Accounts Spectrum

Personal Computer News

Features 4/5

Documentation 2/5

Performance 3/5

User Interface 2/5

Reliability 3/5

Value For Money 2/5

David Janda

NAME: Accounts APPLICATION: Preparation of limited company accounts from incomplete records. SYSTEM: Spectrum 48K PRICE: £35 PUBLISHER: Hestacrest - [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Basic/machine code OTHER VERSIONS: ZX-81 16K OUTLETS: Mail Order. LTD VIABILITY? David Janda finds there are a few taxing problems with Hestacrest's Accounts for the Spectrum. Software has been available on cassette for the small businessman and accountant for some time now. Sales ledgers, purchase ledgers, payroll - you name it, you can get it. But it can be a nuisance having to buy a separate program to handle each individual task, then trying to find a way to integrate them into one system. So more and more packages are popping up with a little of everything thrown in. Accounts is one such package, and it sets out to provide the small businessman and accountant with a system to aid in the preparation of accounts from incomplete records for limited companies. FEATURES Since Accounts could be the most expensive piece of software you buy for the Spectrum, it is worth looking in detail at what it has to offer. There are nine main options open to the user: 1- input initial details, 2 - amend account codes, 3 - prime entry routines, 4 - produce profit and loss account, 5 - produce balance sheet, 6 - produce nominal ledger, 7 - produce trial balance, 8 - SAVE (with data intact), 9 - start new accounting period. Option 1 is the choice to make when you use the package for the first time, to set up your company name, account date, and specify if you want VAT to be covered. You have the option of entering up to five different VAT rates, and these rates, as well as any of the other information, can be amended at any time. Altogether, there are 65 account codes, of which 47 can be amended. Codes 1-5 cover sales, 6-10 cost of sales, 11-13 other income such as rent, interest and sundries, while 14-47 are expense codes. These expense codes fall under four headings - Administration, Establishment, Selling, and Financial. After selecting one of the options - say, cash payments - the account code is entered, together with the VAT code if used. You then enter the amount, and have the option of printing batch and cumulative totals. The system can produce a profit and loss account and balance sheet, together with supporting schedules, and like any other part of the system, this can be printed out. But neither profit and loss amount nor nominal ledger can be displayed or printed unless the opening balances and journals are zero, and the cash and bank transfers are equal. After every prime entry routine, the cumulative totals of the transactions are transferred to the nominal ledger accounts - the heart of the system. You can then choose to print out all the accounts, or parts of them selectively. Quite a few features are missing from this package. You cannot include budget figures alongside the actual figures, and this facility would have been very 'useful. The package's limited ability to break down entries is more of a problem. If my accountant spotted a dubious looking entry, he would have to trudge through all the printout I had produced. To be able to at least enter the date of an entry would be helpful. And I would have expected to see some security features - say, a user code routine. This is a real weakness. PRESENTATION The cassette is clearly marked, and the program LOADS without any trouble - but the documentation lets down this package. All the instructions are printed on the cassette sleeve, with only very brief details on how to LOAD the program and SAVE the data. The description of the package is almost as brief. All you are given is a description of the facilities and a few notes on how the system works. IN USE When the program is LOADed, you are invited to 'Press any key'. You then get the main menu, where you select your option from the nine on offer. The program works in black and white, and the screen layouts are of a very high quality and really well designed. I found setting up something of a problem, especially as there are no help files, but the main problem lay with my relative unfamiliarity with accounting rather than with the program itself. More documentation with plenty of examples would have helped here. The menus are short, but cannot be avoided even after you have reached a high level of expertise. You just have to plough through them every time. The speed of calculations is impressive, and I found them very accurate - this I believe is due to the machine code routines at the beginning of the program. VERDICT Hestacrest has not made any false claims about this package. It does what it says it will do on the cassette sleeve, and it does it well enough. The trouble is that I didn't feel that what it does do is sufficient. In truth, I was not all that impressed with it as an accounts package. Trying to combine as many features as possible in a single package is Hestacrest's approach, but I don't feel it entirely succeeds. You should also hear in mind that SAVEing all your accounts data on cassette uncoded can be a risky business. And I must say that the Spectrum was never designed to be used for business applications. Even the best software in the world would not be able to alter that fact.