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PC-ACCOUNTING Copyright 1986 PPE Inc. All Rights Reserved Contents Introduction ....................... 2 List of Files ...................... 2 Program Menus and Options........... 3 Main Program ..................... 3 Pay Program ...................... 4 Secondary Program ................ 4 Main Program........................ 5 Changing Transactions............... 7 Payroll ............................ 7 Tax Tables ......................... 7 Employee File ...................... 9 Using Payroll Program .............. 10 Post Tax Liabilities ............... 12 Comparing Bank Statement ........... 13 Optional Compare Bank Statement..... 15 1099 and W2 Tax Forms .............. 15 Inventory .......................... 16 Car Log ............................ 17 Checks ............................. 17 Income Tax Forms ................... 18 Multiple Transactions .............. 19 Gross Pay and Quarterly Reports .... 19 Scanning Files ..................... 20 Paycheck Condensed Format .......... 20 Program Accuracy ................... 20 Double Checking Sums ............... 21 New Year/ End of Year .............. 21 Bank Accounts ...................... 22 Program Limits ..................... 22 File Management .................... 22 Starting Your Own Files ............ 23 Starting in the Middle of the Year . 23 Errors ............................. 24 Business Income Tax Basics ......... 24 Depreciation ....................... 26 Prompts ............................ 26 File Explanation ................... 27 Disclaimer of Warranties ........... 28 License Information ................ 28 Update Service ..................... 29 Update Order Form .................. 31 Other Products from PPE ............ 32 Introduction PC Accounting is a single entry accounting system designed for small businesses. The main advantages to single entry accounting systems are that they are relatively easy to use and very little knowledge of accounting is required. The main disadvantage is that there are no checks and balances as there are in double entry accounting. Therefore, a single entry system is not recommended for large businesses where the owner cannot personally keep track of all transactions where the possibility of embezzlement exists. A double entry accounting system will not prevent all embezzlement, but it will make it more difficult. PC Accounting is similar to the Dome accounting books and most single entry pen and paper accounting systems. The main differences are that all the entries are stored on disk instead of ledger paper and the computer does all the calculations for you. The data files on disk hold the same information that your ledger paper would hold. Before you can start using this program you need to know how to use your computer and disk operating system. You should know : 1. How to turn on your computer and load DOS 2. How to backup a disk or file using DISKCOPY or COPY 3. How to see what is on your diskettes using DIR 4. How to delete a file using DEL 5. Which disk drive is drive A, which disk drive is drive B, and which one is the default disk drive at any time (the letter before the > prompt). If you do not know how to do any of the above read your Disk Operating System Manual to find out how. IBM also encloses with some of its computers a manual titled Guide to Operations which explains in simple terms how to use DOS. You could also get a friend to show you how to use your computer. LIST OF FILES The following files should be on the diskette you received. MAIN.EXE - The main program PAY.EXE - The payroll program SECOND.EXE - The secondary program TRANSACT - Contains all the transactions PAYCK - Contains all the paychecks TAXTBL - Contains all the tax tables; used by pay program EMPLOYE - Contains all the employee information; used by pay program COMPANY - Contains company name, address, and tax numbers used for W2 and 1099 tax forms CONTRACT - Contains name, address, and tax number of contractors CLASS - Contains description of each class BANK - Contains name of each bank CARLOG - Contains all carlog entries GROSSPAY - Contains gross pay and tax liabilities LASTGROSS - Contains gross pay for each employee at last The -2 quarter option will create file. INVENTOR - Contains inventory SCREEN - Contains screen for transaction input MAN - The manual on disk PRINTMAN.BAS - A short basic program that prints the manual BRUN10.EXE - Basic run-time module PC Accounting is a system of three programs. The first program named MAIN is used to enter the transactions and carlog entries. The program PAY is the payroll program. The program SECOND is used to initialize your tax tables, employees, contractors, and other information. The program SECOND also has the end of year inventory and depreciation calculations. You can start any of the three programs by putting the diskette with the program in the default disk drive then type the program name. For example : A>MAIN or A>PAY or A>SECOND Each program will take a few seconds to load. Each program will then display a prompt asking you to put the program data disk in the default disk drive. Make sure the disk is in the default disk drive, then press any key to continue. When you are familiar with the program, you may find it convenient to load the programs from disk drive B. Each program is loaded entirely into memory so that the program file does not have to remain in one of the disk drives. If this is your first time trying out the system, just put the disk in drive A or copy all files on your hard disk, and leave the disk in until you understand the system. PROGRAM MENUS SUBMENUS AND OPTIONS MAIN PROGRAM 0-Exit to Operating System A-Transactions A-Enter New Transaction Print Checks B-View Already Entered Transactions Make Changes Print on Paper Print Checks C-Scan Transactions Scan a Single Bank Scan a Single Contractor Scan a Single Class Print Transactions Scanned on Paper Print Subtotals on Class Print Total Deposits, Withdraws B-Compare Bank Balance C-Car Log A-New Log Entry B-Scan Entries Print on Paper Change a Single Log Entry Show Total Mileage D-Contractor End of Year Summary A-Total Payments to Each Contractor B-Print 1099 Tax Forms PAY PROGRAM 0-Exit to Operating System A-New Paycheck Computes Deductions Print Checks Print on Paper B-View a Single Paycheck Print Checks Make Changes Print on Paper C-Post Tax Liabilities D-Scan Paychecks Print on Paper Subtotal Taxes Scan a Single Employee Scan a Single Pay Date E-W2 Tax Forms Print Individual W2 Print Subtotal W2 Print Total W2 F-Tax Liabilities, Gross Pay Change Tax Liabilities Change Gross Pay Quarterly Gross Pay Clear Gross Pay Move Gross Pay to Quarter Gross Pay SECONDARY PROGRAM A-Depreciation A-ACR 3 year 6% tax credit B-ACR 3 year 4% tax credit C-ACR 5 year 10% tax credit D-ACR 5 year 8% tax credit E-Straight Line F-Double Declining G-Sum of Digits H-Fixed % B-Class of Transaction A-View and/or Change a Class B-Print All classes on Paper C-Reduce Maximum Number of Classes C-Bank Accounts Change Name or Number of Bank Accounts D-Contractors for 1099 form A-View/Change/Enter a Contractor B-Print a Single Record on Paper C-Print All Records on Paper E-Screen Prompts Enter/Change Screen Prompts F-Company Name and Information Change Name/Address/Tax Number G-End of Year Inventory A-New Entry B-Scan Inventory Print on Paper Change an Entry Total Inventory Value H-Employee File Enter New Employee Change Old Employee Data Print on paper I-Tax Tables Enter New Tax Table Change Old Tax Table Print on Paper MAIN PROGRAM The best way to learn how the program works is to run the program and start using it. This is not a printed manual filled with screen prints of every possible screen the program generates. Therefore, you will have to learn by doing. In case you have not noticed, the way most people, including us, write huge manuals for their software is to show a screen print on one page, a sentence or two describing the option chosen, then a screen print on the next page showing the results. The program is menu driven. Put the diskette in drive A and start the program. Just follow the menus to the different options. The programs are fairly simple, so it will only take you an hour or two to become familiar with all the programs. The main program lets you enter transactions. You can think of the transaction file as a ledger containing the following columns : Day Month Description Pay To Bank Number, 1 or 2, 0 for Non-Bank Transaction Check Number, 0 for Deposit Check Cleared Y/N Amount, Dollar amount of the Transaction Contractor Number Class of Transaction Bank Balance Bank #1 Bank Balance Bank #2 The new entry screen will show you the last entry in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The last entry is shown so you don't type in a transaction twice by mistake. When first entering a transaction for the day, look at the last entry and make sure it is the last date and last transaction you entered the last time you used the system. A common mistake is to start using last week's backup disk instead of the most up to date disk. If you look at the last transaction entered, this should not happen. Your bank balances are shown in the lower left hand corner. The lower half of the screen shows all the classes of transactions. You can change the screen using the secondary program. Note that changing classes does not automatically change the the screen. The class of each transaction is the category or classification of the transaction. You can chose your own classes using the secondary program. Examples of classes are advertising expense, office expense, utility expense, and so forth. The day and month fields are entered automatically by the computer. When the program first starts up, it will ask you if the date is correct and give you the opportunity to change it. You can either enter the date when you boot up DOS or when you start the program. On some not so IBM compatible computers the program may not get the correct date from DOS, so you will have to enter it when starting the program. The check cleared field is set to "N", not cleared. The computer automatically updates each bank account balance after each transaction. You enter the other fields. For the check number, enter 0 for a deposit; otherwise enter the check number. The program does not keep track of checks by check number, so it does not make any difference if you skip check numbers. If you are making a withdrawal without using a check, enter check number 1 anyway so the program will recognize it as a withdrawal. When you print checks the computer gives you the option to change the check number. You may find it more convenient to enter the check number when printing checks. You do not have to print the checks out using the computer; you may write your checks by hand if you prefer to. If the transaction is a cash or non-bank transaction enter 0 for the bank number. A cash or non bank transaction will not change any of the bank account balances. The IRS requires you to send them a 1099 report of miscellaneous income to any person you pay over $600 per year to. The contractor number is used to prepare the 1099 forms. Most transactions do not involve contractors, so you can just enter 0 (or press return for the default value of 0) for no contractor. If a contractor is paid, enter his contractor number. Enter all transactions paid to a contractor. If you are not sure which contractor is which, you can use the -1 scan contractor option. This will show contractor number 1 on the screen. Press any letter key to see the next contractor. Continue pressing any letter key until the correct contractor number is shown. When the correct contractor is shown press return. Depending on your business you may many contractors. If your business is small you may not pay any contractors $600 for the year. You can exit the enter a new transaction subroutine by just pressing return on the first description field or using -1 the abort entry option. CHANGING TRANSACTIONS Using the view a single entry option, you can change some of the information in the transaction file. After a transaction is entered, you can NOT change the amount or bank or change a deposit to a check or change a check to a deposit. This is because the program is designed like your bank statements. The bank balances are kept in 2 fields of the transaction file. Any change to a bank account balance must be done with a new transaction. This is done for security and reliability reasons. For example, if you enter a check as $400 when it actually was for $500 you can't just change the $400 to $500. You can enter an adjusting transaction or enter a voiding transaction. In the above example an adjusting transaction would be a "check" for the difference of $100. You enter an adjusting transaction the same way as any other transaction. You could VOID or negate a bad transaction by the same transactions with the negative amount of money. You would also want to change the description to "Voiding ..... " so that you know it is a voiding transaction. Once you have voided the bad transaction, you can enter the correct transaction. Obviously, this is some trouble. It would be easier just to change the initial transaction, but if we let you do that you would have no record of changes which could make your bank account balances unreliable. Needless to say, make sure your bank account number 0,1 or 2, the dollar amount, and whether it is a check or deposit are correct before you press the 0 for OK, no changes, when entering a new transaction. PAYROLL You can use the transaction program without using the payroll program. Use of the payroll program is optional. If you are a one person company, you many not have any payroll. You can try the payroll program with the sample employee and tax tables we have provided. Once you have tried the program and decided to use it, enter your own tax tables and employees using the secondary program. Enter the tax tables first because you have to assign each employee to the tax tables later. This system can only handle one length of pay period. You can pay your employees weekly, every other week, twice a month or once a month. You cannot have some employees paid once a week while some are paid once a month. All employees must use the same length of pay period. This is because this system only has room for the tax tables of one pay period. The tax tables we have included as samples on disk are the 1986 Employee Social Security, Employer Social Security, weekly Federal Withholding, and weekly Federal Earned Income Credit tables. Tax Tables You can have up to 16 tax tables. The first eight are reserved for : 1. Employee Social Security 2. Federal Single Income Tax Withholding 3. Federal Married Income Tax Withholding 4. Federal Unemployment Tax 5. State Unemployment Tax 6. Employer's Social Security - Currently this is the same as tax table one but tax laws could change 7. Earned Income Credit Single (EIC) 8. Earned Income Credit Married (EIC) Tables 9 to 16 can be used for state taxes, local taxes, state deductions, disability, union dues, or any other deduction you can put on a table. Each tax table has: Description - Name of the tax table Allowance - This is the dollars deducted from taxable pay for each allowance. For example, the federal allowance is $20.77 for each allowance on a weekly payroll. Limit On Gross - Some taxes such as Social Security apply only to pay under some limit, such as $42,000 for Social Security in 1986. Number of Tax Brackets - This is the number of tax brackets or rows in the tax table. You can use a maximum of 15 brackets. Each row or Tax Bracket contains the following : Lower Limit - if pay is under the lower limit, this tax bracket does not apply Upper Limit - if pay is over the upper limit, this tax bracket does not apply Tax - This is the dollar tax plus Percent - Additional tax is this percent of the pay over the over amount Over - over this amount; this is usually equals the lower limit Enter the tax tables for the pay period you are using. For example, if you pay your employees every week, enter the federal single weekly tax table, the federal married weekly tax table, and the state weekly tax tables. Some of the tax tables are the same regardless of pay period. For example Social Security is 7.15 percent up to a limit of $42,000 regardless of the pay period. The Federal Tax Tables are obtained from IRS Circular E "Employer's Tax Guide", which the IRS sends free every year to each employer. Once you get on the IRS employers mailing list and your state employers mailing list, they will mail you tax table changes. You get on their mailing lists when you apply for a tax ID number. The IRS lets you figure income tax withholding by either the "Percentage Method" or "Wage Bracket" method. This program uses the percentage method. Most states have a percentage method very similar to the Federal percentage system. A few states will publish a yearly percentage withholding method and make you divide the yearly figures by the number of pay periods in a year. For example, the State of Wisconsin has the following tax withholding schedule: Annual Net Wage Tax Not over $7,500 5% $7,500 to $15,000 $375 plus 6.6% over $7,500 Over $15,000 $870 plus 7.9% over $15,000 You can convert this to a weekly table by dividing all the dollar amounts by 52 (the number of pay periods in a year). The percentages remain the same: Weekly Wage Tax Not over $144.23 5% $144.23 to $288.46 $7.21 plus 6.6% over $144.23 Over $288.46 $16.73 plus 7.9% over $288.46 When entering the tax tables, you will notice that the computer will estimate the lower limit, tax, and over amount. All you have to enter is the Upper Limit and Percent. This is because the Lower limit, Tax, and Over amounts can be computed from the just the Upper Limit and Percent. This saves you a few minutes of entering numbers. Also, the last upper limit is probably "No Limit" or left empty in most tax table. In other words, no matter how much money you make the government wants its percentage. However, this computer program does not understand the words "No Limit " so enter $99,999 for the upper limit of the last row. No employee in your business makes over $99,999 in one pay period so $99,999 is effectively no limit. Employee File After you enter the tax tables, you should enter each of your employees in the employee file using the secondary program. For each employee you need to enter : 1. Name 2. Street Address 3. City, State, Zip Code 4. Social Security Number 5. Married or Single Federal Tax 1 for Single 2 for Married 0 - No federal tax 6. Class of Transaction - This is not currently used - Reserved for future use - Just enter zero 7. Salary or Hourly Wage - must not be zero 8. Earned Income Credit: 0 for none, 1 for Single, 2 for Married 9. Number of Federal Allowances 10. Number of State Allowances - 0 if none 11. State Allowances in dollars - In some states you don't get the same amount for each allowance. Some states give you $30 for yourself, $25 for being married, and $20 for each dependent. If you are in a state where the allowances are not equal, you will need to enter the employees allowance in dollars here. If you are in a state where the dollars per allowance are equal then enter zero and let the tax table calculate the allowance using the above number of state allowances. Use either this option or the previous option to compute the state allowances(Don't use both). 12. State Deduction - Some states give you a state deduction in addition to the your allowances. This is similar to the old federal system before the $2,700 dollar personal deduction was figured in the withholding tax tables. 0 if no state deduction. 13. State Deduction Table - 0 for most states. For a few states the deduction is progressive or regressive and you need a tax table to figure out the state deduction. For example in Maryland you get a deduction of 15% of your income up to a limit of $30 on a weekly basis. See the sample state deduction table if you live in a state that has varying deductions. Use either this option or the previous option to compute the state deduction (Don't use both). 14. State Tax Table Number - Enter the number of the State Tax Table for the employee. Make sure it is the correct married or single table 15. State Number. This is important if you have employees from more then one state and have to pay withholding taxes to several states. State one should be your state. States 2,3, and 4 can be other states that you withhold taxes for. This does not affect the calculation of the tax; the state number only affects which state the state taxes are totaled for. 16. Local Tax Basis 1- Percent of Gross Pay 2- Percent of Federal Tax 3- Percent of State Tax 4-16 a tax table number for local tax; the number of allowances for local tax equals the number of state allowances. 17. Local tax percentage- Used if the local tax basis is percent of gross pay, percent of Federal Tax, or Percent of State Tax 18. Optional Withholding 1. - A tax table number 0 if none 19. Optional Withholding 2. - A tax table number 0 if none 20. Optional Employer Tax 1 - A tax table number 0 if none 21. Optional Employer Tax 2 - A tax table number 0 if none 22. Optional State Tax Credit - 0 if none (most states) Some states like California give a tax credit on state taxes to each employee. Using The Payroll Program Now that you have entered the initial tax tables and employee information, you can use the pay program to enter a few test paychecks for them. Use option A to enter new paychecks. The computer will run through each employee and ask you if you want to enter a paycheck for the employee. If the employee has not worked this pay period, you press N for no pay. The computer then advances to the next employee. If the employee has worked, you press Y for yes. The computer will then ask you for number of hours worked. You need to enter a decimal number. One hour and a half is 1.5 hours not 1.30 (one hour and thirty minutes). Fifteen minutes is a quarter of an hour or .25 hours. Forty five minutes is three quarters of an hour or .75 hours. If you keep exact track of how many minutes your employees work instead of keeping track of the nearest quarter hour, you will have to convert to decimal by dividing the minutes by sixty. For example if an employee works 3 hours and 58 minutes and you are too cheap to pay him for four hours then you have to convert the 58 minutes to decimal by dividing 58 by 60 to get .9666 hours + 3 equals 3.9666 hours. But most of you probably hire people to work on the hour, half hour or quarter hour and probably don't care nor have a time clock to track hours worked to the exact minute. If you enter zero for the number of hours worked, the computer will move to the next employee. The computer will then ask you for tips for this employee. If your employee receives tips, you have to collect taxes on them. Just press return for the default value of 0 if the employee has no tips. The computer will show you the gross pay, then it asks you if it is correct. Press Y if the gross pay is correct. Press N for no if the gross pay is not correct. If you press N the computer will give you the opportunity to enter the gross pay or reenter the hours worked. The computer will then automatically calculate and display the following : Month Day Record Number 3. Employee Number and Name 4. Hourly Wage and Salary 5. Hours Worked 6. Tips 7. Gross Pay 8. Federal Income Tax Withheld 9. State Income Tax Withheld 10. Local Income Tax Withheld 11. Social Security Withheld 12. Other Withheld 1 13. Other Withheld 2 14. Earned Income Credit 15. Paycheck 16. Employers Federal Unemployment 17. Employers State Unemployment 18. Employers Social Security 19. Employers Tax 1 20. Employers Tax 2 21. Check Number Line 16 to 20 are taxes that you, the employer, must pay. They are not deducted from the paychecks. Lines 8 to 13 are deducted from the employee's paycheck. Earned income credit is added to the paycheck. The Other Withholding Tax 1 and Other Withholding 2 can be used for union dues, health plans, or other state taxes. The Other Employer Tax 1 and Other Employer Tax 2 can be used for state disability, pension plans or other taxes. The options after the computer displays the tax are: A-Forward B-Back C-Change D-Print on paper E-Print Check F-Redo The Redo option lets you start over entering the employee hours, gross pay then recomputes the taxes. You can print the check at this time, but it is advisable to wait until you have entered all the employees. Press Return to go to the next employee. The A- Forward and B-Back Options are disabled during the new paycheck entry. You can use the Change option to enter any other taxes or deductions by hand. For example, if an employee borrowed $100 from you and you are taking $25 dollars out of his paycheck each paycheck, you can reduce the paycheck by $25. Employee Tips Tips are also subtracted from gross pay because you, the employer, do not pay the tips. If an employee receives two or three times more tips then salary, it is possible that the paycheck could end up negative. This means that all of his salary goes to taxes plus you still have to collect money from his tips to pay some of the taxes. Also, if you have a tipped employee who earns over $42,000, the Social Security limit you still have to pay employer's Social Security until the salary (not including tip) reaches $42,000. The computer will stop computing employer's social security when gross pay reaches $42,000. You will have to enter this using the change option. Since there are probably no tipped employees who earn (much less report) $42,000, this will probably never be a problem. Tips are included in the gross pay for federal and state unemployment tax calculations. POST TAX LIABILITIES When you are done doing all the paychecks, use the option "Post Tax Liabilities" to add all the taxes payable, and the employee gross pay. This operation requires no action on your part. You just press C and watch the computer post the records for a few seconds. Before you post the tax liabilities, you should scan the paychecks you have just entered to make sure they are correct. Printing out the subtotal of taxes should at least confirm that they are no wildly incorrect values. The Payroll and Transaction Programs are not interconnected. After each payroll, you have to make an entry in the transaction file contain the total dollar amount of paychecks made . This is done to update your bank account balance. For example, if you paid five employees $100 each, enter a transaction entitled Total Paychecks Jan 1 for $500. If you are a manufacturer, you will have to allocate your labor between manufacturing labor and administrative labor. For example, if three of the employee make sailboats and two of them sell them you will need to enter a transaction for manufacturing labor of $300 and administrative labor of $200. After you have posted the tax liabilities, you should use option F - Tax Liabilities to look at how much you owe the federal and various state governments. Depending on the amount of taxes you owe, you may have to mail the government a check right away, at the end of month, or end of the quarter. If you make a payment on any of the taxes, you should enter the payment in the Tax Liabilities option of the payroll program. When you are at the main menu of the payroll program, the computer will display the last record posted and the last record entered. You should make sure the last record entered was your last pay period entry to make sure you are not using an old disk. Before you start entering a new pay period, you should make sure the last record posted is the same as the last record. If it is not, post the records before entering the new records. The only thing that could happen if you don't post last week's paychecks before starting this week's is that some of the taxes which have a limit on gross such as Social Security could be overcollected if you hit the limit on gross during either the week you failed to post or the current week. For example, if my pay at $1,000 per week went over the limit of $42,000 last week but I forgot to post the paychecks, I would end up paying social security this week even though I should not pay any because I went over the $42,000 limit last week. The posting subroutine will post all records that have not been posted, so even if you forget to post for a week, next week the two weeks will be posted at once. The records cannot be over posted. Even if you use the Post option two or three times in one week by mistake, the computer will only post each record once. MAKE BACK-UP COPIES EVERY WEEK You should make back-up copies of your data at least once a week or whenever you spend a large amount of time entering data. If you spend a hour a week entering data, you have invested 52 hours by the end of the year entering the data. If you lose the information, it will take you a long time to reenter the data. So make plenty of backup copies. Don't reuse the same disk every week for the backup. Disks are so cheap now that you should use a different disk each week for backup. If you lose one week's data, you can get the disk from last week and reenter the one week only. You still need to keep your checks and receipts in case you are audited. Just because you entered in a payment in this program does no constitute proof that you did actually make the payment. The IRS may want to see a cancelled check or receipt. On the bright side, if you do get audited, a computer printout of your bookkeeping will impress the IRS more then just a pile of canceled checks and receipts. COMPARING YOUR BANK STATEMENT This program will continuously balance one or two checking accounts. Your Bank Balances could be off for several reasons: 1. You could have written a check, then forgotten to enter it into the computer. 2. You could have entered the wrong amount into the computer. 3. You could have entered a check as paid on bank one instead of bank two or vice versa. 4. This program could have made a mistake. If you think this program made a mistake see the chapter Double-Checking Sums. 5. The bank's program could have made a mistake. This is very unlikely since when banks make a mistake in the customer's favor the customer may or may not give the money back. Banks have a very strong incentive to make sure their programs work. 6. A bank clerk could have entered the wrong amount of the check. The bank clerks, who type in the dollar amounts of each check are only human and they make a mistakes on one of every several thousand checks. When your bank makes adjustments to your account such as when a customer's check bounces, it is important to enter the transaction right away as a transaction so that your bank balances are up to date. Your bank will usually send you a computer generated "debit charge" and the bad check the same day. Assuming you are using a local bank, you should receive the notice within one, two, or three days. It is important that you enter these charges in the same month they happen, or reconciling your bank account will be complicated by the fact that on Jan 30 the bank reduced your account by $200 to cover a bad check but because you did not receive notice until February 1st this program thinks the amount was reduced in February. Watch out for this if your account does not balance. You can compare your checking account using using the B option on the main program. The computer will ask you to enter the month of the statement and the last day of the statement. Most bank statements are for the entire month. The computer will also ask you to enter the bank balance. The program assumes the bank gives you your interest or service charge on the next day. Some banks give interest on the last day of the month; others hold onto the money for an extra day and give it on the first day of the month. (After all, you haven't earned a months interest until the month is over!) If your bank statement has an interest earned or service charge on the last day as the last entry, USE THE BANK BALANCE RIGHT BEFORE THE INTEREST EARNED OR SERVICE CHARGE. You must have your printer turned on to balance your checkbook. The computer will run through all the checks that have not cleared in the previous months. For each check the computer will ask you if the check has cleared. If the check has not cleared, the computer will print the check description on paper. If the bank account is used for payroll, the program will do the same for the payroll checks. The computer will also figure out the checks and deposits made after the last day of the statement. If you get your checks back from your bank you can put the checks in one pile. When the computer asks you if the check has cleared physically, move the cleared check to a second cleared pile. When the computer is done asking you if each check has cleared all the checks should be in the cleared pile. If you have a check that the computer did not ask you about, you probably forgot to enter that check in the computer system or else you mistakenly changed the clear flag to clear. If you have a check the computer did not ask you about go back and look at the transaction file to see if you entered the check in the computer system in the first place. You should also make sure that the dollar amount of the check and the dollar amount on the computer are the same. If you enter Y for yes the check has cleared, the computer will change the check cleared flag in the transaction file; or if the check is a payroll check, it will change its check number to the negative of the check number. Using a fiscal year other then a calendar year will cause you a few problems when comparing your bank statement. The compare program is designed to handle months of increasing number. In the calendar year, months run from 1 to 12. If you are using a fiscal year from July to June the months run from 7 to 12 then from 1 to 6. If you are using a fiscal year, once the calendar year changes to January you have to use the optional method below. If you do not use the correct date when entering transactions, the compare statement will not work properly. For example, if you mistakenly enter February 2 transactions with the date January 2 the computer will think the transactions are in January not February. If you mistakenly enter transactions with the wrong date, you can change the date with the change option or use the optional method below. Optional Comparing Bank Statement Method If some of your transactions are improperly entered in the wrong months, you can use this optional method to compare your bank statement. Use the B - Compare Bank Statement option. Use December 31 as the end of Statement Date. The program will print out all uncashed checks. You will have to manually add all the deposits you made after the statement date. Bank Statement Balance + Deposits Made after Statement Date - All Uncashed checks, Payroll and Transactions --------------------------------------------------- Correct Bank Balance (Should equal current balance on computer.) PRINTING 1099 AND W2 TAX FORMS At the end of the year, you need to print 1099 and W2 tax forms. You can get the forms free from the IRS. The forms the IRS gives you are sheets of 3 on a page, and you have to supply your own carbon paper. Feeding and aligning the individual sheets the IRS gives you plus the carbon paper is a bit of trouble. You can order continuous W2 and 1099 forms from a business forms printer or computer supply house. Currently the W2 tax forms sell for $15.95 for 50 or $21.50 for 100. The forms are available from NEBS Computer Forms (phone 800-225-9550) if they are not available locally. The forms are 4 part carbonless and continuous like continuous computer paper, so all you have to do is align the first form then print the rest. It's a question if you want to spend the money for good continuous tax forms or suffer with the free IRS tax forms. If you only have less then 10 employees or less then 10 contractors, you might survive using the free forms the IRS gives you. Print the W2 tax forms using the W2 option on the PAY program. If you have several thousand entries it may take a few minutes for the computer to add them up. If you have more then 41 employees you have to print subtotal W2 forms after the the 41st and 82nd employee. The subtotal form must be on the last form of three on a form. If you make a mistake and print the wrong employee or print a badly misaligned form, you can put a big X in the void box and reprint the information on the next form. As an employee you are probably used to seeing just your own W2 form which is one third of a page. As an employer the IRS wants the W2 forms three on a page. The first copy of the forms which go to the IRS does not have any perforations on the first page. This is because you are not supposed to separate the first page into thirds. 1099 TAX FORMS The 1099 tax forms are printed using the Main Program. First you must use option A - Total the Contractors. This reads each record in the transaction file, and if a contractor is stated it adds it up and stores the result in the Contractor File. Then use option B - Print 1099 forms. INVENTORY There is a very simple end of year inventory calculation in the secondary program. This inventory program lets you enter: Description of Inventory Item - Name Number in Stock Individual Cost Total Cost - equals number in stock times individual cost You could do this on paper, but it may be more convenient to do it on the computer. The value of your ending inventory is used to determine the cost of goods sold. You need to take a physical count of your inventory at the end of year. The difficult task is determining the cost of each item. Choosing a method of inventory valuation is not something you should take lightly if your inventory is large, so your accountant should advise you on which inventory method to use. Some of the most popular inventory valuations methods are: First In First Out Last In Last Out Gross Margin Lower of Cost or Market The main problem is that you may have purchased the same item at different prices. For example, we used to pay $1.14 for disks in January. By December disks cost 80 cents. We had 1000 disks in stock at the end of the year. Are they worth 80 cents or $1.14 each ? How would it affect our taxes? Manufacturers have even a more difficult time determining costs. We manufacture software. By the time we copy the software, put the label on, and package it how much is that one disk package worth? Manufacturer's Indirect Overhead Costs must also included in the cost. CAR LOG If you use your own car or have a business car you can use this carlog to document your business mileage for the IRS. The IRS tried to make people keep a carlog in their car and write the beginning mileage, ending mileage, destination and business discussed at each stop. Fortunately people complained so much to their congressmen that the law was changed. You still have to document business use of your car but you can write your entries whenever you want to and you don't have to keep odometer readings at each stop. You do not have to use this car log. You can continue using a notebook car log if you prefer to. But you may find it convenient to enter your business car use at the same time you are entering your accounting data. You should just enter your business trips in the car log. Do not enter personal trips PRINTING CHECKS You can either continue writing your checks by hand or you can let the computer print your checks. You can print some of your checks using the computer and some of them by hand if you are in a rush. Printing a check does not change any of the information in either the transaction or paycheck file. If you want to use the computer to print your checks this program uses Multi-Purpose top blank checks, one of the most popular computer checks. The check should measure 9 1/2 by 7 inches overall, 8 1/2 by 7 detached (when the paper strips with the holes on the side are taken off). The actual check is 1/2 the size or 8 1/2 by 3 1/2. The top part is blank with the company name on top. You can print a "check" on regular paper to see how it should look. You should be able to obtain computer checks from your bank which will probably charge you about 5 to 7 cents per check. The check number is MPC 302 if your bank orders its checks from RUDCO Check Company. When printing checks, you have the option of changing the check number. You may find it convenient to just enter check number one when entering transactions then enter the actual check number when printing the check because you may not be sure which check number the check will end up on until you print it. When printing transaction checks, the computer will ask you for an address. You can print the address of the recipient below his name. Then you can use those envelopes with windows so you don't have to type their name and address on the envelope. If you don't want to print their address, just press return. The computer uses the same multipurpose check for payroll. We have not used one of those specialized payroll checks so you can use the same checking account for both payroll and other expenses. Also it is easier to align the top blank checks then specialized payroll checks with small boxes for each deduction. INCOME TAX FORMS, SCHEDULE C One of the biggest advantages to using this system is that at the end of the year you do not have to go through all the thousands of checks and receipts, put them in different categories and spend hours adding them up. With this program all you have to do is scan all the transactions then print the subtotals of each class out at the end of the year. During the year you may have put some transactions into a "suspense" classification which means you weren't sure what class to put them in. At the end of the year you need to decide which class to put each transaction in. For example, if you purchase a $89 book case and at the time weren't sure if you should classify it as an office expense or as an asset purchase you can put it in the suspense class. At the end of the year you have to decide whether to deduct it as an office expense or a capital asset. At the end of year change the class to either office expense or asset purchase using the change option. If the problem is deciding between two deduction classes such as advertising expense or office expense, the decision is not important since both are directly deductible from your income. If the problem is deciding between an asset or cost of goods sold or a deduction, the decision is important and does affect your taxes. The classes of transactions were set up initially for the Schedule C, most partnerships and most corporations. If you are a farmer or most of your income comes from rental properties, then the classes of transactions should be changed to the categories on the different tax forms required. You can change classes and the screen using the secondary program. The print subtotal option will print out a simple income statement. It will subtotal all classes, add all the revenue classes for total revenue, add all the expense classes for total expenses, subtract revenue - expense yielding income (or loss). Remember at the end of year you have to figure your cost of goods sold and depreciation expense and include them in your income statement. You can enter a non-bank transaction at the end of the year for both cost of goods sold and depreciation so that all of your transactions will be on the computer, or you could just add them up on your tax forms. MULTIPLE TRANSACTIONS Most checks that you write are a single transaction for a single item. Most checks will be clearly for a single purpose. Deposits are different. Your deposit may contain $1200 of sales and $60 dollars of sales tax collected. You can enter the transaction one of two ways you can either enter : Sales with a $1200 Deposit and Sales tax with a $60 Deposit OR Sales with $1200 NON BANK TRANSACTION and Sales tax with $60 NON BANK TRANSACTION and "OTHER CLASS" with a $1200 Deposit The "Other" class is a class for dummy transactions. The first method is the easiest to enter since it requires only two entries. However if you add the two deposits incorrectly, your bank balance could be off. For example, if you mistakenly enter $50 as the sales tax the mistake is harder to catch. The second method takes an extra entry but eliminates the danger that the deposit could be incorrectly added. GROSS PAY AND QUARTERLY REPORTS For payroll reporting purposes, most states now accept a copy of the federal W2 forms. The quarterly state reports are in most cases similar to federal 941 quarterly reports. You can get most of the information needed for the 941 quarterly report by scanning all paychecks for the quarter and printing out the subtotals. However, many states still require you to file quarterly reports showing the quarterly pay for each employee. For example, suppose your state requires you to fill out an unemployment tax form that requires you to list each employee, the employee's pay this quarter, the pay under the $6,000 unemployment tax limit, and pay over the $6,000 unemployment tax limit. The -3 gross pay report option will produce this information for you. After you produce this report, you should then move the current gross pay to the Last Gross Pay file using the -2 Quarter Option. You should make a backup copy of your disks at the end of each quarter and save them. The LASTGROS file contains the gross pay for each employee at the end of the last quarter or 0 if it is the beginning of the year. The GROSSPAY file contains the gross pay of each employee. The difference between the two is the amount earned this quarter. Subtracting will yield the pay over $6,000 and under $6,000 or what ever number your state requires. If your state does not require quarterly reporting of pay for each employee, you do not have to bother updating the LASTGROS file each quarter. SCANNING FILES Your records are stored in files just as they would be if they were entered in a ledger book sequentially. Because these records are computerized, you can read the files selectively reading only the records you want. For example, you can scan all transactions with a class of adverting. You can view them on the screen or print them out on paper. You can get subtotals on most scans. This is one of the advantages of a computerized accounting system. PAYCHECK CONDENSED FORMAT The scan option will produce a condensed format containing three lines. The first line contains : Date Employee Name Hours Worked Wage Rate Tips Gross Pay The second line contains : Federal Withholding State Withholding Local Withholding Social Security Other Withholding 1 Other Withholding 2 Paycheck The third line contains : Federal Unemployment State Unemployment Employers Social Security Other Tax 1 Other Tax 2 Earned Income Credit PROGRAM ACCURACIES Because this is an accounting program, we have designed this program using a very conservative save program design to minimize errors. No running totals are kept. The main danger of running totals is that if the computer crashes due to a power failure or program failure the running total may not be correct. No indexing is used. All the files are flat files which cannot be mixed up due to bad indexing. However, the disadvantages to using these safe programming techniques are the the program may not be as fast as it could be. However, we feel that the advantage of having a safe design outweighs a few seconds of added speed. If your computer crashes due to a power outage, the last few records you entered that were not saved on disk may have been lost. You just have to reenter them when the power comes back on. Just because you have printed a check does not mean the transaction was saved on disk. The program saves the transactions on disk about every 5 to 8 transactions. We could have forced the program to save every transaction on disk right away, but the half second delay while the disk writes would get annoying. Almost the worst thing that could happen is that data on a disk could become damaged and not readable due to a bad disk or disk head crash. Then you will have to reenter all the data you entered that day. So always make back up copies! The bank account balances are stored in the transaction file. They are updated each transaction. You may also wonder why we did use the "fill in the blank" method of entering data where all the information is displaced on the screen and you just move the cursor to the spot to type over and change the information. The problem with the fill in the blank method is that if you hit the wrong key and fail to notice it you will change your entry. In word processing if you accidentally delete a letter by hitting the delete key instead of the down arrow your word is spelled wrong. In accounting if you accidentally delete a number a $200.00 check becomes $20.00 or employee 15 becomes employee 5 or an expense may become a revenue thus the fill in the blank method is not safe enough for accounting. DOUBLE-CHECKING SUMS The bank balance can be checked by scanning transactions on just one bank. The "Print Subtotal" option will display total deposits, total withdrawals, and the difference, which should equal the bank balance. The 1099 form total payments can be checked by scanning the transactions on one contractor. The W2 forms can be checked by scanning the paycheck file on the employee and comparing the subtotals to the W2 form. The gross pay and tax liabilities can also be checked by scanning the payroll file. You can also check any of the sums by printing the transactions or paychecks on paper and add them up with a calculator. NEW YEAR At the start of a new year you should start a new TRANSACT, PAYCK and CARLOG file. You should keep your old disks for your records. You have to initialize the bank accounts with the first entries in the transaction file. You use a new INVENTOR (inventory) file each year for the end of year inventory. With the start of the new year, you can eliminate employees from the employee file by changing there name to "empty" and their salary to 0. You can later assign a new employee to the old employee number. If an employee has quit, keep his or her name in the employee file until the end of year so you can print a W2 form. When balancing your checking account for January you may have a few checks from last December that have not cleared. You should take the paper printout produced by balancing the December statement and make sure all the checks from last year have cleared by checking them off against the paper printout. If not all of the checks from last year have cleared, then the compare bank option will be off by last years check(s) not cleared. BANK ACCOUNTS This program is designed to balance one or two checking accounts. The bank accounts are number one and number two. You change the names of the bank accounts using the secondary program. You can only use one bank account for your payroll program, so use either bank number one or bank number two. If you write payroll checks using both bank accounts the computer will not be able to compare your bank statement. PROGRAM LIMITS 99 - classes of transactions 99 - employees for the entire year - Watch out if your employee turnover is very high 16 - tax tables with up to 15 row each 2 - bank accounts - only 1 may be used for payroll 99 - contractors Number of transactions, paychecks, car log entries and inventory entries are limited by disk space available. FILE MANAGEMENT TRANSACT - The transaction file. Each entry takes up 80 bytes. On a 360K disk you can get 4,500 transaction on the disk. On a hard disk you limited only by its size. If you are using a floppy disk based system, you can only enter 4,500 transactions for the year before running out of disk space. If you have to use two floppy disks you will have to add the totals from the two disks together manually. The system is not designed to use over 4,500 transactions on a floppy based system. The 4500 limit does not include the payroll entries. You can have 4500 transactions plus 2800 payroll entries on a floppy based system. PAYCK - The Paycheck file. Each entry takes up 128 bytes. On a 360 K disk you can get 2800 payroll entries on a floppy disk. If you expect to make only a few entries, you can keep all the data files on one disk. If you expect to make a large number of entries, you can keep the PAYCK file on one disk, the TRANSACT file on another disk, and the other data files on a third disk. You can always start out with all the files on one disk. Then if they fill up the disk, you can copy the PAYCK and/or TRANSACT file to a different diskette. You should transfer the three programs to a second disk since the three programs take up 260K of disk space. You may want to copy the programs to a system disk which has your disk operating system on it so that you can boot up directly from the program disk. You should delete the manual file MAN from your working disks. If you are using a floppy disk based system you can use up to four diskettes: one diskette containing the programs; a second diskette containing the TRANSACT file; a third diskette containing the PAYCK file; and a fourth diskette containing all the other files. Using more then four diskettes is not advisable. We suggest keeping the data disk in the default disk drive almost all of the time. If you are using a separate disk for either the Transact or Paycheck File, use them in drive B. If you are using a hard disk based system just have all the files on one subdirectory. STARTING YOUR OWN FILES You should first try running the programs with the sample data we have provided. This gives you the opportunity to experiment with the programs without changing your own data. Once you are familiar with the programs, you should then start entering your own information. You can delete the following files using the DOS command DEL. (Make sure you have a backup copy) TRANSACT PAYCK CARLOG INVENTOR EMPLOYEE CONTRACT Then you can start your own files from scratch. You should not delete the CLASS, BANK, COMPANY, TAXTBL, GROSS or LASTGROSS files. You can change the CLASS, BANK, COMPANY, and TAXTBL files using the Secondary Program. You can change the GROSS and LASTGROSS files using the pay program. You need to: 1. Enter your tax tables using the Secondary Program Tax Tables must be entered before Employees, because the Employees are assigned to the Tax Tables 2. Enter your Employee information using the secondary program. 3. Enter Contractor information 4. Enter your Company Name using the Secondary program 5. Enter your Bank names using the Secondary program 6. Change the Classes of Transaction if you want to. 7. Change the Screens if you want to. 8. Set Grosspay and Tax Liabilities to zero using the Pay Program 9. Set the Last Gross pay file to zero using the Pay Program. Use the -2 Quarter Option 10. Initialize your Bank Account balances in the Transaction File by entering for the first transactions a deposit in the amount of the bank account balance. You do not have to do the above in any specific order. If you are not using the payroll program or do not expect to have any contractors, you do not have to initialize their files. STARTING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE YEAR If you are starting to use the program in the middle of the your business year, you can either enter all your back transactions into the system OR at the end of the year manually add the totals from both this program any whatever system you were using before. The problems with starting in the middle of the year occur at the end of the year when you have to fill out tax forms for the entire year and only part of the year is on the computer. For example, if you were keeping records by hand from January to June and used this system from July to August, you could add up all your sales from January to June, then add them to the total sales from the computer. If you want to use our system to print the W2 forms, you would need to enter a "paycheck" for each employee containing the sum of his pay and taxes withheld from January to June that are not on the system. If you wanted to use the system to print 1099 tax forms, you can enter the total paid each contractor manually using the Secondary Program instead of letting the computer compute it. ERRORS If there are any errors in the program the computer will print an error message looking like : ERROR DISK FULL on line 21400 ***** Press any key to continue ****** Some errors are correctable. For example, replace the full disk with an empty disk, then press "any key to continue". The computer will take you back to the main menu where you can try the operation again. If you run into any problems that you think are errors in the program, please call or write to us. We learn from and value customer's suggestions. A device not available error means either that your printer is not on line or that your disk drive is not closed. If your printer is not turned on or a disk drive is not closed, the program will wait for about 20 seconds before giving you the error message. If the program appears to stop just before it should be printing on paper make sure your printer is turned on AND on line. BUSINESS INCOME TAX BASICS One of the main reasons you are keeping records is probably that the IRS requires you to. It helps if you know the basics of business accounting. The IRS gives away dozens of different publications on taxes. You can call you local IRS office and get a copy of Publications 334 "Tax Guide for Small Business" which is a 184 page book that contains useful tax information. PROFIT = REVENUE - EXPENSES Revenue is your sales. In your record keeping it is important to distinguish revenue or sales from other money coming in. Not all money coming in is revenue. Your initial investment is not revenue. Borrowing money from a bank is not revenue. If your brother repays a loan to you, that is not revenue. A sale of a capital asset is a capital gain (or loss), not revenue. TOTAL EXPENSES = DEDUCTIONS + COST OF GOODS SOLD + DEPRECIATION All expenses must be "ordinary and necessary" to be deductible. There are no firm rules telling you what you can and cannot deduct. People are tempted to deduct personal expenses to lower there taxes. For example, one tax accountant tried to deduct the costs of his yacht as an advertising expense because he flew a 12 inch flag on it with his name on it. He never obtained a client from this "advertisement", nor did he probably expect to. He barely escaped jail. On the other had our local boat dealer runs his sailboat in races. He uses the opportunity to meet other sailing enthusiasts. He has made more money from resulting sales then the cost of the boat. Therefore, a sailboat to run in races is a legitimate business expense for him. The point is there is no firm rule starting "No you can not deduct a sailboat" or "Yes you can deduct a sailboat" because there are many different situations. If you reasonably expect to make more money from your expense then its cost, then it is a reasonable business expense. On transactions such as deducting home office expenses, luxury cars, vacations, or expensive meals which could be considered personal expenses, the IRS has developed rules for these situation which you should check. There are three kinds of expenses. Deductions are deducted directly from your gross income. Examples of deductions are advertising, car expenses, insurance, and administrative wages. Deductions are all the expenses that are not in the cost of goods sold or depreciation. Cost of Goods Sold is also deducted from your gross income. However, cost of goods sold is complicated by the fact that you have an inventory at the beginning and end of year. You must keep your cost of goods sold separate from other deductions. If you are a small service business, you may not have any inventory or cost of goods sold. Inventory at beginning of year + Purchases of Inventory Items - Items withdrawn for personal use + Cost of Manufacturing Labor + Other Manufacturing Costs + Material and Supplies used in manufacturing - Inventory at End of year ---------------------------------------------- Cost of Goods Sold If you are not a manufacturer you should not have any labor or material and supplies in the cost of goods sold. If you are not a manufacturer, then figuring the cost of goods sold is relatively easy. Your inventory purchases are the the only item you have to keep track of. If you are a manufacturer, you have more problems determining what goes into cost of goods sold. Manufacturing labor goes into the cost of goods sold. If an employee works partly on manufacturing and partly on sales, you have to allocate his labor costs between the two. You also have to allocate overhead expenses such as rent, heat, insurance, depreciation, supervision cost, and other costs to cost of goods sold. Manufactures will also have a more difficult time determining the cost of inventory. For example, if you are a sailboat retailer for one sailboat the inventory value is the cost you paid to the manufacturer. However, if you are the sailboat manufacturer and have that same boat in inventory, you have to figure the cost of raw materials + assembly labor + allocated rent + allocated other expenses. The main thing the IRS is worried about is that you don't say at the end of the year that the sailboat is worth only $120 which is the cost of raw materials, when it actually cost you $500 to make once you add the cost of labor, rent etc. Manufacturers should note that it does not affect your income or taxes whether you deduct indirect cost as a deduction or in the cost of goods sold. The factor that affects your income tax is how you value your inventory at the end of year. DEPRECIATION EXPENSE If you purchase any business assets (except inventory items) with a life of more then a year, then you cannot deduct the cost of the asset all in one year because you are going to be using the asset for several years (Except for Section 179 Depreciation). You have to allocate the cost of the asset over several years. In using the program, you should enter all assets you purchase into the class "Asset Purchase". At the end of the year, you need estimate the depreciation for each asset. Depreciation is rather complicated, and the results greatly affect your taxes. If you are not familiar with depreciation, you should let your accountant advise you on which depreciation method to use. The secondary program will calculate depreciation and the investment tax credit for you. This program only does the numerical calculations. It will not tell you which method is best for you. Your state probably has different depreciation requirements then the Federal Government. Most states tax business property. The higher the value of the property the more money the state raises in taxes. Therefore, most states only allow straight line depreciation or a fixed percentage deduction each year. You may need to keep two depreciation methods for all your assets. You will probably use the ACR for your Federal taxes and straight line for your state. Use the depreciation calculations to print the both depreciation schedules for each asset on one sheet of paper. Then keep that page and the pages for all your assets together. You will need them in future years because depreciation covers several years. (Don't Lose Them) PROMPTS Y/N - The Y/N prompt stands for Yes or No. Press either capital Y or small y for yes. Press either capital N or small n for no. The "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE" prompt occurs after an instruction for you do to do something such as turn your printer on. Obviously, all you have to do is press any key to continue. It is not advisable to randomly tap on the keyboard while the program is running. The letter prompts give you a series of letters to chose from. Just press the letter of the option you want to use. The default value is 0 if just return is pressed. The data entry prompts look like : >__< or >_______< or >_________________________< If a number is requested the computer will not accept any letters. For numbers you may enter 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,-,+,$,., ,,, or %. If an integer number is requested the computer will not accept the decimal point entry. If a number is outside its range the computer will ask for another number by repeating its prompt. For example if you ask to see employee number 25 and there are only 20 employee the computer will ask again for the employee number. Entry Controls RETURN : Press return when you are done with the entry CONTROL-Q OR BACKSPACE : Moves the cursor back and erases the last character CONTROL-D OR RIGHT ARROW: Moves the cursor right CONTROL-S OR LEFT ARROW : Moves the cursor left CONTROL-F OR INSERT : Inserts a space where the cursor is CONTROL-A OR DELETE : Deletes a character or space where the cursor is This is one of the areas of incompatibility between computers, so not all of the above entry controls may work on different computers. Some of the menus may give you use a negative number for an option. For example : Enter the Employe Number or 0 to return or -1 to print on paper Enter -1 if you want to print on paper. FILE EXPLANATION Most of your data is stored in random access files. A file contains records. Each record contains information stored in different fields. A simple example of the CARLOG file is shown below : FILE : CARLOG RECORD #1 FIELD #1 FIELD NAME: Destination ENTRY : Post Office FIELD #2 FIELD NAME: Mileage ENTRY : 5 RECORD #2 FIELD #1 FIELD NAME: Destination ENTRY : Computer Store FIELD #2 FIELD NAME: Mileage ENTRY : 10 RECORD #3 FIELD #1 FIELD NAME: Destination ENTRY : Computer Club Meeting FIELD #2 FIELD NAME: Mileage ENTRY : 31 A file may contain any number of records up to the storage limits of the disks. Each record contains the same number and type of fields. Your information is stored in a field which is part of a record. All the records make up the entire file. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES Before ordering updates read this disclaimer of warranties and license agreement. If you do not agree with all of the conditions then because of potential liability problems we cannot license you to use this program. Note: This is almost the same agreement you get with any program you purchase from IBM, Microsoft or any other software firm. PPE Inc. licenses this program solely on an "as is" basis. PPE Inc. shall have no liability or responsibility to Licensee or any other person or entity with respect to any liability, loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this product, including but not limited to interruption of services, loss of business or anticipatory profits or consequential damages resulting from the use or operation of this program. PPE Inc. make no warranties, either express or implied regarding this program, its merchantability and/or its fitness for a particular purpose. Licensee agrees that PPE shall not be held liable for any consequential damages, even if PPE has been advised of the possibility of such damages. It is entirely the responsibility of the user to check the results of the program and design a temporary accounting system for use if your computer breaks down. LICENSE AGREEMENT The programs and manual are copyrighted by PPE Inc. The program is not sold it is licensed under the following conditions : 1. You may make as many backup copies of the program as you want. 2. The $49 license fee entitles you to use the program on multiple computers. 3. You can use the program for free for a short period of time to evaluate its usefulness. 4. You can give away copies of the program to other people to evaluate for their own use. 5. Computer dealers can sell copies of the program or give it away to their customers as long as they sell it for not over $7 for the one disk. (We don't want people paying $50 or $75 for a copy of the program.) 6. This software may be placed on bulletin boards. 7. Individuals (not business) may use this program for balancing a non business checking account for free. UPDATE AND SERVICE POLICY Accounting Programs are different from other programs in that due to changes in tax rates and tax laws you need a new program almost every year, especially if you are using it for payroll. You can keep using the same word processor for the rest of your life. Next year the IRS will probably change the W2 Forms or the 1099 Forms, or a change in the tax law will make all 1986 accounting programs obsolete in 1987. Unfortunately, many people have spent hundreds of dollars on accounting software only to discover that they have to spend one or two hundred dollars more every year for updates and/or support. Even with DAC-ACCOUNTING and DAC-PAYROLL, the most reasonable accounting package available, they want you to pay $50 per year per package for support plus $22.50 for each payroll update and $7.50 for each accounting update. You have to pay $50 per package just to have the right to call for support and receive notice of the updates. You have to spend $100 for support even if you may not use it, but like most people you are probably going to spend the hundred dollars just in case a problem comes up and you need help. So even though their original cost is $69 for DAC-ACCOUNTING and $49 for DAC-PAYROLL, you could end up paying over $150 each year for support and updates. We charge only $20 for updates. If you pay the $49 registration fee you will receive notices of major updates. If we find a major bug we send the update to registered users for free. We also charge $5.00 per phone call of less then ten minutes and $5.00 for every ten minutes thereafter. You have to be a registered user to call for support unless you just received the program and are still evaluating it. There is no charge for support if you are calling concerning a bug in the program. We are not Certified Public Accountants nor tax layers and are not qualified to answer questions concerning tax laws. The new updates each year might contain the W2 tax forms, 1099 tax forms and a new payroll calculation if the tax laws change. Updates may be sent to correct a bug or error in the program. If you have used any other software you know that bugs in software are a fact of life. Lotus 123, Dbase II and even IBM's DOS are infamous for their bugs. While it is theoretically possible to design a perfect bugless program, it is also theoretically possible to design a car to last a lifetime or have a completely fair government but don't expect to see one. Most of the bugs are relatively minor and rarely happen. You should become a registered user so you can get the most debuged program we have. Bugs in accounting software can cause greater problems the bugs in other kinds of software. We may be adding new features to make the program easier to use and more powerful. PC ACCOUNTING II We also have a larger double-entry accounting system for larger businesses. It requires a hard disk. PC Accounting II contains Journals, Ledgers, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, and Running Inventory. The Payroll and the Secondary programs are the same for PC Accounting I and II. PC Accounting II is designed for medium size businesses. If you obtained this program on two disks you probably have a copy of PC Accounting II on the second disk. You may obtain a copy of PC accounting from us for $7. USER SUPPORTED SOFTWARE This software is distributed as a "user-supported program" also know as "Freeware". User-supported programs are copyrighted and the author requests a registration fee or donation for the program. The authors of user-supported programs allow users to make copies and share them with others with the request that satisfied users send them a donation. The advantages to user-supported software are: 1. You can try the program before you pay for it. No program can please everyone. 2. You can't get stuck with an expensive program you can't use. 3. The cost is lower because you are not paying for advertising, distributor markup and retailer markup. If you decide to use this program please send us the $49 registration fee. If you use this program you are legally and morally obligated to pay for it. If you send us the registration fee you will receive: 1. The source code for the programs in basic. 2. The latest version of this program. You may have an old version. 3. Notice of all updates. REGISTRATION ORDER FORM Please add me to your list of registered users. Send me the source code and the latest version of the program. Enclosed is a check for $49. I have read and agree to the license agreement and disclaimer of warranties. Your Name __________________________________ Your Address _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ The programs are only available on 360K DSDD disks. Optional: Send the 10 disk package mentioned below $32 Yes / No All programs require an IBM PC or Compatible with 192K Mail To : PPE Inc. Box 2027 Gaithersburg, MD 20879 Phone (301) 977-1489 OTHER SOFTWARE FROM PPE If you liked our accounting program try some of our other programs. You can receive all of the below programs on 10 diskettes for only $32. No other "donation" or registration fee is required for the below programs. Database Management System * Report Generator * Sorts on 3 fields * Global Field Changes * Relational * Written in Basic for easy Modification * 3 files open simultaneously * Transfer Data between files * 14 Ways to calculate fields * Global Field Changes * Customizable Screens * Retrieve on Conditions * Not recommended for computer novices * Requires IBM or Microsoft Basic Spreadsheet * 21 ways to calculate numbers or write your own subroutine * Source Code given * Full cursor control * Automatic Recalculation * Numbers and Text may be placed anywhere on the screen Expert System Inference Engine * Design your own expert system * Diagnoses Multiple Solutions * Assign probability with rules * Detects Contradictory Evidence * Explanation of Reasoning * Accepts unknown input * Intelligent Search Pattern with Manual Override * Logic Path through subcategories shown Decision Support * Helps you make better decisions faster * Your decisions look and are well thought out * Makes decision making easier like word processing make typing easier * Brainstorming Techniques * 96 page printed manual Near Typeset Quality Printing * Requires a letter quality printer with Diablo 630 escape codes and Wordstar * Variable letter spacing * Individual letter spacing with 8,000 combination look up table * Right justification * Micro Centering * See the insert that tells how to print the manual for a sample of the typesetting program's type. Plus 7500 word Vocabulary Builder, Typing Teacher,and Math Teacher * Most of the Manuals are on Diskette Trademarks : The following names contained in the manual are trademarks of their manufacturers: PC Accounting, IBM, Microsoft DAC, Dome Accounting, Lotus, Dbase