Business

Cashé will help slash the time it takes to pull together financial information and prepare an in-depth study of your business. You provide the financial information to develop strategies for managing cash flow, determining the benefits of investing in property and equipment, and examining scenarios of major business decisions.

Cashé's built-in analytical engine can handle income statements, assets and liabilities, investments, and AIP and AIR. You can set up a Business Profile that includes where you pay the most state taxes, the SIC code that best describes your business, the fiscal year-end date, the forecast period and the type of currency to be used in the analytical process. Then enter the company's actuals, beginning balances and other relevant data for planning and modeling. You can now begin performance testing for any scenario.

The Assumptions tab reveals six major categories and 16 subcategories. The program combines this information with initial input. It then calculates high-quality pro forma financial statements using your own default or Dun & Bradstreet industry averages.

Cashé's excellent documentation and context-sensitive help complement its sophisticated analytical tools.

Cashé
Price: $995
Pros: What-if scenarios; documentation
Cons: Price
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Disk Space: 8MB
RAM: 8MB
Business Matters
800-993-3600, 617-899-8700
WinMag Box Score 4.5

Accounting packages and spreadsheets come together through different Wizards in Microsoft's Small Business Financial Manager. The Import Wizard, for instance, asks you to locate your accounting data, then creates a mirrored version in an Excel file. Data in the original file doesn't change until you update the Import Wizard. To save time, the software imports only new transactions.

Report Wizard offers a complete set of standard financial reports that lets you choose from several subreports in each category, as well as Financial Ratio and Sales Analysis reports. The Sales Analysis report uses Excel Pivot Tables to show sales by different categories, with the option of displaying cost of sales and gross profit along with actual and/or budget values.

You can drill down to specific transaction detail in all of the program's reports by double-clicking on an entry. You can insert the balance for a single account as of a single date, or you can insert multiple balances for multiple dates.

Reports are displayed in outline mode. Cells are given their own Tool Tip-style tips. The Recalculate Report dialog box lets you update reports when changes have been made in the original accounting program. Excel's own Chart Wizard works with the software-simply invoke it to create charts from the data.

Microsoft Small Business Financial Manager
Price: $99.95
Pros: Speed; ease of use
Cons: Few accounting apps supported
Platforms: Windows 95, NT 3.51
Microsoft Corp.
800-426-9400
WinMag Box Score 4.5

ExpensAble gives you trip envelopes into which you "stuff" your receipts. Type in each expense item using smart pull-down menus that remember past entries. ExpensAble's Hotel Genie also makes it easy to sort hotel bill charges, such as room, phone calls and meals. The only drawback is its limited reporting. You can pick a report from a short list, but you can't customize it to look like your company's.

ExpensAble's Trip Genie steps you through the entire expense report process, prompting for each expenditure and offering point-and-click pull-down menus for quick entries. The Currency Genie makes figuring foreign exchange rates a snap.

ExpensAble's analytical reports, which show expenses by type, merchant and payment method, can now be customized to exclude extraneous information. You can pop up a pie chart that shows you where your travel expense dollars are going.

ExpensAble is e-mail-enabled (VIM and MAPI), and you can use scanners such as Visioneer's PaperPort to scan receipts and attach them to trip envelopes.

Quicken ExpensAble 2.0
Price: $49.95
Pros: Data entry; Genies
Cons: Form customization
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Intuit
800-816-8025, 415-944-6000
WinMag Box Score 4.0

OnTime's strength is its client/server architecture, which offers enterprise-worthy features that can't be matched by peer-to-peer products. This architecture enhances OnTime's performance, and the program's functionality-including single-point multiserver configuration-makes administration much easier. OnTime Enterprise for NetWare 3.0 runs on a NetWare file server and takes full advantage of the existing network user database to make adding new users a snap.

The program uses Novell's industry-standard, high-performance Btrieve record manager to maintain its database. Installation of the server software is complex but not particularly difficult, thanks to the included installation checklist. It's important that your NetWare system is up-to-date. The OnTime package includes a NetWare Btrieve update disk.

Most of the enhancements are on the client side. You can select time periods directly on the grids, which are used to show appointments. The dialog box no longer changes depending upon whether you are the person who created the appointment or a proposed attendee.

OnTime Enterprise's interface offers Windows 95 support for the client and makes it much easier to use. Everything related to an appointment can be set in one place. Set a date by picking it directly from a calendar, and VCR-like controls make finding a particular month quick and easy. The time and duration of the appointment can be set using a timeline control. You can then assign a priority to the appointment and add a reminder alarm.

OnTime Enterprise for NetWare 3.0
Price: 3 users, $427; 10 users, $994; 100 users, $5,616
Pros: Client/server architecture
Cons: Complex installation
Platforms: Server, NetWare 3.11, 4.x; client, Windows 3.x, 95
OnTime, div. of FTP Software
800-559-5955, 810-559-5955
WinMag Box Score 4.5

Peachtree Complete Accounting maintains its ease of setup and short learning curve. It includes sales, purchase order, job costing and fixed-assets capabilities.

The program has General Ledger, Accounts Payable and Receivable, Inventory and Payroll features. Unlike some of its competitors, Complete is networkable right out of the box. It handles complex details for sales and receivables. You can ship and track partial quantities against a sales order, or follow drop shipments. Complete Accounting prints pick lists or packing slips and can add freight charges; it also eliminates duplicate data entry.

Job Costing reports compare a job's actual cost to associated revenue. You can break a job into phases that include cost codes, specific tasks or categories, and splitting of material, labor and equipment. Once set up, phases and cost codes can be used as templates for new jobs.

The Fixed Asset module handles multiple tax books and keeps track of Alternative Minimum Taxes. It can calculate for a short year as well.

Complete Accounting tracks your customer's payment method, lets you see your cash balance as you write checks, prints a G/L summary report with subtotals by period, and reprints individual invoices and quotes.

Program setup is easy, as is the guided tour/tutorial. Technical support includes 30 free days from the time of registration.

You can connect Peachtree accounting packages with ADP's payroll service, called e-TAX, which provides tax filing for payroll taxes and handles direct deposit and W-2 printing. This is an excellent choice for medium-sized businesses.

Peachtree Complete Accounting
Price: $199; upgrade, $139
Pros: Networkable; ideal for small to mid-sized businesses
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Disk Space: 24MB-42MB
RAM: 8MB
Peachtree Software
800-228-0068, 770-564-5800
WinMag Box Score 5.0

Quicken Financial Planner 2 provides the perfect answer to retirement planning questions. This program steps you through the process quickly and simply. You can set up a Quick Plan in a matter of minutes by entering generalized data such as age, salary, current savings and living expenses. Or you can toss in every bit of information you have, from rental income, to anticipated vacations and car purchases throughout your lifetime. Either simple or detailed, QFP presents its findings clearly. Click on the Results tab, and a traffic-light icon flashes green if your retirement will be fully funded, yellow for concerns and red for serious problems.

A what-if feature lets you manipulate variables, allowing you to adjust your plan to meet your retirement needs for the future. Charts and graphs show everything from cash flow to portfolio value and net worth.

Quicken Financial Planner 2
Price: $39.95
Pros: Complete, easy-to-use package for retirement planning
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Intuit
800-624-8742, 415-944-6000
WinMag Box Score 5.0

Get your business going and keep the details in good order with Intuit's accounting aid, QuickBooks 4.0.

The software has in-depth industry-specific documentation for more than 20 different types of businesses. The Easy Step Interview elicits information via an intelligent question-and-answer format.

Customization of fields, forms and reports is the program's strongest feature. You can personalize customer, vendor, item and employee information, and produce detailed reports on every facet of your business.

Version 4.0 also helps you manage your tax reporting. It can output 1099 forms for the vendors you select, 940 and 941 forms for payroll-related tax reporting, and reports with line-item totals for your own tax returns. The program includes a link to TurboTax for Business. The documentation also helps you move and convert data from Quicken and QuickPay to QuickBooks 4.0.

The CD-ROM version of QuickBooks 4.0 includes a business library, with topics covering finance, accounting, human resources and benefits, general management principles, and ways to minimize taxes and improve your cash flow. Clicking on the SoundAdvice button launches an audio clip explaining how to get the most from that particular aspect of the program.

QuickBooks 4.0
Price: $99 (disk), $129 (CD-ROM)
Pros: Ease of use; form and report customization
Cons: Won't replace your favorite contact manager
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
Intuit
800-816-8025, 415-944-6000
WinMag Box Score 4.5

WinSales is based on relationship marketing and has an improved user interface with tabbed dialogs to replace multiple windows. It's easy to add fields to any contact screen using standard text and numeric fields, as well as a credit card field that performs check-digit verification. Tabs let you switch to account information or a notes field, and you can associate meetings, mail and phone calls with a contact by using another tabbed dialog box.

Triggers, or user-defined actions, are key to this package. A trigger may assign or reassign a sales rep based on the zip code in a client record. The trigger "language" resembles Visual Basic, but you can use a series of lists that WinSales provides to build your triggers.

WinSales' reporting and query tools are also easy to use for preparing ad hoc reports. You can choose from a variety of tools, and the program builds a list of your query selections. Report results are displayed on a spreadsheet-like grid. Double-click on any cell and you're taken to the underlying detail, such as a contact record or appointment information. This type of drill-down access to information is remarkably fast and efficient.

WinSales 3.0
Price: Single user $495, upgrade $99; 5 users $1,495, upgrade $99 per site
Pros: User interface; ease of use
Cons: None significant
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
WinSales
206-747-2464 x1, fax 206-747-2955
WinMag Box Score 5

Premiering as part of Quicken Deluxe 5, Investor Insight is also a standalone application that opens the way to capturing in-depth data for any security (stocks, mutual funds and so forth) traded on the NYSE, AMEX or NASDAQ. With a few clicks of a button, news reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones News Service, as well as company announcements from Business Wire and PR Newswire, are downloaded to your PC with only a 15-minute delay during trading hours.

Late-breaking information concerning your Watch List of securities will be downloaded each time you go online, manually or according to a preset schedule. Investment Insight's greatest benefit is that it allows you to build portfolios of selected stocks and group them by category or industry, and build flash reports to track changes.

Primavera's SureTrak Project Manager 1.5 equips project managers with tools for budgeting both labor and materials resources, capabilities common to industrial-strength project management packages but rarely found in the lower-end variety.

The software's interface has further evolved with industry-specific templates and wizards that steer users through a sea of activity codes and data dictionaries. You can categorize project components according to responsibility and phase, and later slice and dice the whole plan with an eye toward summarizing, setting priorities or distribution. SureTrak was one of the first of its class to weave in workgroup capabilities. Version 1.5 improves upon its predecessor's e-mail update features with direct-mail addressing, which lets users broadcast multiple messages simultaneously.

The program includes a set of built-in ODBC drivers so SureTrak files can easily integrate with database applications created in Oracle 7, SQL Server, Excel, Access and Approach. SureTrak's Pivot Table Wizards for Excel let you instantly cross-tabulate project data.

SureTrak 1.5 also includes OLE support, so project managers can dress up their work with eye-catching illustrations, supporting documents or even videos. In addition, it offers Softbridge Basic Language. Like Microsoft Project's Visual Basic, Softbridge lets you build macros into your projects.

A spin-off of Primavera's higher-end project management packages, SureTrak 1.5 combines sophisticated tools with a competitive price. It's perfect for medium-size businesses that don't have the big bucks or staff to maintain a high-end system.

SureTrak Project Manager 1.5
Price: $399; upgrade, $99
Pros: Built-in ODBC drivers; OLE support
Cons: Busy interface
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95
RAM: 16MB
Primavera Systems
800-423-0245, 610-667-8600
WinMag Box Score 4.0

ACT 3.0 offers significant updated features and a new, easy-to-use interface to this perennial favorite.

ACT now splits itself into two resizable panes. The top pane offers the standard fields you'd find in any contact manager. The bottom window's tabs let you switch between pages that include contact notes, history, group information and more.

To add new fields to the layout, simply drag and drop them from an available field list into ACT's forms designer. You can switch between the standard layout and a columnar grid, but any form can be modified using form tools.

Use the e-mail address field and a simple command to create mail-merged Internet messages via Microsoft Exchange, or use e-mail to send contact information to others who can merge it into their own ACT databases.

Various tabbed dialogs perform expected functions. For example, the Activities tab puts all tasks associated with a contact in a single spot, while the program's Groups tab displays all the groups to which the contact is attached.

You can now perform field-by-field merging (changes are time- and date-stamped) and two-way synchronization. ACT can serve as an automatic group synchronization server that checks for incoming updates, applies them and sends out updates to mobile users.

ACT 3.0
Price: $199.95
Pros: User interface; customization options
Cons: No mass change option
Platforms: Windows 3.x, 95, NT
Disk Space: 18MB
RAM: 8MB
Symantec Corp.
800-441-7234, 408-253-9600
WinMag Box Score 4.5