce financial reports such as income statements and balance sheets using any currency. This lets you report to foreign owners / investors in their currency.

Foreign Currency Revaluations

At any point in time, you can perform a revaluation. Pastel calculates the profit or loss on the outstanding foreign currency balances, and then writes it to a foreign currency variance account:


Improved Export Facilities

In Pastel Partner, you can export any field from any file. You select the file you wish to export from, and you then select the individual fields in the file.

In addition, Pastel Partner ships with Btrieve® DDF (data definition files). This lets you read all of Pastel's data directly into many third party products, such as Microsoft® Access, Microsoft® Excel, and Crystal Report Writer, which support these files.


Controlling Access

Pastel Partner has a comprehensive password system. This system performs these functions:

•	It limits access to authorised persons only

•	It allows limited access to specified parts of Pastel

•	It allows simultaneous access by more than one person to the same company.

You can create up to ten users, each of whom has their own access profile:


Multi-User Capabilities

With the purchase of the optional Multi-User Pack, Pastel becomes a networkable product. Up to ten users can work on one company at a time.

Updates across the network still keep full integrity in case of a hardware failure or a power interruption on one or more workstations. In addition, a failure on one workstation does not stop another workstation from continuing.


Icons

The icon bar in Pastel Partner is customisable. You can choose between text buttons and icons, and you can choose which functions to display on the icon bar:

You select a function simply by dragging its icon onto the icon bar. In the same way, to remove an icon off the icon bar, simply drag it onto the Select Icons window.


General Ledger

Consolidations

Budgets

General Ledger Report Writer

Financial Periods

Entry Types

Process...Journals/Cash Book


Consolidations

You can consolidate general ledgers from different companies into a new company. Pastel creates general ledger balances in the new company, which represent the totals of all the balances in all the companies you consolidate.


Budgets

In Pastel SOHO Accounting, you enter budgets on each general ledger account. Pastel also keeps last year budgets for comparative purposes.

Pastel Partner Accounting version 4 has some major improvements as far as budget processing is concerned:

•	You can enter next year budgets. This lets you create budgets before the year end. They become the current year budgets when you process the year end procedure.

•	You can adjust budgets globally, by a value or a percentage, by a range of accounts and / or categories. You can also round them at the same time. This lets you, for example, increase budgets on all expense accounts by 5%, and round the increased value to 1.00 at the same time.

•	You can create budgets from any other actual or budget value. For example, you can create next year budgets from the current actuals.

•	You can create your own budget variance reports using the general ledger report writer, which we discuss in the next section.


General Ledger Report Writer

The general ledger report writer allows you flexible access to current and last year actuals, and current, last year, and next year budgets. This enables you to write custom balance sheet, income statement, and budget reports, amongst others.

You can print any of these values, as well as percentage or value variances between them.

You can  show these values as a percentage of a specified account or category. For example, you can analyse income and expenditure as a percentage of total sales.

Output can be sent to the printer, to the screen, or directly into spreadsheets and word processors.

Here is a screen which shows report lines being defined:


Financial Periods

Instead of being fixed, you can define you own periods. You define, for each year, how many (1-13) periods there are, and their date ranges:

In Pastel SOHO Accounting, you can work in any period at any time. In Pastel Partner Accounting version 4, you can optionally force a user to work in one period only. This is useful where you have an operator who is doing data entry for you. Standard data entry should only take place in one period at a time.


Entry Types

Pastel SOHO Accounting has 12 fixed entry types, and three cash books. In Pastel Partner Accounting, you can have up to 32 entry types and 10 cash books, and each of these is user-definable:


Process...Journals/Cash Book

The Process...Journals/Cash Book menu option is where you do a lot of processing work in Pastel. You use it for all cash book transactions, as well as general ledger, customer, and supplier journals.

Pastel Partner version 4 has many additional facilities over and above Pastel SOHO Accounting in this area. Some of these are:

•	Pastel remembers the column sizes and positions that you set, per entry type and per user. This means that you can customise your input screens.

•	In recurring batches you can set the number of times for a transaction to recur. If you are paying a lease for a fixed number of months, for example, Pastel deletes the recurring line once the number of months is complete.
You can also create transactions which recur at intervals longer than one month (e.g. quarterly, annually).

•	Besides recurring batches, you can also create postdated batches. The difference between recurring and postdated batches is firstly that with postdated batches you copy items which are in a date range, and secondly that once a line copies from a postdated batch it deletes automatically.
For example, if someone pays you with three postdated cheques, enter each one on its own line. In each month, as the transaction becomes due, it copies and deletes.

•	You have more settings per entry type, which lets you better automate data entry. Per entry type per user, you can choose whether to repeat descriptions, automatically invoke the open item screen or not, use multi-currency, use inclusive or exclusive entries, what the default tax type is, and whether to increment references once at the start of the batch.

•	You can use the notepad to create abbreviations for often-used descriptions.

•	You can sort a batch by account number, reference, or period, in ascending or descending sequence.

•	You can update all outstanding batches, not just one batch at a time.


Job Costing

Job codes let you analyse across general ledger accounts. First, you create job codes, which consist of a unique code and a description. Whenever you process transactions such as journals, cash book entries, invoices, and inventory journals, you can assign a job code. Pastel can then produce a report for each job code, showing you the income and expenditure against each job.


Inventory

Inventory Items

Inventory Selling Prices

Inventory Counting

Inventory Journals

Negative Quantities

Inventory Reporting


Inventory Items

Inventory items are more sophisticated in Pastel Partner version 4. For example:

•	You can decide if the description and unit can be changed while invoicing. In Pastel SOHO Accounting, you can always change the item. If you fix the description and unit, you ensure that an inventory code is always used to sell the same item, which gives you far more control.

•	Instead of just being discountable or not, as in SOHO Accounting, you can choose whether to apply invoice discount, settlement discount, only one, or both discounts, per item.

•	You can enter and use a bar code.

•	You can have a bin number.

•	You have far more flexibility with selling prices. We discuss this in detail in the next section.


Inventory Selling Prices

Pastel SOHO Accounting has a selling price per inventory item. Pastel Partner version 4 gives you incredibly powerful flexibility when it comes to selling prices. If you don't need these prices, then they don't get in your way or complicate your life. But if you do need them, they are an indispensable aid:

•	You can create up to three separate selling price lists. You can name each list (for example, Retail, Wholesale, Special). You can enter exclusive or inclusive prices for each price list on every inventory item:

•	You can globally calculate a price list as a percentage mark-up on either the cost price (e.g. Retail=Cost+60%) or on another price list (e.g. Special=Retail-20%).

•	You can create a special price for each inventory item. The special price has a date range, and will override the normal price list price. This facility lets you, for example, put items on special for one week.

•	One irritating aspect of running a business is implementing new selling prices. You have to calculate and prepare new price lists in advance, have new labels with the new prices, and enter the new prices on the computer. Most of the time, you have to do all this outside of your accounting system, and then enter and check the prices the evening before you implement them. Not so with Pastel. You can create and manipulate your future selling prices in Pastel itself, without affecting your current prices! Also, you can print new price lists and price labels. And you can do this way before you actually have to change the prices. When you are ready to start using the new prices, you run a simple price changeover routine which automatically swaps the old and new prices around - and in a few minutes you're ready to run!

•	At the most detailed level, you can create a custom price list per customer! In other words, you can negotiate prices with a customer, for some or all inventory items, which are totally different from any of the standard price lists. These customer prices can be quantity based - for example, this is the price for 1-5 items, this is the price for 6-10 items, and so on per inventory item:

The advantage of all these facilities is that Pastel automatically and intelligently senses which price to apply when you invoice. When you create a customer, you tell Pastel which price list the customer normally uses. Pastel checks for customer prices, special prices, and which price list to use, and it puts in the appropriate price automatically.

Think of the advantages of this. For example, you can negotiate special deals with many customers, and your operator does not have to remember which price to charge which customer - Pastel does it for you!


Inventory Counting

You can perform an inventory count ("stock take") at any time. To do this, you take a "snapshot" of your inventory quantities at a certain point in time. You can choose which items to snapshot by ranging on inventory codes, inventory groups, or bin numbers.

You then perform the physical counting of the inventory. Once the physical count is complete, you can continue processing in the normal manner.

When you are ready, you enter your physical quantities into Pastel and then produce a variance report. Once you resolve the discrepancies, you can update and Pastel adjusts items as required.


Inventory Journals

Inventory journal processing is more flexible. For example:

•	Pastel remembers the column sizes and positions that you set, per user. This means that you can customise your input screens.

•	You have more settings, which lets you better automate data entry. Per user, you can choose whether to repeat descriptions, repeat job codes, and increment references.

•	You can sort a batch into inventory code sequence.


Negative Quantities

Pastel SOHO Accounting allows inventory items to go into negative quantities. In Pastel Partner version 4, you can prevent negative inventory. This lets you keep a tighter control of your inventory.


Inventory Reporting

Some additional inventory reports in Pastel Partner version 4 are:

•	Slow moving reports by date or quantity

•	Price lists

•	Inventory history in sequence of entry

•	Count sheets and count variance reports.

Inventory labels can print bar codes in various bar code formats.


Customers

We have already seen the tremendous flexibility which Pastel Partner Accounting version 4 gives you in terms of selling prices. In this section, we look at other enhancements in the way Pastel Partner version 4 handles customers.

More:

Selling to Customers

Interest on Overdue Accounts

Customer Account Fields

Other Customer Processing Features / Enhancements


Selling to Customers

New Documents

In Pastel SOHO Accounting, you can process invoices and credit notes as customer documents. In Pastel Partner version 4, you can process additional documents. These are:

•	Quotations

•	Sales Orders

•	Debit Notes.

Pastel Partner also allows you to print a supporting document with each document. For example, invoices can have delivery notes, which show quantities and no values.

We will concentrate on quotations and sales orders. These documents are almost identical to invoices and credit notes. Quotations have an expiry date, and sales orders have an expected delivery date.

The processing of quotes and sales orders is done in the same way as the processing of invoices and credit notes. Therefore, you only learn how to process one document, and you know how to process the rest.

Pastel Partner version 4 allows you to link quotes, sales orders, and invoices. You can create sales orders from quotes, and you can create invoices from quotes or from sales orders. Therefore, you could give your customer a quotation, automatically create a sales order from the quotation, and then automatically create the invoice from the sales order.

When you link documents, you do not have to use all of the original document:

You can select all lines, some lines, or partial quantities on lines.

In addition, once you link, you have some choices:

•	You can delete the quote or sales order, irrespective of whether you used all the items.

•	You can leave the unused items in place in the original document. For sales orders, this would then represent back orders.

•	You can leave the full original document in place. You could use this in a tele-sales situation, where you get regular orders from customers.

On the reporting side, you can produce reports of outstanding quotations and back orders. You can do these in item sequence, customer sequence, or document number sequence.

Recurring Invoices

You can enter recurring invoices in much the same way as you enter recurring journals. If you invoice maintenance, subscription fees, or any other regular amount, this can save you a lot of time.

The recurring invoices can be set up to recur at intervals other than one month - for example, annually, quarterly, and so on.

Make One for All

This is a variation of recurring invoices, which is much less work if you send the same, or similar, invoices to a large number of customers.

Here, you create one invoice. You then tell Pastel to create the invoice for a range of customers. This range is based on the customer category.

So, for example, if you charge some customers annually for maintenance, others quarterly, and yet others monthly, assign a separate customer category to each of these three types of customers. Then, create an annual invoice, and apply it one operation for all annual customers. Do the same for your quarterly and monthly customers. You only create three invoices, and Pastel can invoice thousands of customers without you doing anything else!

Invoice Lines on Statements

In Pastel Partner version 4 you can tell Pastel to move each invoice line onto a customer's statement, instead of just one line per invoice. This lets you produce a combined invoice and statement.

One type of user who can use this feature is a medical practitioner, who can then track each line of an invoice for medical insurance payment purposes.

Other Invoicing Features

In this section we look at the actual invoice processing itself. Naturally, the same features apply to quotations and sales orders as well.

Overdue Checking When Invoicing

As you invoice, Pastel checks whether the customer is over their credit limit. This happens in both Pastel SOHO Accounting and in Pastel Partner version 4. Pastel Partner is more sophisticated in that it will tell you, as you enter the invoice, if this will put the customer over the credit limit.

In addition, in Pastel Partner version 4, you can also tell Pastel to calculate the ageing at invoicing and determine whether the customer is currently overdue on  a payment. This gives you automatic, on-line, credit control.

Column Positions and Sizes are Remembered

As with the other processing screens, you can customise the input columns. Pastel remembers, for each user and each document, how you size and position the columns.

Insert Lines Function

In Pastel SOHO Accounting you insert new invoice lines at the end. In Partner version 4, you can insert lines anywhere in the invoice lines.

Finding an Inventory Item Quickly

Pastel Partner version 4 gives you alternative methods of accessing inventory items, other than entering their codes. These are:

•	Bar Code  You can use the bar code instead of the inventory code. If you have a bar code scanner connected to your computer, you can scan the code in.

•	Inventory Abbreviations  You can create abbreviations for common items. Operators can use shortened versions of the inventory code, which they can learn much easier. You can bring up a list of the abbreviations, and the operator can pick one:

You can even tell Pastel to search the abbreviations list first, and then, if the code is not found, to look for the code in the inventory file.

Speeding up Invoicing

In Pastel Partner version 4, you can process invoices in Quick mode. In this mode, you enter only the item code (using any of the means described above). Pastel then invoices a quantity of one at the correct selling price for the customer, and moves immediately to the next line. You can switch between Quick mode and Normal Mode in one keystroke or mouse click.

Multiple Remarks Lines

In Pastel SOHO Accounting you can enter remarks lines on invoices. Although you can enter as many lines as you require, you enter one line at a time.

Pastel Partner version 4 extends remark line processing in two ways:

•	You can open a window and enter as many as ten lines of remarks at once.

•	You can create a library of standard remarks. Each library item can contain as many lines as you require. You simply select the library item, and Pastel pastes all the lines into the invoice. This feature is very useful if you have lengthy standard descriptions.

Inclusive / Exclusive Processing per Invoice

In Pastel Partner version 4, you can set up a default tax processing method (exclusive or inclusive) for each customer. When you produce an invoice for a customer, Pastel uses that default. Even then, you can change the default for each particular invoice.


Interest on Overdue Accounts

You can optionally calculate interest on overdue amounts for customers. For each customer, you can set whether interest should be calculated, and if so, at what ageing period:

You instruct Pastel to run through all the customers and calculate interest at a period. Pastel then creates interest transactions for all relevant customers.


Customer Account Fields

In this section we list new fields which are on the customer account. This list is not complete, as other new fields are discussed in sections on their own.

•	Multiple delivery addresses  Instead of one delivery address, as in Pastel SOHO, you can have multiple delivery addresses in version 4. Each delivery address has its own sales code, contact information, etc.

•	Suppress statement  You can, for each customer, suppress the aged messages from printing. Only the current message prints for those customers. You can also suppress the printing of the statement completely for a customer.

•	User defined fields  You can have up to five user defined fields on each customer record. You can name the fields, and use them for anything you like. You can access and print the user defined fields on invoices. One good use of this feature, for example, is for medical practitioners who can print dependant's names on the invoice.


Other Customer Processing Features / Enhancements

Sales Analysis Codes

You can now define commission values, based on either gross profit or sales. You can define up to five breaks:

You can print out a commission statement which uses the values you enter and calculates the commission due.

Customer Categories

You can create a customer category in much the same way as you have inventory groups. Customer categories let you group and analyse customers. You can produce various reports in customer category sequence.

Delete Inactive Accounts

You can define a period of inactivity, and Pastel will delete all zero balance customers who have been inactive for the specified period.


Suppliers

Most of the customer enhancements are mirrored in supplier processing, and we will not repeat them here.

More:

Purchase Orders

Additional Cost Invoices


Purchase Orders

You can create purchase orders and link them in the same manner as with customer sales orders and quotations.


Additional Cost Invoices

One important feature which is specific to suppliers only is the ability to handle additional costs for inventory items.

This feature is commonly used where you purchase an item from an overseas supplier. Once you capture the supplier's invoice, you invariably receive other invoices for the item, which affect the item's cost. Examples of these items are shipping charges, clearing charges, and so on.

The additional cost option on the supplier invoice lets you add to the cost of an inventory item, without adding to its quantity, and without having to do a manual inventory journal.


Control Centre

Pastel's Control Centre is a versatile enquiry and management tool. The Control Centre lets you:

•	View balances or daily movements for financial categories and general ledger accounts

•	View quantities on hand or daily quantity movement for inventory items

•	Check which users are active on a network.

Here is a typical Control Centre screen:

You configure what you want the Control Centre to monitor. You save the configuration information in a format file, which you can retrieve at any time. You can save multiple configurations, and you can copy these from one company to another if you need to.

You can tell the Control Centre how often to refresh the values. If you set this to, say, ten minutes, then the Control Centre "wakes up" every ten minutes and refreshes the values.

You can also force the Control Centre to remain on top of all other windows on your screen. This gives you immediate access to critical values whatever else you are doing.

The Control Centre is separate from the processing program. Managers can safely use it without affecting processing in any way, since Control Centre never writes to Pastel's accounting files.


Pastel Partner Version 4 - Manufacturing
Manufacturing

Pastel's manufacturing capabilities have two aspects:

•	Manufacturing  This lets you create products as items in your item file, using other existing products as raw materials.

•	Linked Codes  This lets you enter one code when you invoice, and Pastel brings up many inventory items.

More:

Linked Codes

Manufacturing


Linked Codes

A linked code has two elements:

•	A unique link code with its description

•	A list of the inventory items which belong to this code, along with the quantity of each item.

Here is an example:

You use linked codes when you process customer documents. You can access linked codes in various ways:

•	You can tell Pastel you are using linked codes and then enter the code

•	You can tell Pastel to search the linked codes if the code you enter is not an inventory code or an abbreviation.

Once you enter the linked code, Pastel brings up each item you linked to the code. Each line becomes a standard invoice line.

You can therefore use linked codes as abbreviations for many inventory items. Some other uses of linked codes are:

•	Container items

•	Replacement of one item by another, without your operators having to remember the new code.


Pastel Partner Version 4 - Manufacturing - Manufacturing
Manufacturing

You can create manufactured inventory items from other inventory items. Items which you manufacture we call manufactured items. Items which you use to manufacture we call component items or raw material items.

The Manufacturing Process

The manufacturing process is as follows:

•	You specify the components you require to manufacture the item. You do this in a bill of material. In the bill of material, you specify the component items, additional cost prices, and optionally, selling prices or cost markups.

•	You perform the manufacturing process, which takes raw materials out of the component items and places the cost into the cost of the manufactured item.

•	You may need to reverse manufacture (or unmanufacture) some or all of the manufactured items. You do this if you manufacture with incorrect prices, or if you need some of the raw materials for other uses.

When you invoice a manufactured item, you treat it like any other inventory item. Your customer does not see the component items.

Here is a typical screen showing the components of a bill of materials:

At the same time, you can determine the selling price of your manufactured item, and instruct Pastel whether or not to update the selling prices when it manufactures the items:

When you are ready, you manufacture the items you require:

Pastel shows you how many of your component items are available and required. When you manufacture, Pastel moves the items out of the component items, and increases the quantity on the manufactured items.


Point of Sale

Pastel's point of sale system enhances your invoicing capabilities:

•	When you complete a point of sale invoice, Pastel brings up a screen in which you can process the customer's payment:

•	You can have a customer display window which shows values you are entering in large characters. You can size the window to suit your requirements:

•	Once the shift or day completes, you can get reports on all payments received:

Here is a typical point of sale cycle:

1.	Supervisor enters float for operator  The supervisor enters the value of the float in the operator's till.

2.	Supervisor opens the shift for the operator  The supervisor must first open a shift for an operator before they can process point of sale documents.

3.	Operator processes sales for a shift or a day  This includes invoices, credit notes, paid-outs (where amounts can be taken out or put into the till), and COD sales and receipts.

4.	Operator does a cash up  The operator cashes up and enters total values into Pastel.

5.	Supervisor closes the shift  The supervisor reconciles the operator's balance with the balance in Pastel, and then closes the shift.

6.	Supervisor does a day end  Once all operators cash up, and the supervisor cashes up for each operator, the supervisor can end the day. At this point Pastel clears various files and produces various reports.

The supervisor can see at a glance what the status of each shift is: