Well, on to Peachtree and accounting. Let's start with tax filing deadlines. This IRS has a nifty calendar they publish which shows small business deadlines. September has some things going on. Click here to see what they have.

Using Peachtree From Home

Let's talk about using Peachtree from a remote location - like your home. Wouldn't you like to enter invoices or receipts from your own den instead of coming into the office each day. It doesn't have to be everyday, maybe just one morning each week. Hang out at home with your pajamas on and enter Peachtree transactions and review and print reports. Maybe you don't want this for yourself, but how about your staff? Could your bookkeeper spend one day at home and save gasoline and commuter time? Or maybe you're thinking of opening a branch office in another city.

Sneaker-Net The above are good reasons to use Peachtree from a remote location. If you want to more ahead with this idea, there are several different approaches that may be employed. The simplest and cheapest method has the unofficial name: "sneaker-net". Sneaker-net means that the person who is going to work at home makes a backup at the end of the day. When at home and ready to work, Peachtree is opened on the home computer and a restore is done of the day's data. When all entries and reports are completed at home, another backup is made. When this employee reaches work the next day, a restore is done using the backup that was made at home. Backups should be done to either Zip Drive or some type of USB memory. Click here to see more on flash memory.

The biggest draw back of the sneaker-net approach is the risk that something will go wrong with the timing of backups and restores, or that the wrong backup set gets restored. Suppose the bookkeeper works all night on company bookkeeping, then is out sick the next day. He or she stays home and forgets about the company restore. Mean while coworkers come into the office and begin to enter new transactions. The following day the bookkeeper who was out sick comes in and restores her data from two nights before. At this point all the work that coworkers did on the prior day is lost. This is not to say that the sneaker-net is so perilous that it should not be used. I've known companies where this method of allowing bookkeeping to be done at home has been used with great success for many years, but let's look at some other possibilities.

Remote Terminal Services Instead of sneaker-net, you might want to use Windows Server 2003 with Remote Terminal Services to obtain multi-user Peachtree access from a remote location. We'll talk about this method in greater detail in a future issue. For now, we'll just mention that this method requires the installation of a special operating system for the computer where the Peachtree data is stored. This alone means the cost to get started is likely be over $1,000.00. Click here to learn more about remote terminal services.

Peachtree Web Accounting You may not need as much power as Remote Terminal Services provides. Instead, something simpler like the Peachtree Web Accounting may work for you. Peachtree Web Accounting is not a replacement for your desktop accounting, but is an add on to it. Peachtree Web Accounting is a product that allows employees to work with the company accounting from remote locations.

Web Accounting is similar to the sneaker-net mentioned above in that there is a specific synchronizing process that must be consistently followed; but it is different from the sneaker-net in that data is stored at a private location on the Internet instead of on removable media. As with the sneaker net, if the accounting staff at the office does not synchronize their data at the start of each day, then they can be working without the data that was entered by off site employees.

There are some advantages of storing data on the Internet as Peachtree Web Accounting does compared to using removable media as with the sneaker-net. Because the synchronized data is on the Internet, it means that employees at various locations can independently sync their PCs and use the accounting data. This is quite different from sneaker-net where only those who took a backup disc home will have access to the data during the evening. Another advantage of Peachtree Web Accounting is that data will not be destroyed by someone forgetting to synchronize, then synchronizing later. Unlike sneaker-net, if the synchronizing is done at a later time, the data sets are blended with no loss of data.

The following example is for an employee who wants to work at home in the evening. Daytime remote use should be ok too, but be careful because the office data is only synchronized with the web periodically during the day. This means that the remote user is working with data that is one or more hours old. Also, office employees will not have access to entries that were made remotely until later when they synchronize.

Example of using Peachtree Web Accounting in a company with employees who want to work at home as well as at the office:
1. At the end of the day, the bookkeeper syncs the office PC with the web: data is copied to the web.
2. Everyone goes home.
3. Home users can now sync their home PCs with the web: office data is copied from the web onto the home PCs.
4. The home users can enter data and print reports as desired.
5. At the end of the evening, the home users should sync their PCs to the web: work done at home is transferred to the web.
6. Employees return to the office in the morning.
7. The bookkeeper syncs the office desktop PC with the web: work that has been done at employees homes is transferred from the web to the office PC.
8. During the day, everyone works just as they normally would at the office.

To use Peachtree Web Accounting you should have the latest version of Peachtree, a good Internet connection, and Internet Explorer v5.5 or better. The cost of this system is approximately $150/year for single user and $300/year for multi-user.

Peachtree Web Accounting is not to be confused with Peachtree's Internet Accounting package called ePeachtree. ePeachtree is an accounting system that resides totally on the Internet at all times. It is a different accounting system from Peachtree Complete or Peachtree Premium with different - though similar - capabilities.

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Thanks for reading. See you next month.

Jim Vogt Accountant and Consultant
Capitol Data, LLC
www.JVogt.com
866-837-8867