How to maintain the charts of account

Open your Peachtree software and then select the open an existing company which you have made already previously select that company and click on ok button now the Peachtree will show you the welcome page will be appears

Now you have to maintain the charts of account of the company. The first step is to click on the maintain option which will be showing in the menu bar and then the drop down list will be appear which shows the different options what you have to do is click on the chart of account which was in the 4^th option.

After clicking on the chart of accounts the new window will open and that was of maintain chart of account.

This is the picture of maintain chart of accounts in this you have to maintain the accounts by adding the journal ledger entries in it and the beginning balance if you have any. This picture shows us all the information what we have to do in it. In the menu bar the 1^st option is to close the chart of accounts and the 2^nd option is to save the detail and the 3^rd option is to delete the detail and the 4^th option is to change the id of your account and 5^th option is to add new account and 6^th option if of help option from where you can take all the information what you want.

How to enter our data in the chart of account?

First of all you have to write the account id and the description of the account and then select the account type that what type of account is.  Account id is the code by enter that code you easily find the account. In maintains of chart of accounts there is an inactive option by clicking the in active option you can block your account description.

 After saving all the information in the charts of account now you want to see the account detail click on the search button that was in front of account id. By clicking on the search id you can check the account detail and if there is any mistake you can also change it from there.

If you want to see the Accounts that you saved in the Chart of Accounts click on the “Reports” button which was in the tool bar

The drop down list will occur now click on the forth option that was the “General Ledger” the new window will open and that was of the “Select a report” in this window Double click on the “Chart of Accounts”

Now the new window will show you the Accounts, Name and detail of your company were you can see all the saved data you saved previously. This window shows you the “Account ID” “Account description” “Active” and “Account Type”

Maintain beginning balances:

After maintaining the chart of Accounts now you have to put the beginning balances in the Accounts. You can add the balances by clicking on the Maintain option that was in the tool bar and then click on the Fourth option and that was of “Chart of Accounts”

Now again the same window will open and that was of the Maintain Charts of Accounts”. Now you have to do is just Click on the “Beginning Balances” option which was in the front of the Account Type.

A window will open by the name “Select Period”. In this you have to select the period from where you want to enter the beginning balances. If you are entering data on the date 1st January, 2010 than you wouldn’t select the period “1/1/2010 through 1/31/2010” because otherwise it will become the Closing Balance of that month and here we are entering the beginning balances and the beginning balances for 1st January, 2010 will be the accounts maintained on 31st December, 2009. So we will select the period “12/1/2009 through 12/31/2009. And then click “OK” button.

After clicking on the “OK” button the new window will open and that was of “Chart of Accounts Beginning Balances”. Before entering the data we have to check that whether we have created the Retained Earning Account or not if not we must make the Retained Earning account first because without that account the software would not accept our balances. And if there is any difference present in balance sheet then it will be written in “Trail Balance”

How to operate Peachtree Account

If you want to start a work on the peach tree first of all you need to double click on the Peachtree icon and then the Peachtree setup will start.

This is the first page of the Peachtree after the double clicking on the icon this picture occurs. This picture shows us the contents about what you want to do in Peachtree.

1.      The first step of the Peachtree accounting is that open an existing company if you have the company data and you want to use that data simply click on the first step and then open an existing data.

2.      The second step is of set up a new company as you can see by the name of the second step it says that if you don’t have the existing company data and you want to create a new company data so by clicking on the set up a new company you can create your own company data.

3.      The third step tells you about how you can learn about Peachtree accounting through an online tutorial they give you the samples of the company accounts where you can see the company accounts.

4.      The fourth step is to explore a simple company.

5.      Fifth step tells us about how to convert your QuickBooks or one-write or plus company data into Peachtree.

6.      And the last step tells us about to close the windows.

We are going to create a new company so we will use the second option that was set up a new company by clicking on the set up a new company and click on the next button the introduction window will be open it tells us about the 5 steps.

1.      What is your company name?

2.      Your chart of account?

3.      Your accounting method?

4.      Your posting method?

5.      Your accounting period?

This picture show us the information of five steps

 After reading all the basic information we click on the next to continue the work further.

When you click on the next this new window opened and that was about the company information where we put all the information of the company like our company name and the address of the company, city, state, zip (postal code) and country, telephone number of the company and fax number. The most important thing is the type of the business where you mention the type of your business that what type of business you are going to create weather it was corporate or sole proprietorship or partnership business and Limited Liability Company.  Whatever company you want to make just select that company because then we came that company accounts and then next you enter you company web site if you have the web site of the company then you enter your E-mail address of the company these all information are not the compulsory if you don’t want to put all the detail of the company you can just put your company name and the type of the business because it the compulsory for it. There are three more fields in the information and that is not relevant to our business because this software is American made and in America they give the code to the company and they have to put that code in the software so you don’t want to fill that fields you simply skip that field blank that was all the information of your company that you put in the software now click on the next button.

This chart of accounts will appear when you click on the next button.

First of all we have to create the chart of accounts of our company. To make the chart of account you have the following options.

1.      Set up a new retail, service, construction, manufacturing and distributing. If you want that a simple chart of account of your company create automatically you just select the first option.

2.      We want to create the new chart of account of our company so we click on the last option and that was build your own company. And click on the next button to proceed further.

After selecting the chart of account you click on the next button and the accounting method window open.

 Now you have the two types of accounting method

• 1.      Accrual

In the accrual system when you give invoice to the customer you record on the invoice basis and expenses are recorded when you received invoice from the customers.

• 2.      Cash

When you received the cash from customers you recorded the income on that time and when we pay our expenses the transaction recorded at that time.

So we have to follow the accrual accounting system so we select the accrual and click on the next button.

Now the new window is of posting method.

Posting method in the Peachtree accounting method is of two types of method works.

• 1.      Real time

Real time method is the method in which when you enter the transaction in the journal your transaction will automatically recorded in the ledger and financial statements and financial statement automatically updated.

• 2.      Bach

On the other hand Bach method is method in which you have to add the transaction in the journal and after that you have to give the command whenever you want to put the general entries in the ledger and financial statement you can post the general entries in the ledger or in the financial statement.

We want that our general entries will automatically record in the ledger or in the financial statement so we select the real time method to automatically record the transaction. After selecting the option click on the next button.

The next window is of the accounting periods.

This window is of the accounting period where you have to select the accounting period of the company. We want that our business prepare 12 months financial statement. In there we have to decide that how many accounting period we have. We have the 12 months accounting period which means we can prepare our accounts in every month so we select the 1^st option that was 12 month accounting period and then we click on the next option.

Now we have the monthly accounting period.

The software is asking about what our fiscal is and from where it starts. We select our fiscal year from Jan and whatever the year was now the software wants to know from which month we are going to enter our data in the software. The software is showing the month “MARCH” by default we have to change the month and select Jan from the drop down list.After selecting the month click on the next button.

The software shows us the congratulation window after all the steps we have done previously. Simply click on the finish option.

When you click on the finish option the software create the data base in which all the information of our company will be saved after that we can proceed further now we click on the finish again and then the software starts creating the data base file now the Peachtree has create the data base file for us in which all the information of our company incurred and the prove of that is the name of our company occurs in the title. So now we are in our company.