Pastel SOHO
(with Pastel Payroll 2.10)

From: Pastel (02) 9957 4010
URL: http://www.pastel.co.za
List Price: $249 SOHO only, $399 SOHO + 20 employee Payroll.
System Requirements: Windows 95, NT or 3.1, 4Mb RAM (8 Mb recommended), 3.5in FDD, VGA 256 color monitor recommended, 15Mb hard disk space.
Support: 30 days free on registration. Ongoing support programs available.

Ratings
General Ledger:
Payroll:
Inventory:
Invoicing:
Reporting:
Overall:

Setup

After installing SOHO from its four 3.5in disks, you are ready to set up the program. Unfortunately, reading the manual at this stage is confusing. Setup isn't covered until Chapter 4 and by the time you reach this, you'll have read an introduction to double entry accounting and an explanation of batch processing -- heavy weather for a new user. In all, the manual is poorly organised and in many places only a duplicate of the help screens.

The setup assistant steps you through entering your company details. You can select only the standard accounts required for basic processing or choose to model your accounts on those from one of 19 other business types. Some of the tax choices you'll be faced with show the South African origins of the program and it is perhaps the least customised for the Australian market of the reviewed programs. However, the process is simple and straightforward and will be done in 10 minutes.

SOHO's interface needs some work. By default, it requires you to enter transactions in batches and as each entry type, sales, purchases etc, is a different batch, each must be separately updated. Unless you update all batches you'll get warning messages in other areas of the program and you have to go back and do it. You can switch to online processing although the manual doesn't recommend it. However, one bonus is the transaction assistant which, on the basis of your answers to its questions, posts transaction details for you.

Another quibble is that SOHO's zoom tool appears inconsistently throughout the program and often it's difficult to tell that using it is an option. SOHO would do well to replace the zoom tool with more obvious drop-down list boxes.

SOHO's backup is a real weakness. Rather than providing its own backup, SOHO attempts to hook into your DOS or Windows backup program, with varying success. For users unfamiliar with using backup, this could end up in frustration. Given the importance of backing up your data, it's of concern that a reliable backup program isn't built-in.

Invoicing

SOHO offers a single invoice screen which looks like the paper equivalent. These are relatively easy to create and print and, like QuickBooks you can only invoice items from the item list -- you can't create freeform text entries. It is quite easy to add customers and items on the fly from the invoice screen. There is, however, no ability to create pending invoices for quotes and estimates like you can in the other packages.

However, SOHO doesn't make it particularly easy to enter customer and item numbers. If you type the first few letters and then zoom, you're taken to the top of the appropriate list, not to a position relative to the letters you have typed. The correct procedure is to zoom first, then type the first few letters. Worse still, if you key in an incorrect code, you get an error and must start over. The quick fill options in QuickBooks and the M.Y.O.B products are just that bit smarter.

SOHO documents are customisable via the document designer which exists alongside SOHO. It, too, is slow but fairly easy to use. However, we had difficulties using the design we created, as the manual and help screens indicated filenames that weren't exactly the same as appeared on the screen and the saving instructions were, at best, confusing. A call to the help line clarified the issue and the customised report printed.

There is a range of built-in reports on aging, customer balances and transactions and you can chart sales by customer or salesperson for the current year compared with the previous year. However, some of these reports are slow to produce and a switch from viewing an invoice report in full page view to page width view, for example, takes five seconds to complete.

Overall, SOHO lacks the snappy response of the other programs and, even with a small amount of data, its performance is disconcertingly slow.

Inventory

SOHO has a two-level method of creating inventory items. The first is the 'group' which is the basic type of inventory, for example, for a service station, oils and fuel would be two groups. The second level is the actual inventory item, for example, two stroke oil and super fuel would be two items. Every item must be a member of a group in order to be allocated to the correct inventory accounts and to receive other group defaults.

Presumably, the aim is to make inventory management easier. In practice it makes it overly complex and hard to use. On the plus side there is a good 'Activity' tab which allows you to see movement in inventory, for example, purchases and sales on a month by month basis etc. There is also a sophisticated price adjustment function to increase all prices in a range by a percentage amount. You can elect to change all the inventory in a group or do it item by item.

In summary, SOHO's great ambitions in inventory control fail for lack of a user-friendly interface. Weighing up what you put in against the reporting it gives you means that SOHO isn't much more sophisticated than the other packages and it's way more complex.

Reporting

The Pastel report engine is fast and the output to screen clear (in contrast to its lack lustre screen performance elsewhere). However, there is nothing exceptional in the reports it produces; there is less variety than M.Y.O.B offers and less flexibility than QuickBooks. Annoyingly, if you're using batch processing, you'll stumble over outstanding postings in some reports and to obtain a 'drill down' report you must specify an account, customer or supplier name -- there's no list to choose from.

Payroll

Pastel payroll is a cut-down version of WinPay. You'll find setting up an employee is straightforward and comprehensive covering all areas of a standard pay. Linked areas such as cost centres and pay line types are accessible via the right mouse button and Pastel's payroll toolbar is easy to use.

Individual pays can be paid into a maximum of three different bank accounts or paid by a combination of cash and bank payment. Curiously, even when your separate allocations total 100 percent, Pastel still wants to know where the balance should be allocated to. In addition, an employee's banking details are not screened so you can enter nonsensical data in some fields, for example, it will accept ZZZZZ as a BSB entry. This is of concern as this information is ultimately used for electronic banking transfers. Quick Payroll and M.Y.O.B are more intelligent in this area.

Pastel's payrun function is well designed and easy to use. However, the pay period information is not visible on the screen, so to check you must go back to the menu. It's also hard to keep track of where you are in a pay as there are no prompts to indicate a pay is finalised and for which employee.

Pastel's reports are good -- quick and easy to read. However, we wonder if it is necessary to see the myriad of filter screen options each time you generate a report. Curiously, the Group Certificates are located in a menu called Batch Update, but once you've located them, they do the job and look good.

In summary, Pastel's payroll is a complete package that will handle a small to medium payroll. It is fast and error free. Its big downfall is keeping the user fully informed of what stage they are up to and it would be easy to lose track, especially if you use non-standard or ad hoc pay periods.

By Helen Bradley and Kurt Best

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