AccountEdge Blog

Acclivity, makers of AccountEdge, Checkout and Rerun, was acquired by Priority Software today. It’s a happy day in Rockaway, NJ. The union of companies will deliver a broader, deeper set of solutions to businesses of all sizes and industries. We will continue to focus our energies on understanding and addressing the needs of our AccountEdge customers. That won’t stop. But we’ll also be able to offer Priority’s powerful cloud accounting and ERP software to anyone who may outgrow AccountEdge. And, in recognition of the value of the Acclivity team, every single employee was kept on (including us). We’re truly excited for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. But with change comes reflection.

AccountEdge’s history reads like a novel. In the late 1980s, Mind Your Own Business (later shortened to M.Y.O.B., then further to MYOB) was first developed by Teleware, Inc. in northern New Jersey, about 35 miles west of NYC. In 1993, Best Software purchased Teleware to form Best!Ware, then later sold the MYOB software rights to its Australian republisher, Data-Tech, who, in 1999, changed their name to MYOB Ltd. In 2005, Acclivity (the by-product of a management buyout of MYOB US) became the exclusive North American distributor for MYOB. Then in 2008, Acclivity acquired the IP rights to develop AccountEdge (formerly MYOB Accounting). Got all that? 

A reasonable takeaway would be that change is constant around this product, but that ignores key facts. Nearly half of our employees have been with us since the 1990s and a stroll around our New Jersey office can quickly become a history lesson in accounting software. And while we continue to push AccountEdge’s feature set with each new release, adding customers as we go, our customer base shares our history. A note from a happy customer, tracing their MYOB lineage to the early 1990s, is an ordinary, but awesome, occurrence. Yes, the name on our building may have changed from Inc. to Corp. to LLC, but the product’s stewards and loyal customers have remained a constant. 

And in this case, with Priority, we have an attentive partner who is committed to bolstering our offerings with an entirely complimentary approach. The overwhelming majority of AccountEdge customers will never outgrow their software. But if your items list has ballooned to 50,000 or if you’re unsuccessfully networking AccountEdge on 12 workstations, or if you have three office locations that require simultaneous access to your company file, we’ve got you covered. Not to mention Advanced Financials, Warehouse Management, CRM, Mobile Development and (much) more. That’s exciting. 

As Acclivity, we thank you for making the past 12 years great, and we whole-heartedly appreciate your loyalty. 

As Priority US, we are still as engaged as ever to understanding and addressing your needs. 

We’re not going anywhere.

As we come to the final stages of our AccountEdge 2018 product development, one feature has been on our list for way too long – refreshing our OfficeLink templates. 

What are they, you say?

Every report in AccountEdge has a corresponding Excel template that lets you send that report to Excel.  Maybe you’ve never noticed it, go take a look, you’ll see it at the bottom of the Index to Reports window, and elsewhere, just select Send>Excel:

As long as you have Microsoft Excel installed, AccountEdge will take the chosen report data and send it directly to an Excel template, then let you save it as a spreadsheet.  It’s super handy, here is a few reasons why you may want to use OfficeLink:

- To send your financial reports to your accountant - To do additional analysis using data directly from your AccountEdge file - To create budgets based on data you already have - To create other reports with data from other sources - To create reports with more formatting than you can get from AccountEdge - To show off your Excel-chops  

No matter the reason, using Excel is an excellent tool that many of our users love.  

Thing is, we’ve not touched the formatting of these Excel templates since 1998.  And we were determined that this would be the year.  It’s no small task, we have about 350 spreadsheets on each platform, that’s a lot of Excel jockeying.  You could see why this ‘little feature’ has gone undone for so long.   To be clear, we’re not changing the core functionality of these spreadsheets (that’s another feature for another year), just updating the look and feel by using more modern fonts, styles and colors.  That is it.  Times 700….

Once the design team submitted their suggested changes, the hard work began.  

We expected to have to open, modify, and save each spreadsheet by hand, on both platforms.  Ugh.  With about 15 changes per file, we calculated it would take more than a week to finish.  Now we understood why this perpetually ended up at the end of the to-do list for (almost 20) years.  

That's when our development team jumped in with some Visual Basic knowledge and created an Excel macro to speed the process along. Now each spreadsheet took 5 seconds, not 5 minutes.  All told, we were able to modify all the templates in about an hour.  

After testing, we found that the changes appeared different on the Mac vs. the PC. No surprise there.  So we modified our macro and re-ran the files to clean up the differences that appeared on Windows.  Problem solved, time spent, about another hour.  

Yes, sometimes it takes a village, but sometimes it just takes (a small) team, and a macro.  

And sometimes, only a video can do it justice...

Every fifth Thursday our honor “vending machine” is stocked by a trip to Costco, thanks to two (loosely defined) volunteers, author included, who make it happen. It’s not like the first Monday in October or the first Tuesday in November.  It’s certainly not that important.  Or, maybe it is, depending on whom you are listening too.  

This fifth Thursday at Acclivity is better known as “Costco Day” or, more specifically, “(Are you going to) Costco (to)Day”. There is office pressure from the cookie crowd, who have been dreaming about the  oatmeal/raisin goodness, plus the Diet Coke addicts, the Kind bar devotees, and those who swear by the Kirkland brand soy milk.  Though none are more passionate than the Slim Jim mafia, especially since Costco stopped carrying the (alleged) meat snacks.

We’ve scoured the web and analyzed how to schedule and deliver the goods with some combination of Amazon, Costco Business and unmanned drones, but, in the end, the most prudent way to fill up the kitchen is to  get in the car and just go.  A tried and true delivery mechanism, without the overhead of a web browser.

Each trip requires a stop at M&S Pizza on Rte. 46 for a couple Jersey slices, before we grab our carts, make the rounds, taste the samples, and look for new treats (criteria: good shelf life, individually wrapped, loved by all, healthy is a plus).  We don’t ask for much, just a good parking spot and help unloading the car back at the office. 

There has been a significant uptick in music being consumed on vinyl.  We’re not talking cassettes, we’re not talking CDs, we’re not talking streaming.  We’re talking vinyl.  Old school records. Plastic.  Things you buy once that you own and play on a turntable, over and over again, with no additional cost.  Some say the sound is better, deeper, fuller, skips and scratches and all.  No matter how much noise there is about digital and streaming in the marketplace, there’s our vinyl records, tried and true, steady and consistent.  They never really went away, they just weren’t the new shiny object that folks tend to obsess over.  

If you’re of a certain age, you probably heard about cassettes killing vinyl.  Didn’t happen.  You probably heard about CDs killing vinyl.  Didn’t happen.  And now we hear about streaming killing everything.  Not clear that is going to happen either.  Through it all, our vinyl still works.  Pop an album onto the turntable and get 22 minutes of pure pleasure in the comfort of your home or office.

We sometimes feel like vinyl in a digital world.  While web apps are all the rage in the accounting space, we’ve carved out a nice living committing to our customers who prefer the option of having their accounting on the desktop, with native Macintosh and Windows apps.  You don’t need a web browser to record sales invoices or pay your bills.  

While we do have web-collaboration tools (and a free iOS app) to help you record financial transactions remotely and sync to AccountEdge, our bread and butter is desktop accounting software that you buy, own, and can use forever.  It’s a format you can use anytime, anywhere, on either platform, with no shortcomings.  

Web browsers are great for many tasks.  We believe that for transaction intensive processes like accounting, using a native app written for your desktop operating system is preferable.  We fully recognize that having the option to use a web app or iOS companion tool is convenient, especially when you are away from your desktop computer.  And in some instances, it could even replace or replicate your desktop workflow.  But, having a real native application meant to serve a single purpose, to help you get your accounting done without distraction, will keep your business running smoothly, just like one of your favorite albums.  

Add this blog post to the pile entitled “Yeah, we use Slack too”.  In case you’re not familiar with Slack, it combines chat, group chat, topical channels and other cool office communication tools and apps.  For us, it has helped to reduce our reliance on Messages/iChat and email and enabled us to have topical conversations on long-term and short term projects, threaded conversations, shared idea spaces, manage to do’s and do meeting followup.  We even use it for meeting reminders, as in “Someone slack Kevin…tell him its time for the product meeting”. We also love that there is a desktop app.  OK, we’re partial…

We don’t use all of Slack, and all of it is not for us, but what we do use, we mostly love.  It’s simple and it has simplified our collective, collaborative work lives.  It’s not the answer to all our needs, for example, we use other tools for file storage, shared document storage, in-depth product enhancement discussions, planning, requirements and research.  

Like with AccountEdge, we recommend to our prospective customers and existing users to use the parts that meet your most immediate needs, that solve today’s problems; like invoicing and receivables management, payables and cash management, detailed inventory tracking or time billing.  You don’t have to use it all on day one, or ever.  But you can.  And like Slack, as you use it for all facets of your bookkeeping and accounting, you’ll change some things, automate old processes, create new things to account for, experiment, and maybe use other apps to accomplish other important tasks.  

We use Direct Messages, Slack’s chat feature, to speak to each other like an open phone line, enabling one-on-one or small group discussion.  For more formal group-work, we set up Channels that act like permanent meeting rooms, whether for groups of people or topics that folks can join.  We also have several apps setup to feed data into Slack channels, like our Send Feedback form from AccountEdge.

Being able to combine many of our disparate communication tools into one easy-to-use app made the transition simple, even comfortable.  We know a thing or two about converting to new systems, having (sometimes unrealistic) expectations, and changing the ways things are done.  Adoption was fast and now it feels like a glove.  

Same thing with AccountEdge. Not everyone in your office will need to use it, and some will never even know it exists, but for those who manage the business, it can save a lot of time and eliminate many separate systems and redundant tasks.

The key is, when you find a good tool, you work it, you make it fit where it can and you work around it where it can’t, and realize it won’t ever be perfect.  There are always trade-offs and maybe even some backlash (as has been reported internally, and in the tech press).

For us, we rely less on email as a way to communicate and have eliminated separate chat apps across both Mac and Windows computers.  Plus, it feels like our communication is more targeted and focused, using less words to say more in less time.  

Today marks the release of the Canadian version of AccountEdge Pro 2017.  Now our Canadian customers can send shipments via UPS®, create custom emails using templates and merge tags, view customer credits/vendor debits on transaction windows, email payment receipts, utilize more paid today options for deposits and invoice payments, use notes fields on all transactions, and apply payments faster.  Just to name a few of our latest enhancements.  

In addition, the release introduces new features for AccountEdge Connect; Banking, Purchases, and more.  Now create even more transaction types without access to your AccountEdge Pro file, from across the office or across the country.  Great for your remote employees and vendor/subcontractors.  

This upgrade is for any existing customer using AccountEdge, Mac or Windows, to manage their small business.  

If you’re a Canadian SMB looking for a small business accounting solution that costs hundreds, not thousands, AccountEdge deserves your attention.

Visit our website for more details.

A recent watercooler conversation turned to memories of childhood cereals.  Bowls of milky delight.  Fast forward two weeks to the Montclair, NJ ACME and a shopping cart filled with 21 boxes of sugary and non-sugary goodness.  Our “experiment” included a veritable who’s who from the breakfast cereal Hall of Fame, representing every taste and generation.  

Maybe you saw the picture below on our Facebook page or Twitter feed.  

Two weeks later, we reflect on the flurry of bowls passing through the break room, our collective lack of self control and afternoons spent bloated with carbohydrates. 

More interesting were the top two picks: 1. Crackin’ Oat Bran (more sugar than Trix and gone in one day) 2. Honeycomb (responsible for scarring the roof of many Acclivity mouths)

As a social experiment it was interesting to see what was eaten first.  How closely do our results match your cereal shelf?

While we lured you in with thoughts of Apple Jacks and Corn Pops, it could be argued there’s even an accounting tie-in; inventory turnover and control, sales by customer, reorder quantities - it’s all there. Not to mention market research. We’re now thinking about consistently stocking the kitchen with the most popular titles.

Moral of the story?   Do your research. Buy more of what people eat. Don’t invest too much in the slow movers.  Everyone loves cereal (though not so much Special K and Cheerios).

An AccountEdge Connect Update

In our latest update to AccountEdge Connect, we’ve added a new command center; Banking. In it, we’ve consolidated Spend Money and Bill Payment (already available in Purchases) and Add Payment from Sales.  

Plus, we’ve added new functionality for Receive Money transactions.

Receive Money is a great way to record incoming cash that is not associated with a customer’s receivable.  In other words, it’s ideal for entering cash-based sales.  While we call this cash-based sales, it really refers to any sale not made on terms - so the payment is collected at the time the sale is recorded and no invoice with a receivable balance is created.   >> Watch the Receive Money video here. 

Who would use Receive Money? Any AccountEdge user that has a cash-based sales channel.  For example, making weekend sales off-site, or special deliveries that are paid in cash or by check or credit card upon delivery. Rather than create a sales invoice and then apply a payment against that invoice, recording a Receive Money transaction allows you to define the revenue account (defaulted from the Card File>Card List>Selling Details window) and the banking account, when the money is received.  Debit cash (cash goes up), credit sales (sales goes up).

What else can Receive Money do? Do you record numerous cash-based sales that are identical in nature, except for the customer?  With Receive Money (in fact, with every transaction in AccountEdge Connect) you can create a copy of an existing AccountEdge Connect transaction, select another Contact card, and record the same transaction.  This method saves time and hassles when speed is important and accuracy is key.    

Of course you can also define the Transaction # using Connect’s settings or just pass the Transaction # to AccountEdge on your desktop.  Often times, customers prefer to have a single stream of Transaction #’s whether the transaction was created online or on the desktop.  In that case, you can have AccountEdge on the desktop assign a new Transaction # upon sync.  It’s up to you and how you prefer to manage your transaction numbers.

You can also define the currency used in these transactions and elsewhere in Connect. So if you collect payments in a non-local currency, AccountEdge Connect will handle the conversion and track it back to the desktop and manage the gain or loss on currency conversions.  

The devil is in the detail, here are the details… It’s important to understand that the new banking command center will consolidate all your cash receipts and payments in one place - BUT - only the transactions created using AccountEdge Connect.  Banking transactions created in AccountEdge on your desktop will not be synced to AccountEdge Connect.  Also, other desktop banking features such as reconciliations, check printing, preparing bank deposits, and electronic payments are not currently part of the AccountEdge Connect banking module.   To be clear, banking transactions created on AccountEdge Connect will be viewable online and on the desktop after they’re synced into AccountEdge. >> See a Banking video here.

AccountEdge Connect is a tool designed to enter transactions remotely, on any device, across town, across the country, or down the hall, without giving employees or subcontractors access to your entire accounting system.  

Everyone wants to GPF – Get Paid Faster.  No matter what service or product you sell, whether you provide it, build it, or just resell it.  As soon as the sale is booked, we want to be paid.  And while a lot of the content floating around the web about getting paid faster includes great advice, none of it explains how to do it in an app you currently use.  That’s where this article comes in.  We’ll review the common areas of enhancing the likelihood of getting paid faster and how to use AccountEdge to help.

Make sure your customer data is correct Nothing you do will matter if you do not have the correct contact information for your customer:  full mailing addresses including shipping and accounting contact details with names, emails and even phone numbers.  AccountEdge allows for up to five full sets of contact details per Card.  Now is the time to review the details and develop company practices.  For example, address one is the main address; address two is shipping (already set-up that way for Customer Cards); address three is accounting; four is a personal contact at the company and fifth is an extra.  Next time you visit or sell to this customer, confirm their various addresses, emails, web addresses, etc. so your next invoice will get into the right hands, the first time.   Learn more here.

Create custom invoices Learn upfront if your customers require anything specific on their sales invoices.  Does it need to be emailed to another person, do you need to spell out your full warranty statement, are you supplying serial numbers or UPS® Shipping details?

AccountEdge allows you to modify the printed or emailed sales forms you use, whether they are quotes, orders or sales invoices.  From Print/Email invoices, select Advanced Filters>Customize.  From this window, you turn fields off and on, change fonts and styles, and add logos, also include text boxes for special terms or other legalese.  Then assign that custom form to any customer in Card Information>Selling Details.  This way, your clients get the most appropriate invoice for them.  Get it right and you will not spend time redoing their invoices after each sale, which wastes time and delays payment.   Learn more here.

Email invoices immediately after creation Do not wait till the project is done or until the end of the month to send invoices.  If you offer terms, you will not get paid for at least another 15-30 days, or more.  If you do the work, issue the invoice and record the receivable on your books, and let your client record the payable in theirs – today.  It is easy to send your invoices directly from AccountEdge using our enhanced email options.

From an AccountEdge sales window, select the Send button at the bottom to email a pdf along with a custom email directly to your client, and include attachments like graphics, contracts, etc.

And, be sure to use the best Delivery Status, setup at Card Information>Card Details so that AccountEdge knows ‘how’ to send the customer their invoices: via Print, Email, both or neither.  

Use email templates to communicate better and faster AccountEdge helps you communicate better by helping you to create your own email merge templates.  When you record sales invoices and email them you will be able to configure the email you send with the pdf of the sales form.  Use merge tags to personalize these templates to meet your goals and help your clients feel the love, and to help you get paid faster. Add more email addresses from their Card in case a copy needs to go to another person.   Learn more here.

Send Statements It sounds old school, but it works. Consistently send statements, typically monthly, to all of your customers with outstanding balances. AccountEdge allows to customize your statement form(s) and either print and mail them or email them. Even if you only email invoices, do not overlook the power of your aged receivable, on paper, on your customers’ desk.  It’s a subtle, yet powerful way to GPF.  

Accept Credit Cards Offer more ways to get paid by accepting credit cards right in AccountEdge. You’ll get competitive rates, and most importantly, direct integration to your general ledger.  Charge a customer’s credit and the full transaction details are already posted in your company file.   Learn more here. 

Get paid online Make it easier for your clients to pay you. The easiest (for you and them) is to allow them to pay you online.  We have you covered.  AccountEdge Web Pay enables you to send invoices with Pay Now links so your clients can safely pay you online, on their time, from anywhere.   Learn more here.

Getting paid faster requires some forethought and set up.  Do it now, before you engage your next new customer.  Let them see how seriously you take your accounting and send the not-so-subtle message that you mean business and that means delivering the goods and getting paid, making everyone happy.  

Today we pushed live an update that includes new enhancements and addresses bugs.  Here’s a list of what’s new…

Creating a Sale from a Purchase or Purchase from a Sale You can now take an existing sale and create a purchase from it and vice versa. The lines of the sale or purchase will be moved to the new transaction.

Invoice Delivery Default On customer contact records you now can view and set a default Invoice Delivery method. You can set this for Print, Email, Print and Email as well as Printed/Emailed. This is then used when creating sales.

Invoice Delivery Methods On Sales Similar to how this works in AccountEdge Pro, you can set the delivery method for a sale. (eg. To Be Printed, To Be Email, etc). Once a sale is then Printed, the status will change to Printed (or emailed…). This is used in AccountEdge Pro when using Print/Email Invoices. Any changes to this delivery status will be synced back and forth with AccountEdge Connect and your desktop software.

Professional Purchases We’ve added support for creating Professional Purchases just as you can do in AccountEdge Pro. This allows you to add to lines of purchases a date, description, account and amount similar to a Professional Sale.

Updated the Mobile Interface for Contacts We’ve updated the window when viewing contacts on a mobile phone to make it easier working with contacts on a small screen.

Default Income and Expense Accounts for Professional Sales/Purchases When adding an income account to a Professional Sale or expense to a Professional Purchase, we will ask you if you would like to save this account as a default for this customer or vendor for future transactions.

Customer Payment Method You can now set your customers default payment method on a Customer record. You’ll notice a new Payment Method tab where you can set the method and other related details. This method will then be used by default when creating a Customer Payment as well as using Paid Today.

New Transaction on Vendor Record A New Transaction button can now be found on a vendor record while viewing a vendor so you can’t quickly create a purchase or pay a bill.

Changing the Sale Type While on a Sale When creating a new sale, you can now change the type (eg. quote, order, invoice) without having to exit out and start over again.

The Sales Register filter for Customer will now display if the contact is a Customer or a Lead.

Addressed a problem where it was possible to mistakenly process a credit card payment twice.

When customers using an iPhone to view and pay and pay their invoices, the list of invoices might have been empty.

Fixed a problem where Draft sales and purchases converted to Bills and Invoices where not showing up in the Registers as open A/R or A/P.

Cleaned up a bit of the Bill Payment window where fields weren’t aligned quite right.

Miscellaneous Purchase Orders were listed as Bills in the Bill Payment window.

Removed the address field from Misc Sales and Purchases. This does not exist in AccountEdge Pro, etc. and could cause sync issues if used.

The Miscellaneous Sales window had some alignment issues if the browser window was a certain size.

Cleaned up the user interface across a variety of screens and squashed other smaller bugs.

This is possibly the most subjective question ever: Where is the line? In our case, it wasn’t political, military, financial, or even that important in the overall scheme of things.  But for some of our customers it was personal. And not in a bad way.


You see, our lines are actual lines, as in the lines between the columns on an AccountEdge sales or purchases  transaction. When we redesigned  these windows, we updated the look and feel from top to bottom. We received tons of great feedback about the newer font choices, gray alternating row colors, the bolded (sometimes red) fonts, and even rubber stamps (PAID). It was encouraging to hear we were moving the right direction.  

But one change  was met with mixed reviews; the removal of the line between columns.  For some, it was personal. Everyone has a line.  And a small group actually wanted to see it.

So we mocked it up, added some extra padding, found a good color and weight, and asked for user feedback. Thumbs up.  The result is in AccountEdge Pro US r21.0.3.

(aka Introducing AccountEdge 2017...and our top 3 new favorite features)

There is so much to love about AccountEdge 2017 (US) we’d like to introduce you to our top three new features;

Clearly at number #1 is UPS® shipping.  From our customer surveys we learned that a majority of our customers ship using UPS.  This writer has personally lobbied and voted for UPS support inside AccountEdge for years.  We agree, it’s a great idea and it was time to make it happen.  Over the course of 2016 we’ve built an excellent working relationship with UPS resulting in AccountEdge being approved as a UPS Ready® certified business application.  

What does this mean to our customers? That you can now send a shipment from a sale or from a card, get estimates, use negotiated rates, update freight on sales, print labels, track everything.  Use all the familiar UPS shipping services, packaging and other options, notifications and services.  Whether you send items or contracts to commercial or residential addresses or a UPS Access Point™ location, UPS is small business friendly and AccountEdge makes shipping easy.  Learn More here.

Our second highlight is robust email enhancements that use templates to create custom merged emails for all your invoices, statements, receipts, purchases, payments, pay stubs, cards and shipping communications.  See your merged emails before you send them.  Send your holiday hours or shipping information, add attachments, make special offers or turn leads into customers.  Select to merge fields from company, card, invoice or shipping details. AccountEdge is making it easier and faster to do your email marketing right from your accounting app. Learn more here.

Longtime customers will love our third-favorite feature, which will save clicks everyday.  We’ve added a more efficient way to do ‘Paid Today’ on a sale or purchase.  Define the account you want to receive money into or to pay out of on sales and purchases.  Set the payment’s transaction number and memo, and with one-click fill in the amount being applied. If you take or make deposits on sales and purchases, this feature is for you.  Learn more here.

Of course, your favorite might not be listed above. It may be one of the other great features of 2017. After all, we wouldn’t have guessed the most popular feature (as defined by you, our customers) in 2015 would be Hide Inactives or in 2016 - Void Check. What will you find most useful most this year?

Visit our website for more details and our YouTube channel to see AccountEdge 2017 in action and learn how it will work for you.  

The AccountEdge Team

In 2014 we launched AccountEdge Cloud. The idea was to allow customers to perform key AccountEdge tasks from the web. That could be a salesperson needing to enter sales from the field or a graphic designer three cubicles down wanting to participate in the time billing process without having an awesome, but potentially intimidating, accounting app on their computer. It was and is a great idea and a concept we’re enthusiastically expanding over time. But, there was the important matter of settling on a name.

“AccountEdge Cloud” made sense (to us) because it very clearly underscored that the companion app was a departure from our desktop roots and was…in the cloud. What we didn’t anticipate was the very rational perception that AccountEdge Cloud would be identical to AccountEdge Pro, only in the cloud. But it’s not. And won’t be. AccountEdge Pro has the benefit of 20+ years of development and it’s not our goal, nor would it be possible, to put all of that functionality into a browser-based app. Instead, we’re actively engaging customers to understand what important tasks and information make sense to access from a browser on any device.

It really does come down to that, doesn’t it?  

You can know your products and services, your customers, your employees, your pricing, your everything.  But, as Marcus Lemonis of CNBC’s ‘The Profit’ told a business owner, “…if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business”.  

What did he mean? Marcus was asking a hapless entrepreneur about his food costs; his breakdown of revenue by location, revenue by product - things an owner should know off the top of his or her head.  Clearly, Mr. Hapless did not have any answers, he was lost.  When he blurted out “60%” as one metric of food costs, Mr. Lemonis countered with this devastating followup, “Did you make that up or do you know that for sure?”.

And Mr. Lemonis is exactly right. Without intimate knowledge of your numbers, you really can’t know what’s going on inside your business.  You could sell a lot of products, but if your costs are too high per unit you might be losing money each time you deliver one.  Or, you might make so little profit that you can’t cover your costs, fixed or variable. As the Profit explains each week, if you keep an eye on the ‘people, process and product’, everything will be ok.  The underlying details are in the numbers.

Ask your bookkeeper, accountant or run the reports yourself.  Start with the obvious reports: Profit and Loss (for a period of time, like YTD) and the Balance Sheet (as of the last quarter-end).  Use these to dig deeper, looking at aged receivables and payables, inventory valuation and turns, cash flow.  These are your numbers.  Review these reports and you’ll have the answers to all of Marcus’s questions and you’ll know the numbers.  

We’re proud to announce the addition of Spend Money and Purchases as new features to AccountEdge Cloud, plus a whole lot more...

Spend Money https://youtu.be/WW5q_XI9130 You can now enter your expenses, checks written, credit card purchases, cash spent, etc. using Spend Money just like you can in AccountEdge Pro.  Choose a bank or credit cx2ard account and allocate amounts across expenses.  You can also apply jobs to each line of the transaction.

Purchases https://youtu.be/LRlKgpQC8_g AccountEdge Cloud now supports the creation of Purchase Orders, Quotes and Bills. Create item purchases or order inventory or service purchase orders, bills, etc.  You also can convert quotes to PO's to bills.  While creating bills, you'll be able to apply a payment using Paid Today as you can do in AccountEdge Pro.

Purchases Register https://youtu.be/RD8c218t4Os The new Purchases Register displays all of your purchases including Spend Money transactions, bills, PO's, quotes and open payables.  Payables created in AccountEdge Pro are synced to AccountEdge Cloud.  These open payables are in summary only and do not include Bill details.

Unlike AccountEdge Pro, the Purchase Register in AccountEdge Cloud shows all types of purchases including Spend Money, open bills, closed bills, purchase orders, etc.

Pay Bills https://youtu.be/sUgub3uEMQs AccountEdge Cloud syncs your open payables so you can now see how much is owed to Vendors.  Use the Purchase Register to find any open payables for a vendor or find them by viewing a vendors contact record.  You can also apply a payment against an open payable synced up from AccountEdge Pro or a bill created in AccoutEdge Cloud.

Paid Today Changes in Sales and Purchases When using Paid Today on a sale or a purchase you can now choose which account you are receiving funds into or which bank account is to be used when making a payment.  You can also create a memo to go with the transition that will be created as well as set the transaction ID.

Transaction IDs for Receive Payment and Pay Bills When using Paid Today or you will be able to set up default transaction ID numbers  per bank and credit card account. For example you might want to set your Checking Account's next transaction ID/check # to be AC000101 or you might want to let AccountEdge Pro assign the transaction ID # when it is synced.

Professional Sales Layout AccountEdge Cloud now supports creating and syncing the Professional Sale Layout. With this sale type you can apply a date to each of the lines on a sale.

Changing Transaction IDs When creating a new sale, purchase, etc., you will be able to override the auto-generated transaction ID which can be modified in Settings.  On your next sale the ID will revert back to the next available ID according to your setting.

Retaining Filters When using filters in the registers, after you click to view a transaction, if you return to the register, your filters will still be applied until you clear them or leave the register.

Promised Date On sales and purchases you can now add a Promised Date just as you can in AccountEdge Pro.  

Manually Activate a Web Pay User You now have the ability to manually activate a Web Pay user where that user's activation email has gone to spam or was not delivered. Simply click Activate on the customers record and the customer will then be able to log in using the password they created.  

Customer Since and Lead Since Auto-Populated When creating a customer or lead, AccountEdge Cloud will pre-populate the Customer or Lead Since fields. For records synced from AccountEdge Pro that do not contain dates, these fields will remain empty but allowing you to add a date if needed.

Creating a Sale from a Customer or Lead Record While viewing a customer or lead in the Contacts list you will be able to create a transaction and have AccountEdge Cloud pre-fill in the customer name and other Sales defaults when using Add Transaction.

You'll also notice that you can not only resend an Invite from a customer record but once activated, you can click a Deactivate button to deactivate the customer's Web Pay account.

We recently had our office kitchen remodeled with new floors, cabinets, the whole works, and it looks great.  But, there’s only one small problem: the spoons keep disappearing.  

Despite pleas to have them reunited with their cutlery brothers and sisters, they simply vanish.  It has been going on for years.  It’s a mystery question of office life.  We have tons of forks and knives, even serving utensils, but somehow, no spoons.  

So what do you do?  Buy each person their own spoon?  It might be cool to have them personalized with lanyards, so we can wear them like Flavor Flav wears his clock.  Do we buy a case of plastic disposable spoons?  Nah, too wasteful.  Do we ask everyone to bring their own?  Seems kinda harsh.  Sometimes you just need a spoon, especially when it’s cold outside or after visiting Denville Dairy in the summer heat.  A spoon is an afterthought in every office, you just grab one from the drawer.  If you work in an office, you probably do the same thing, and have the same problem.  

And then what happens?  

Do we do an inventory?  Do we offer spoon-amnesty? Do we stop supplying cutlery?

In the end, we bought a few dozen more spoons with special NFC chips and geolocation tracking.  We developed an iPhone app (”FindMySpoon”) to track our spoons that sends a signal to any missing cutlery.  The ‘lost’ spoon buzzes and is returned home to the drawer.  

Or at least that’s how I wished it would work.  Really, we just bought a few dozen more spoons.  

The funny thing is, on the way home from the office one day, I reached for a pen in the console of my car and pulled out an office spoon.  How did that get there?  Better sneak it back into the office when no one is watching, wash it off and throw it in the draw.  Ahh, the life of the office spoon.  

We have a meeting room at our office called the “Blue Room”, simply because it’s painted blue.  It has a huge TV monitor, lots of tables and chairs, and two entire walls of whiteboards. The whiteboards are completely full of notes and comments from different projects and product meetings, with past, present and future feature lists. 



These whiteboards represent a timeline of ideas that stretches back several years and looks forward into 2017.  

The problem is, finding open white space is getting harder and harder.  We’ve tried whiteboard apps and 10 other ways to save the info as images, to catalog and sort them, just trying to preserve them.  But, nothing is better than the real thing.  I think most folks are simply too scared to ever erase anything.  Heaven forbid you’re the one to delete the most important list ever created.  No one needs that pressure.  



Even when the actual work starts and the required details are moved to Basecamp, the whiteboard still survives.  Like a signpost, a point in time, a ‘Balance Sheet’ view of a release.  This enables us to learn from previous decisions and make future bets.  



These whiteboards also serve as a point of inspiration, salvation, frustration, and motivation.