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. RAGS TO RICHES 4.0 (Ledger, Receivables, Payables) A Review by S. Louise Worby CPA (An Accountant's Viewpoint) The review of this product was approached in the same manner as one in the office for a small business client. There are certain basic features that any accounting program must have to gain the approval of the accountant. The following time schedule was set up for the review to allow ample, but not excessive, time to explore each of the features of the three modules: 3 hours to read the documentation 3 hours to run the demo/tutorial on the computer 6-12 hours to set up accounts, input two months live transactions, printout the reports and do a closing DOCUMENTATION ------------- Three printed items were packed with each of the modules. 1. The Owner's Manual - a half page size, plastic spine book, 120 pages. 2. An Amiga User's Guide - another half page size, staple bound book, 40 pages. 3. A order form for printed computer checks and invoices. The Owner's manuals appear to be typeset and professionally done. There are numerous examples and no obvious errors. Included in the appendices are examples of all the printed reports and a reference of the command tree. It is a pity that the reference does not include a short description of the command function. The big problem is the manuals are written for a MS-DOS computer and not the Amiga. The Amiga user's guide gives all the Amiga comands and particulars that should have been in the manual. ---------------------------------------- You have to keep flipping back and forth between the two manuals. ---------------------------------------- Additionally, the user guide is the same in all three modules. This adds to the confusion. The manual is written in Plain English, so you do not have to be a programer to read it. There is some space devoted to what the publisher calls accounting basics and sample transactions, BUT there is nothing in the manual concerning error trapping, error recovery or system crash recovery. It would be wonderful to have the perfect operator and the perfect system so there would be no need for these. DEMO/TUTORIAL ------------- All the examples in the tutorials worked on the demo data as shown. The only major difficulties arose from the date system. Both the month end date and the posting today's date are set under files/options. The items displayed or printed change with the month end date, which can also be set to display all. If you have a clock or always have the preferences date set, today's date uses it. This date is also called up automatically for the entries. You can also change it on any one entry. One pet peeve here, they want the whole year entered, ie: 00/00/1986. Why not just two digits like the rest? Included on the Ledger disk are numerious master charts of account, called templates, which can be transfered over to be used for your own set of books without re-entering them. Unfortunately, they are rather skimpy and incomplete. This was surprising, considering the long set in the demo. STARTING FROM SCRATCH --------------------- A small sample set of accounts and two months of entries were input into each module under controlled conditions. This was to allow for one period closing and one year end closing. Most small businesses will start up with the receivables, as this is their biggest headache. It takes up a lot of their time and if they do not get the money in, they do not stay in business! For this reason, the first sample set is receivables. RECEIVABLES ----------- The manual recommends to save your files to disk often. It needs to say - save after every entry when setting up new customer accounts. Three times customer accounts were set up and only on the -------------------------------- Three times everything was lost. -------------------------------- fourth try, with repeated saves, were the beginning customer accounts finally set up. This should not happen to a dog, let alone a poor accountant who has been working with computers only ten years! Although the advertising does not clearly state this, the Receivables module is both an invoicing program and a invoice or open item receivable program. This means you can print up your invoices for items sold and they are automatically posted to the customer's account. When you print out the customer's statement at the end of the month, or any period of your choice, all unpaid items, from any period, will be shown. This also means that if you only need a balance forward program, you will have to do some unnecessary work. You have to post the receipts to each customer account by invoice paid or the item will not clear out of the account. There are a couple of desirable features missing from the invoicing portion of the program. Sales tax cannot be computed automatically on the total of the items and added to the bottom of the invoice along with shipping charges. These items must be computed separately and added just like any other item sold. There is also a problem with the ease that multiple items on an invoice are posted. After the first item is posted the screen calls back up the same customer and invoice number for tapping it in again. Items can be reversed out fairly easily but will still show on the invoice printout unless the same invoice number is not used for any other item. This is due to part of their audit trail system. Part of some cash control systems include numbered receipts. This program does not have any place to put the number except the memo description or in place of the invoice number. If you use the spot for the invoice number, the invoice never gets cleared. If you use the memo spot, the credit gets posted on the invoice itself and does not show on the statement. Either way you lose. Finally, there is no printout with all information for each customer that is shown on the statement, except the statement itself. This means that for proper control, you will need to keep a copy of each statement, either a carbonized copy or a duplicate run, taking up a lot of storage for the printouts. LEDGER ------ The Ledger module has some nice features for the small business owners who keep their own records or who has a trusted computer operator. There are no pass word levels so everything is exposed. There is instant results on all transactions. The screen is divided into three sections. The whole bottom part is for input, while the top section is split, half for the accounts and half for a summary of all classes of accounts and net income. The summary is a nice touch. It changes to debit credit summary for a particular account. It flips back and forth very fast with a mouse. This is true in all modules. All commands can be invoked from the keyboard if you prefer it to the mouse. You can also change between a current view, a quarter to date view, and a year to date view. Going through the demo on these views for assets and liabilities was very upsetting. For instance the cash in bank should be the same regardless if it is a current view or a year to date view. ------------------------ This problem disappeared ------------------------ when the sample data was input. Evidentley the beginning balances were set up wrong on the demo. There is no real guidance on this in the manual. One major problem that will not disappear is that a printout of the general ledger is not available. Imagine a disk crash in November and you are talking to your C.P.A. - Whataya mean, you have to reconstruct the general ledger for the whole year, we finished everything but the current month! This is another area not covered by the manual. There is no flexibility in any of the printed reports, what is in the manual is what you are going to get. The total on the income statement is going to say Estimated Profits even if you want it to say Net Income. PAYABLES -------- The Payables module has two super features. One, you can preview the checks before printing them. Unfortunately, you have to do it via a printout. A screen preview would have been so much nicer. Two, the system accommodates hand written checks. Many small businesses operate out of their hip pocket so this is a very necessary feature. Also, this is the only way to make partial payments with this program. One missing feature is the ability to have the 10 - 30 day discount computed automatically. CONCLUSIONS ----------- These three modules have a lot going for them. One thing not mentioned above is the departure from tradition in the use of account and customer number. All the search and entries are by the account or customer name. If you are not number orientated this might be a real boon for you. A small problem with this is that there is no error checking for duplicate accounts. There is also the ability to add a single key fast search to heavy use accounts and customers. The programs seem to be somewhat unstable, especially the receivables module. The system crashed several times during the sample input and one time the screen changed colors so that it was unreadable. Another time, a save to the backup disk was not saved, even though it appeared as if it had been saved. There is a lot of flexibility in the viewing of the accounts on the screen and the periods that can be viewed. This very flexibility can cause problems in the control of the output. The ease of multiple entries can also cause problems in the control of the accounts. Rigid controls outside of the computer need to be developed and maintained on key accounts along with adhering to a systematic schedule of backups. This set of programs is not for everyone. If you need the special features it has to offer and have the discipline to control it, then by all means buy it. If you do not need these features or cannot maintain control on your hand set of books and accounts, then these programs are not for you. ABOUT THE AUTHOR S. Louise Worby is a practicing Certified Public Accountant with her own firm in Bakersfield, California. She is a self-proclaimed hacker and has been involved with microcomputers and Commodore computers for the past ten years. Besides owning an Amiga, she owns one of almost every computer ever released by Commodore Business Machines.