The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Pastel Partner 4.1 Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au

Pastel Partner is an accounting package aimed at medium-sized businesses. Like most of its competitors, it is available in several versions, so you only pay for the features you actually need. The basic program, Bookkeeper, includes:

• General Ledger
• Cashbook
• Customers
• Invoicing
• Suppliers
• Report Writer

• Inventory
• Purchase and Sales Orders
• Quotations.

Point-of-Sale and Manufacturing include all the functionality of Accounting with the addition of Point-of-Sale and Bill of Materials respectively. An Ultra version has the full range of features, and network support for up to ten users is available with all versions. If you need payroll capability, Pastel Payroll is available as a separate program.

Having reviewed its junior off-shoot, Pastel SOHO Accounting (PC Update, July 1997), I was interested to see how Pastel Partner compared. My verdict is pretty much what you would expect: Pastel Partner has a great deal more functionality and flexibility while being a bit more difficult to use. Nevertheless, it shouldn't offer too painful an upgrade to most users.

How it works

To help you set up your accounts, the Setup Assistant walks you through each step. If you accept any of the pre-defined charts of accounts, the Assistant whizzes you through setup in 15 minutes or less.

Pastel classifies transactions by entry type, such as General Journal, Sales Journal, Sales Credits. You can create up to 32 entry types. You might choose, for instance, to create separate entry types for customer invoices and customer credits. Alternatively, you could process both invoices and credit notes through a single entry type.

You can establish as many as 999 main general ledger accounts, and further break down each account into 999 sub-accounts. You can quickly zoom to underlying records from high-level accounts; for example, click on a customer balance to see the transactions that make up the balance and then click on a transaction to see the actual source document. Pastel supports up to ten bank accounts per company, and enables you to create as many companies as you like.

By default, Pastel uses batch processing, placing new records in a temporary file until merged into the main accounts. Until this happens, you can easily edit any transactions; after merging, any amendments require adjusting journal entries or credit notes. Pastel uses separate batches for each transaction type, and you can merge batches with the main accounts either individually or collectively. If you prefer, you can choose to use online processing, where ledgers update immediately.

There is no month-end procedure, and you can post transactions to any month in the current or previous financial years (depending upon your access rights), mixing months in any batch. You still have to invoke a year-end procedure to prepare the accounts for a new financial year, but this is largely automatic. Pastel accepts post-dated transactions, and will determine when they become current and therefore require posting to the ledgers.

Unlike SOHO Accounting, Pastel has no Transaction Assistant to hold your hand while you work, but the System Navigator, a graphical shortcut menu of Pastel's functions, is the same. You can work in Pastel using either the System Navigator, the toolbar or the drop-down menus. You'll have to choose between the System Navigator and the toolbar, however, since you can't use both at the same time (the menus are always available). Individual users can configure the toolbar to suit themselves, with up to 20 icons permitted on the screen at any one time.

Most input screens look much like their real life paper equivalents, and Pastel automatically completes some lines for you; for example, enter an inventory item code on an invoice and the rest of the line completes automatically. You can create new control accounts on the fly - add a new supplier, for instance, while you're creating a purchase order.

Other features

Pastel offers pretty well all the standard features found in other mid-range accounting packages, so I'll briefly list only a few features of special note:

• You can nominate up to three prices for each inventory item (e.g. retail, wholesale, dealer), with current and future prices specified for each customer type. Additionally, you can specify sale prices for specific date ranges
  
• As well as allocating customers a price list, you can nominate special prices for each customer for individual inventory items, with up to three volume-based price breaks, and expiry dates set for all prices. Special prices take precedence over price lists, while sale prices take precedence over special prices. You can override prices (access rights permitting), while invoicing
  
• If you have foreign customers, you can set up price lists for them in their own currency to avoid charging variable amounts as exchange rates fluctuate
  
• You can process sales and purchase transactions in foreign currencies, with up to 16 foreign currencies of your choice supported
  
• Pastel can create consolidated companies for reporting purposes using multiple company accounts
  
• You can specify interest terms for each customer and suppress trivial amounts of interest by specifying minimum interest charges
  
• Pastel supports multiple delivery addresses for customers while maintaining a central billing address for statements
  
• The Manufacturing module includes the ability to link inventory items under a single inventory code. You could, for example, sell kits assembled from individual inventory items or display the various procedures involved in a course of medical treatment. Linking items doesn't affect your ability to invoice the individual inventory items, and you can link individual items as many times as you like
  
• Pastel supports a maximum of 30 tax rates, with date validation ensuring that out-of-date tax rates are not used
  
• A troublesome backup routine which has been dogging Pastel for some time is now fixed, with a more robust PKZIP-compatible backup procedure available.

Training and Support

One of the most critical aspects of business accounting packages is the easy availability of training and support. Think of the resulting chaos if you encounter an insurmountable problem with your customer accounts just as you're about to invoice them (good for the customers but not for you!) and you can't get through to Technical Support. Pastel offers 30 days free telephone support (Sydney number). When this expires, you can choose to pay an annual support fee or a per-minute charge whenever you need assistance. As for training, Tailored Solutions run Pastel training courses in Melbourne, with Pastel consultants doing the same in country Victoria.

Assessment

Pastel Partner is not the best choice for someone not familiar with accounting procedures. It is, after all, aimed at medium-sized businesses, where the expectation is that the accounting system is administered (or at least, installed and overseen) by professionally qualified persons. It has an extensive range of features, far more than listed here, and a high degree of customisability. If you need more flexibility than is available within the main programs, you can customise Pastel further, or develop additional modules and front-ends using the Partner Developer's Toolkit (a separate product).

Pastel Partner appears to be a solid contender amongst mid-range accounting packages, with a competitive price, flexible features (and plenty of them), as well as an established training and support structure.

Reprinted from the March 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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