October, 1986 AMIGAZINE! RAGS TO RICHES 4.0 (Ledger, Receivables, Payables) A Review by Donna Moran (A Business Owner's Viewpoint) One problem that most new computers share is the lack of software available upon the computer's release. The Amiga is no exception. As the proud owner of an Amiga, and also the owner of a retail outlet for Amiga software, I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of an accounting software package I could use to keep my business's books as well as recommend to my customers. Rags To Riches is the first accounting package for the Amiga I have had the opportunity to review that fits this billing. As a whole, I found Rags To Riches to be a well done, easy to use program and I can recommend it (with a few reservations) for the small business owner. Before continuing any further though, I feel one point should be made here. Rags To Riches is NOT an accounting tutorial program. If accounting is unfamiliar to you, you will have problems with this accounting program as well as most other accounting programs on most any other computer. A common misconception is that adding an accounting program to your software library will automatically turn the owner into a full fledged accountant. This is no more true than the ownership of a little black bag turning the owner into a medical doctor. Rags To Riches is a tool. Used as such, and by a person with the proper qualifications, it does a fairly good job of easing the task of financial record keeping for a small business. Rags To Riches comes handsomely packaged with a spiral bound manual. That's about the most favorable statement I can make concerning the product's documentation. Chang Labs also markets Rags To Riches for MS/DOS and Macintosh machines. The manuals reflect this in that they seem to be geared towards the MS/DOS product. To accomodate the Amiga version Chang Labs also packages an "Amiga Users Guide" with the standard manual. In short order you will find yourself jumping between both of these manuals trying to decide what part of what manual to read when. I feel the product's ease of use could be greatly enhanced with the publication of a manual just for the Amiga version. Rags To Riches 4.0 comes with two dozen sets of books already created for various small business. These templates consist of retail as well as service type businesses. While you will probably not find a set of books suitable for your use, studying the templates can make creating your own set of books easier. Rags To Riches is a double entry bookkeeping system that consists of a Ledger, Accounts Receivable, and Accounts Payable. Each module can be used separately if so desired. Memory expansion totaling 512 K is a must. The Receivables module will allow you to print invoices and statements on regular pinfeed paper as well as standard forms purchased through Deluxe Computer Forms. The Payables module allows the printout of checks on check forms available through Deluxe Computer Forms. Rags To Riches allows the user to define the length of accounting cycle. Thus, your accounting cycle can consist of one, three, six or whatever months. Rags To Riches provides you with the ability to print out a variety of reports. These include trial balance, transaction journals, income statement, balance sheet, etc. Two words of caution are advisable here. First make sure the proper dates are set in the options menu or the information you find in your printout may not be at all what you thought you had requested. Second, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP! This program's weakest spot seems to be right here. My experiences found that I can expect a major crash (total system reset) for about 15% of the printouts I request! If you have saved all your just entered data prior to the crash, (printout request) it is just a major nusiance. If you haven't saved your new data, it can become a huge pain as well as a huge waste of time. A point must be made here concerning support. After encountering these problems, I made a call to Chang Labs on their toll free 800 line. I received prompt courteous assistance and the promise of updates just as soon as they received my original disks. I found the primary screen used in Rags To Riches very pleasing to the eye and information filled. It is colorful and easy to read. Each category (income, expense, networth etc.) is shown in a different color which makes it easier to keep track of what you are viewing and working with. The screen is divided into three sections. These sections are the Display Window, the Entry Window and the Summary Window. At any given time you can see just how your latest entry affects your total business picture by glancing at the Summary Window. The Summary Window also doubles as a help screen when you reqest the online help available. While the mouse can make some programs easier to use, I found it actually a major nuisance in using Rags To Riches. Happily, the program allows for input from either mouse or keyboard and you can actually use a combination of the two (as long as you remember how many times to click the mouse and where!). Rags To Riches is not a copy protected program so backups can and should be freely made. It IS a multasking program so you have the ability to run your accounting program at the same time you run (for example) your wordprocessing program. Although Rags To Riches does have it's share of bugs to be worked out yet, it does provide a small business owner with an Amiga a way to automate the accounting system. It would be nice if all new products were released error free. Such is not the case in the computer world. The bugs found in my review of this accounting system do not affect the actual data manipulation and as such, can be worked around until further updates become available. Rags To Riches is available from your local Amiga software dealer or direct from Chang Labs, 5300 Stevens Creek Blvd., San Jose, CA 95129. Each module retails for $199.95. The three pack (ledger, payables, receivables) is available for $499.50. The version reviewed for this article was 4.0. Future reviews will appear here in AMIGAZINE! on updates as the updates are made available. Please address mail c/o AMIGAZINE!, P.O. Box 9231, Bakersfield, CA 93389.