Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0

by Peachtree Software

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002S5WZ
• Item model number: PCW7-RT
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,428 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Whether your business sells products or services, Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0 has the accounting and business-management tools you need to get the job done. From basic accounting features--check writing, invoicing, and payroll--to advanced features--job costing, project tracking, and time and billing--Peachtree Complete has everything you need to do your business accounting.

From Winmag®

Peachtree's newest version of Peachtree Complete Accounting 7 adds some seemingly simple but much needed improvements to the user interface that dramatically improve your productivity.

Notable is Peachtree's improved reporting. Bring up an invoice and you can now see if the customer has made any payments. The new Financial Manager uses a tabbed window to display important balances in key accounts (cash, A/R, inventory, etc.), balance sheet figures (Income, Cost of Sales, Expenses, and Net Income), or ratios (such as Current Ratio) for the current date. You can even choose a historical date, though we'd have liked to graph some of these balances over time.

If you transfer accounting data to Excel (typically by brute force), you'll really love the Excel button on many screens that automatically transfers the data to a spreadsheet and opens Excel for you. Peachtree does a good job of text formatting, too. Other time savers: You can make global changes to prices based on a fixed amount or percent, and now you can change customer, vendor and inventory IDs while keeping historical info intact.

For new users anxious to get started (and not be bogged down with tedious chores up front), the New Company setup has new, more attractive graphics and fewer questions. All users can now customize more data screens (hiding a limited number of fields you don't use, such as Customer PO number or Ship Via on the Invoice screen).

PeachLink 2.0, included in the product, lets you turn your inventory into an e-commerce catalog of up to 1000 items easily. When hosted by a Harbinger, Peachtree's partner, for less than $50/month (a real steal) you can accept orders which then automatically adjusts your inventory balances. PeachLink 2.0 adds support of sales tax and shipping calculations.

If don't you need job costing, fixed assets, screen-level password security, or time and billing, you can get by with Peachtree Accounting 7.0. For absolute novices, QuickBooks is easier to learn. Peachtree however, is stronger in inventory, payroll, and job costing. Version 7 secures its place on our WinList.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful but not user friendly, April 30, 2000

By 

"flickjunkie" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0 (CD-ROM)

I have used Peachtree Accounting for about 5 years now. I am happy with it's capabilities, but it is not particularly user friendly. The interface is not at all intuitive and there is a lot of redundancy. It is a very mouse intense program (five mouse clicks to complete a task when two would have sufficed). The account reconciliation program for balancing your checkbook is cumbersome and difficult to use.

I have an MBA and a strong accounting background and it definitely helps in using this program. I think this is more of a useful tool for accountants or professional bookkeepers than your average entrepreneurial Joe running his own small business. For that type of user, I would probably recommend QuickBooks.

Peachtree is far superior for keeping track of inventory and its payroll features are excellent. It also has a job costing feature that I use that I don't think can be matched by any other software in its price range.

Overall, if you are an intermediate to expert computer user and have a strong knowledge of accounting, or do a lot of job costing or work with inventories, this is an excellent tool. But it is clearly not for everyone. If you don't need some of these features, or if you want the program to demystify accounting and make it easy, you might want to look for a product that is easier to use or more appropriate to your accounting needs.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Longtime User, September 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0 (CD-ROM)

I've been using computerized small business accounting systems since the early 1970's... After going into business for myself (in a field unrelated to computers) I was reduced to a manual system until I found an excellent DOS system for the PC - a system that went through several owners, eventually winding up as the ACCPAC system from Computer Associates. ACCPAC, was slow to move to Windows and so when I began to look for a Windows accounting system I had to look elsewhere....

I've looked at all the most popular "off the shelf" accounting software as well as a number of shareware programs. I'm convinced Peachtree Complete is superior, in almost every respect, to all the rest of them. I've used every version since the first (which curiously was Version 2.0). Some of the early versions were buggy but the last few versions haven't had serious problems...I'm currently using version 7 and have ordered Version 8.

Each succeeding version of Peachtree - which come about every two years - comes with a little more integration with Microsoft Office. Version 7, for example, has an Excel icon on most report screens. Clicking on the icon opens Excel and dumps the report into the spreadsheet. The formatting on the resulting spreadsheet is pretty good - but there are no formulas.

As I understand multiuser capability (which I don't use) has been part of the package until Version 8 where it costs extra, depending on the number of users.

One of the grumbles about Peachtree is that you have to know something about accounting to use it. That should be true whether you are keeping books on Peachtree, Quicken or a Big Chief tablet and No. 2 lead pencil. If you are running a business where accurate records are required and where the financial statements are relied upon for the management of the business and you don't have some knowledge of proper accounting methods, then you BETTER seek some expert assistance. If all you really want is a check writing program or a billing program, then a full featured accounting program may be overkill and simpler software may be sufficient. Just keep in mind there tends to be an inverse relationship between ease of use on the one hand and flexibility and scope of features available on the other hand (though exceptions abound).

All the major functions such as General Ledger, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, Inventory, a really cool Job Costing feature, etc., are fully integrated; a payroll check is immediately accessible in the G.L. without having to do any intermediate journal posting. The Fixed Assets program which will interface but IS a module that runs separately.

Peachtree is a General Ledger based system in that the full detail of all journal entries affecting a particular account is available in the G.L. Double clicking on a particular entry "drills down" to and then displays the check, invoice or other journal entry source document. Two fiscal years of detail are maintained. By changing the "accounting period" to the period (month) of interest, you can edit, add or delete transactions within this time period.

One of the strongest areas of Peachtree is the reporting capabilities - probably the part I like most about it. Almost everything that goes to screen or print is highly customizable. But be advised, taking advantage of this flexibility WILL require some time and effort to learn how to do. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are actually three different kinds of reports - Financial Statements, Forms, and Reports, each of which has its own system of modification. Financial statements can be designed with up to 30 columns with a myriad of date range possibilities and subsets of data (such as departments, enterprises, regions, etc.) The structure of financial statements is not tied to the order of the account numbering scheme.

Payroll is quite complete for software in this price range. In addition to the basics, you can set up 401k deductions, maintain important dates, track vacation time etc. Peachtree aggressively markets its Payroll Tax service but it is easy to update the tax tables yourself. There are default tax tables but you can also specify tax tables that are specific to one business. (Peachtree permits using the software to keep books for multiple business entities.)

For most of the common data entry tasks you can use either the mouse or the keyboard for navigation and entry. But it is somewhat inconsistent - for example if you are posting invoices and come to a customer who isn't on file you have to use the mouse to access the options on the screen that allows you to enter a new customer "on the fly".

Data entry can be assisted by optional features such as drop down screens in fields where you have lists - customer ID, inventory ID for example, "smart fill in" that completes the entry for you among others. On data entry forms you have the option to hide certain fields that you don't use so you don't have to skip over them as you are making entries. For example, in recording invoices if you don't use Customer Purchase Orders, alternate "ship to" addresses, sales reps, etc., you can hide these fields in your input form.

Of course there are things I don't like. The General Ledger requires more paper to print than necessary. I'm not keen on the fact there is only a single field for names (employees, vendors, customers) which makes it difficult to get an alphabetical list unless you design ID numbers in such a way as to approximate alphabetical order - or enter names in the Last Name, First Name reverse order. Mailing label options are limited You can, for example, assign a "type" to your customers, say Doctors, Fishermen and Golfers and generate a mailing list for any type. But you can't specify a customer is a member of the Doctor type AND the Golfer type (except maybe on Wednesday afternoon). Nor can you quickly go through your list of customers and check off a subset to receive a special mailing. You can develop a report of your customers that shows the amounts of inventory items each customer bought but you can't get a report of inventory items listing which customers bought that item. (You CAN dump the former report into Excel, sort it to get the latter order and then clean up the result.)

...I have set up a number of businesses which included sole proprietorship, partnership, charitable organization and corporation structures. I would recommend Peachtree Complete as an accounting solution to almost any business.

36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Design Errors, January 28, 2000

By 

Michele (Orange County, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0 (CD-ROM)

Form Setup does not work in Peachtree Complete Accounting 7.0. Peachtree makes it easy to choose the data you would like to appear on your forms, however, under many criteria categories either no data or incorrect data is pulled. I chose "description for sales" and it worked for a while but then started drawing from "description for purchases" (tech support was able to duplicate this). When I asked for "short description" I got "description for purchases", "description for sales", "short description", or nothing at all depending on the form I was printing. Peachtree told me it is a design problem that was present in 6.0 and will be present in the next version, 8.0. Bernard from tech support told me that the following version may work properly but that he was "not at liberty to discuss" when that might be. I am returning my software because Peachtree seems in no hurry to fix design problems.