ACCPAC launches new Simply Accounting 2004

ACCPAC Africa, a subsidiary of ACCPAC International, part of The Sage Group, plc, announced today the South African release of Simply Accounting 2004 Basic and Simply Accounting 2004 PRO, new versions of the award-winning accounting program for small businesses.

Simply Accounting 2004 Basic gives small businesses a complete accounting system, and e-commerce features, for as little as R895. Simply Accounting 2004 PRO provides these same business management features and adds multi-user, multi-currency, time and billing, and a range of other advanced capabilities for as little as R1 995.

"Simply Accounting simply gets better and better every year," said Ann Cumming, Product Marketing Manager for Simply Accounting at ACCPAC Africa. "Our development team has tackled the issues that small businesses and the accounting community have told us are most important to them, including ease of use especially for the beginning user while supporting an ever more powerful feature set."

Simply Accounting 2004 also addresses local business requirements such as the ability to e-mail forms in PDF format as well as being able to record a client's VAT number on their invoice, both of which are proposed for legislation by the South Africa Revenue Service.

"There is tremendous potential in the South African market for low cost, powerful, easy-to-use accounting software," says Cumming. "With Simply Accounting 2004, we've brought that unique combination to South African businesses."

A major upgrade from previous versions, Simply Accounting 2004 builds even further on the product's strengths in usability and reporting. Among the dozens of new features and enhancements in Simply Accounting 2004 are:

Simply Accounting 2004 versions offer enhancements throughout that make tasks even easier and faster to manage. The enhanced user interface now offers an optional "second layer", providing users with two distinct views to the accounting system. The new interface layer is designed especially for new users, further simplifying navigation by providing quick access to common functions such as sales quotes, sales orders, sales invoices and receipts, as well as a new "How Do I?" help section for quick self-service support. Users can easily switch between the two available interfaces and operate with either depending on their personal preference.

In addition, data search enhancements now make it easier to find critical information such as invoice numbers, cheque numbers and customer information. Other usability enhancements include a redesigned account reconciliation process with streamlined setup, the ability to "lock" fiscal periods to prevent transactions from being erroneously applied.

Simply Accounting 2004 includes new functionality to give users more options for managing transactions. Simply Accounting 2004 PRO handles an unlimited number of price lists, enabling businesses to easily maintain separate pricing for preferred customers and create special "sale" price lists. In both the Basic and PRO versions, prepaid sales orders can now be accepted, and credit cards can be accepted for receipts. Credit card receipts can also be linked to bank accounts. The popular Automatic Adjusting Entries feature has been expanded and is now available in the payments and receipts journals, enabling users to quickly make changes to data while the software does all the proper accounting entries in the background.

Reporting in Simply Accounting 2004 has been updated to give users tighter integration of financial reports with MS-Excel, more options to access data, and overall refinements to on-screen presentation. For example, financial statements can now be "dropped" into Excel, with formulas and calculations included, with a single mouse click on the Simply Accounting toolbar.

More date selection options are available for aging and inventory reports, enabling users to report on more granular data. All reports also benefit from redesigned on-screen presentation and the ability to tailor the appearance of reports to specific user preferences.

To help new users get up and running with confidence, free setup support is provided for new users of Simply Accounting 2004 PRO. Free setup includes 30-day setup technical telephone support.

Simply Accounting 2004 Basic and Simply Accounting 2004 PRO are available in SA for R895 and R1 995, respectively. Both products are available directly from ACCPAC by calling 0800 201 463, or from your local software consultant, or from Incredible Connection and CNA branches countrywide. To get a full listing of Simply Accounting resellers, visit www.accpac.co.za.