Connie Certusi’s GM Blog

[#1]

Welcome to the new Peachtree online community sponsored by Sage Software, provider of Peachtree Accounting. As the General Manager for the Peachtree business, I have awaited this launch with great anticipation. Not only does this community provide me & my team with an avenue to better connect with you, it also provides you with an excellent forum to network with other Peachtree users, sharing best practices as it relates to using Peachtree, or just running your business.

Peachtree has been serving the small business market for more than 30 years (longer than any other package on the market today). As a result, our brand is very strong and our customers are unique. Small businesses using Peachtree are serious about the financial management component of their business and demand the accuracy, control, and insight to make the right business decisions each and every day. This community provides you with the ability to converse with other small businesses that think like you, have some of the same aspirations and challenges you face, and can share many tips & tricks on how to unleash the full power of Peachtree Accounting. It also provides you with the opportunity to let us know how you feel, both the good and the bad. We want to hear your stories of success related to how Peachtree helps you manage your business. We also want to hear about your challenges and how we can help you address these challenges through the products and services we provide.

While these forums will primarily be peer-supported, my team and I will be actively involved. We’ll be reviewing and participating in your conversations with interest. We expect to see amazing new ideas develop for improving our products and services, and we look forward to collaborating with you on them. We will also be adding to our blogs whenever we find information or resources we think you may benefit from, so I encourage you to visit often. We will also be offering special promotions and contests to simply say ‘thank you’ to our Peachtree community for your loyalty to the Peachtree business and participation in this online community.

In summary, I’m absolutely psyched about the launch of the new Peachtree community. I would like to personally thank you for being some of the first visitors to the site. As a result, I’m counting on you to tell us how we can improve this forum in the future. My goal is that you keep coming back to talk to us and others within the Peachtree community. Please be honest and share your thoughts and ideas on a regular basis. The entire Peachtree team looks forward to learning more about you. I would also suggest that there’s a whole world of Peachtree users out there (hundreds of thousands) that look forward to meeting you right here – on the new Peachtree Online Community.

Connie Certusi

[#2]

Kudos on this very successful community site. I remember the old days when Peachtree had a forum on Compuserve and was very disappointed when that went away. There has been a very popular forum at www.peachtreeusers.com for several years, but that had user only participation. The big feature of your site is that employees of Peachtree and the support centers are actively participating.

One thing puzzles me - I don't see any comments to your blog. Are people just not responding?

I have some issues that I would like to discuss with you but I will do those in a separate message since I'd like to compose them first then paste the text into this entry form.

[#3]

Robert? I'm assuming that's you. Thanks for the posting. Regarding why we've had limited participation so far, I think it's just because it's early. It takes time to get the word out to everyone. Anything you can do to help us spread the news would be greatly appreciated. Regarding your other two postings, give me a day or so to respond. I haven't had a chance to read them in detail but will do so by tomorrow and respond. Again, thanks for being active on the community. I'll respond to your other postings in the next day. Great to hear from you!

[#4]

One thing I would like to see clarified is what the proper procedure should be on this site for 3rd party vendors who are listed on the Peachtree site. If we see somebody has a need for one of our products that works with Peachtree, how would you like us to approach that.

I've already responded to a few threads and tried to present a fair picture of the options without tooting my own horn too much, but I don't know if that is ok. One thing I learned some time ago in forums is that if you are talking about your own product then it is very important to identify at the end of the message that it is your companies product.

[#5]

Connie, Thank you for this community site. I'm new to most everything I do in my business and that includes my use of the peachtree software. Also, thank you for the helpful resourses you gave during your interview with Brent Leary on Tech Talk. It's good to have someone to listen to and learn from. I'll stay posted.

[#6]

Hi Connie,

I work with Peachtree and I do like your product.  I have a large clintel with multiple corporations along with multiple bookkeepers.  We would like to start using the online bill pay but it is limited to $9,999 per day.  My clients have payments that are more than that for just one vender.  Is it possible to increase that limit with verification of creditworthiness? 

[#7]

Hi Bookkeeper -

Please send me a private message after registering for the site for more information regarding the question you posted regarding the Online Bill Pay Service.

Thank you!

[#8]

I may have missed it, but with Peachtree being pitched as the ultimate accounting program, what about "order entry" and use by sales staff who travel a territory and need the ability to make proposals from inventoried items without delay. We are an operation who installs equipment on truck chassis after we buy a multipart assemblies... What about the renewal requirement and complaints. How much and how often. We are around 3 mil in sales, would be close to 10 Mil in less than five years. Help me out. JMGREEN

[#9]

JMichael,

Thanks for your suggestion about new ways for your sales staff to use Peachtree Accounting. Without giving away too much, I can say that we’ve been surveying Peachtree users about functionality that would allow them to access certain Peachtree records with their mobile devices.

I’d love to chat with you about your needs. Please register on the community and then send me a private message so we can discuss this further.

Regards,

Shari Willman

[#10]

Subject: disappointed about Quantum 2010 

We have been using Quantum for 3 years and also on a support plan.  Recently received the v2010 and upgraded a couple days ago.  We have had high hope for this version’s new additional contacts feature but we were very disappointed with it not printable in Quotation (contact phone#, email, etc.).  Another big surprise took us aback was the new version dropped a data field in the customer addresses tab.  Namely the Recipient field which could be used by any company to identify the location.  This field is VERY important to us, a service company.  Our customers have multi-locations which we provide services.  An address is simply not enough we need a site name to help identify, especially for large location that have multiple sub-sites.  V2010 carelessly dropped the field and deleted existing information during the data conversion process.  It seems to us that v2010 has mistakenly assumed  the Recipient field is not important to anyone or it has same data as the contact (wrong in both cases) and decided to eliminated this data in v2010 without even alerting existing users.  Because of the missing data field we had to make that painful decision to restore back to the previously version 2009, wasting 2 full workdays in doing so including re-entering all input after the upgrade. There are other good features in v2010 we now cannot use.  We wonder why did you drop a data field.  The customer screen, quote and the invoice screens already do not have enough data fields for good business tracking purposes.  Taking away any field is unacceptable.   We need more printable data fields, not less. 

The following questions had came to mind whether we could continue as a loyal customer:   

(1)When can you add back the deleted Recipient field and add more customizable fields to make PT more usable?  

(2)When can you make the additional contact information printable in a quote?    

(3)We now back on Quantum v2009 due to the missing Recipient field data which we can’t be without.  If there is no fix to add back this data until future upgrade, will the future version (v2011) upgradable from v2009 skipping one upgrade in between? 

I’ll appreciate your response, thank you.  

[#11]

Julie Hui(anon),

Thanks for your feedback. Most of your concerns are actually already addressed in the program.

1)When can you add back the deleted Recipient field and add more customizable fields to make PT more usable?  Answer: The recipient field wasn’t removed. It was essentially moved and renamed. It is now the Company Name on the Contact. When your data was converted the system should have made new contacts for you based on your existing shipping addresses. These contacts would have the Ship to Address X label placed in the Contact Name and the data from the Recipient field should be in the Company Name field. This will allow you to continue creating invoices without any interruption or changes on your end. Now when creating your transactions you will select a contact instead of an address. That contact can either be a person (Contact Name) or a site (Company Name). Practically speaking when you convert you should still see all the Ship to Addresses you have data for when you are creating a transaction. The format will just be slightly different and will include some additional information.As for additional fields, we added 7 new fields with the Contacts feature. Many of the fields account for data that users were placing in the Custom Fields (like second contact). So hopefully we have freed up some of your custom fields. Also the number of contacts you can add for a customer are virtually unlimited, meaning you have a virtually unlimited number of fields available now. There is no reason you couldn’t use this contact functionality to track additional custom information. Create one or more contacts on a customer named Custom Data and use the fields on the contact to record your custom data. Just be sure not to select that contact when creating transactions.We are also considering adding additional fields, including custom fields, in future releases but if you have specific needs please tell us more about them here, http://ideascopeanywhere.com/peachtree/frmSubmitIdea.aspx (2)When can you make the additional contact information printable in a quote?    

Answer: We have been investigating the feasibility of allowing other contact fields to be added to forms in an upcoming service release.

(3)We now back on Quantum v2009 due to the missing Recipient field data which we can’t be without.  If there is no fix to add back this data until future upgrade, will the future version (v2011) upgradable from v2009 skipping one upgrade in between? Answer: Yes you can skip versions when you upgrade. However the more versions you wait to upgrade the more effort it can require, as the number of differences between versions mount up.

[#12]

Is anybody of the Peachtree users sees a need to have postal letters be sent out of the system automatically? that is, instaed of printing a file, folding, envelop, go to the Postal Office, simply push a button? such service is available.

[#13]

is there any way to print envelopes or labels to customers or vendors?

[#14]

Hi Gadi,

That's a great idea, but I don't know of any such solution that integrates with Peachtree. Take a look at our listing of third-party partners, and I also suggest posting your question in our forum. Other Peachtree users may have a suggestion for you.

[#15]

Hi Barry,

From within Peachtree, select Reports & Forms > Forms > Customer Labels & Letters. You'll see a selection of templates for different sizes of labels and envelopes. You can also create your own custom form. Press F1 from this screen for more help.

[#16]

Mike:  I I went to forms for printing envelopes, but when I clicked on envelope it gave me an error message about not being authorized. I am the admin for this site - sole owner.

[#17]

Barry - Sounds like you don't have security rights to print customer forms. Do you use a login name to access the company? If so, select Maintain > Users > Set Up Security (or Maintain > User Security). Select your name and click Edit User's Rights. Select the Customers & Sales groups and make sure the Reports; Forms setting is "Full Access," or just set the whole category to Full Access.

[#18]

on printing forms page, it only lists labels but not envelopes

am I missing something in the setup?

[#19]

We have been using PT for about a year now and recently upgraded to Q2010 and we love the new features!  The Customer Managment improvements are very helpful. 

The new workflow tracking is also very helpful to us as we have two locations and this allows those working in our branch office to stay in the loop better with the Status and Notes sections.

Of course, we can always wish for more....and our suggestions are to make the same improvements on the Vendor section where you can see at a glance the history of purchase orders placed, items purchased from vendors and invoices. 

Another thing that we find annoying is that we cannot view the entire Item ID in our purchase orders.  This makes it difficult when receiving inventory items.  Our Item IDs are 12 digits long and many times you cannot view the last 2 or 3 digits.  On some forms you can only view about 6 digits.  I called support and was told that there really wasn't anything to do about this.  This would be a huge help to us if you could address this problem on future upgrades.

[#20]

Barry - you're right, there are only label templates, but you can easily create an envelope  template. Just select the "Customer Labels Continuous" form and click Customize. Select File >  Page Setup and set the paper size to Envelope #10 and set orientation to landscape. Rearrange the address field appropriately and save your new form. I couldn't figure out a way to format a form for a printer that feeds envelopes lengthwise, though. Maybe someone else can make a suggestion.

An alternative is to export customer addresses and use Word to print envelopes.

[#21]

haarcfo - thanks for these great suggestions. We'll definitely look into them.

[#22]

I would like to report a very unsatisfactory customer service experience today (Tues 9/22/2009 @9:39 AM PST) Peachtree Tel # 1-800-247-3224.  My customer service rep (Jonathon) could barely be heard over excessive background noises which included voices at a very loud volume. I asked Jonathon what all the noise was about and he said a meeting was in progress in close proximity to his work area.

Could I make a suggestion that if meetings are held while a customer service rep is on the phone they are held far enough away from the rep's station that the meeting noise does not impact the customer's call. I could barely hear the rep over the background noise and found the whole experience very distracting.

For a company like Peachtree I am surprised that this elemetary customer service protocol is not observed.

[#23]

Mr. Hayes,  

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  I apologize for the experience you had today while on the phone with our customer service team. I will certainly investigate this issue and address your concerns.   

In the meantime, I’d also like to make sure your service needs were addressed.  If they were not yet fully addressed, please to email me directly and I’ll be happy to help: connie.certusi@sage.com. 

Again, I apologize for noise; we will look into this.  I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to let us know about your experience.   

Kind regards,

Connie 

[#24]

I'm setting up security access for an employee and I have given her full access to 'Vendors and Purchase' and 'Inventory and Services' and yet when she goes in to print a purchase order, it says she doesn't have security access to print.  Does anyone know why that is?

Lee

[#25]

Hi Lee - In your security settings, select the Company group. Under the "Tasks" area set Up-Post to Full Access. This setting is required in order to print transactions such as purchase orders because the print action is considered by Peachtree to be a modification, even though you may not be changing anything on the PO. Let me know if this doesn't solve it.

-Mike

[#26]

RE:  SALES TAX EXEMPT...

HELLO!  ALL TAX EXEMPT SALES ARE NOT CROSSING OVER FROM SERVICE WRITER TO PEACHTREE.  IS THERE ANOTHER AREA IN PEACHTREE TO LOOK OR EDIT?  WE NEED TO GET PEACHTREE TO REFLECT ALL SAX TAX EXEMPT SALES ORDERS/INVOICES.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ASSISTANCE IN THIS MATTER.

SINCERELY,

FIRST CLASS TRUCK AND AUTO SERVICE