Accounting Xpert

Accounting practices that prepare financial statements for clients have long needed software that treats each client as a separate set of books. Accounting Xpert Enterprise Edition is a family of products for professional accountants and for small to mid-sized businesses, and its client write-up module sits at the center. The maker describes it as a complete integrated system made of write-up, bank reconciliation, payroll and a module for W2 and 1099 forms, and says it can handle virtually any type of client and any size of practice.

Client write-up and the general ledger

The write-up module works without monthly closings. Transactions can be edited at any time with full audit control, and a mistake can be reversed by unposting a journal, correcting it and posting it again, so ledgers stay free of adjusting entries. Journal entry shows several transactions at once, which helps catch errors on the screen, and each transaction carries a description of up to 70 characters. Up to 999 user-defined journals can be set up, including recurring and reversing entries. Check numbers can be incremented or duplicated automatically, and a check split across several ledger accounts shows its net amount.

Entries can be made by payee, which avoids memorizing account numbers, and accounts can be added or looked up during entry. Date-sensitive transactions go automatically into the right twelve or thirteen accounting periods, prior period adjustments can be made at any time and prior year statements update themselves.

Reports and schedules

A general ledger can be printed for any date, including earlier years, for a range of accounts and in check number or date order. Reports can be sent to the screen, the printer, a text file or a PDF file, or emailed or faxed. Up to 9,999 financial reports can be designed, or the maker's predefined formats modified, with control over underlining, titles, totals and fonts. Up to 9,999 supporting schedules can be created for each company, for items such as a funds statement or a rearranged balance sheet. Budget reports compare actual with budgeted amounts for variance analysis.

Bank reconciliation and payroll

Reconciling against the bank works for any number of accounts, and the transactions either come from journal entries or are keyed in directly. The After The Fact payroll module derives payroll history from the journal entries and prints the federal year-end forms W2, 1099, 940 and 941, together with state unemployment returns. A separate W2 and 1099 module can be run alongside the write-up or alone, and it prints to laser and dot matrix printers.

Working with other software

The product interfaces with Microsoft Word for compilation letters and with Excel for charts and graphs, and imports data from Quicken and QuickBooks. A duplicate-a-company feature sets up new companies instantly, and group and user security can allow or block access to selected programs. Backup and restore tools for each client are built in, and the maker says new operators become productive with little training.