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Preferences are settings that enable you to tailor AccountEdge to your business requirements and processes.

You can set preferences to customize the way AccountEdge operates. For example, you can choose to automatically print invoices after recording them, or prevent users from editing transactions.

Easy Setup Assistant

After completing the New Company File Assistant, it’s time to set up your new AccountEdge company file to suit your business. Setting up your preferences now will make your work flow easier and more efficient when you enter transactions later.

The Easy Setup Assistant will walk you through the process of choosing your AccountEdge system and company file preferences. It will go over the key preferences for the five main areas of AccountEdge: Accounts, Sales, Purchases, Payroll and your company file Preferences. The Easy Setup Assistant will launch automatically after completing the New Company File Assistant. You can also access this by going to Setup on the top menu bar and selecting Easy Setup Assistant from the drop-down.

Note: You do not NEED to set these preferences now, but we recommend you do, spending a few minutes choosing key preferences in AccountEdge will save you hours in the future. You can always get back to this in the future by going to Setup > Easy Setup Assistant from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

There are 5 different sections to the Easy Setup Assistant:

• Customize
• Accounts
• Sales
• Purchases
• Payroll

The Customize Easy Setup Assistant will help you personalize AccountEdge.

Data Entry: In this step, choose which of the data entry options you want to use. You can have AccountEdge Easy-Fill, or auto-fill, your accounts, items or cards when you start to type text into certain fields. Expandable Data Entry will help display long item descriptions on sales and purchases.

Record Selection: Choose how you want to select accounts, items and cards by their name or number (or ID, for contact cards).

Multiple Currencies: If you select this option, you will be able to record sales, purchases and other transactions in foreign currencies, and track your gains and losses on the exchange rate.

Note: Once you turn multi-currency “on” and start recording transactions, you cannot turn it off. You should not select this option if you conduct all your business in your local currency.

Reminder Log: The Reminder Log is where you can view notes, transactions, and reminders. You can tell AccountEdge to automatically create a log entry each time you record a sale, purchase, or banking transaction. The log entry contains basic information about the transaction, such as the invoice number, check number, and the amount.

Selecting these options will enable you to view a record of the transactions you make and the log entries you create in one window; however, your company file’s size can increase significantly over time if you record a high volume of transactions.

Aging Options: You can choose how you would like to age the account balances of customers and vendors. You can choose to use daily aging periods (example: 30-60-90 days) or monthly aging periods (January, February, etc.).

The selection you make here will affect the way information is displayed in your Analyze Receivables and Analyze Payables windows, on statements and on the following reports: Aged Receivables, Aged Payables, Receivables Reconciliation and Payables Reconciliation.

If you don’t track aging periods on your transactions set up the 30-60-90 day aging period by default, just in case.

View Options: The To Do list displays recurring transactions, which items need ordering, which payments are due, and any reminders you may have set for a specific date.

The Accounts section of the Easy Setup Assistant will help you set up your accounts list and enter your opening balances.

Before you continue with the Easy Setup Assistant, you should review the Accounts in AccountEdge Guide to learn more about how AccountEdge handles your accounts list.

Accounts List: The Accounts section of the Easy Setup Assistant will help you create or modify your accounts list.

When you created your company file using the New Company File Assistant you selected how you wanted to set up your accounts list in AccountEdge.

If you chose to start with an accounts list provided by AccountEdge, you can now review and modify the accounts list that was created.

If you chose to add or import your own accounts list, you can do this now by selecting New or Import.

For tips and more information on Importing into AccountEdge, click here.

Opening Balances   
Unless you have just started a brand new business, some of your accounts probably have existing balances. You’ve made sales, paid bills, perhaps bought inventory and conducted a variety of other business activities that would affect your account balances.

The balances you enter should be as of the date selected as your conversion month. You can find this information on a trial balance report, a balance sheet or a profit & loss report prepared for the period immediately prior to your conversion date in your previous system.

If you imported your accounts list into AccountEdge, you may have included your opening balances in your import. Take this time to review the information and make sure everything is correct.

Note: We recommend speaking to your accounting professional and getting the latest set of financial statements, including a trial balance and the supporting detail for your open accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory balances and mid-year payroll details. This will help you modify your chart of accounts and enter your opening balances accurately. Don’t have an accounting professional? View our list of AccountEdge Experts.

In this section of the Easy Setup Assistant, you can set up default preferences about your customers and other sales-related information.

Layout   
AccountEdge offers multiple layouts to choose from for entering a new sales transaction. Choose a layout that best fits your needs.

The layout selected will be set as the default for when you create a new sale for a customer. You can always change the layout selection when creating a new sale.

Selling Details   
The details you enter here will be applied to all new contact cards for your customers and leads. Set a default price level for items, income account, and customer credit limit. You can modify these options later for specific contacts after your customer list is set up.

Sales Tax   
Enter in the sales tax codes that you would like to use for sales transactions.

When you create a tax code, you need to select which type of tax it is. There are two tax types you can choose from. The table below describes what each tax type is for.

• Sales Tax: This tax type is associated with the tax recorded on sales and purchases of goods and services.
• Consolidated: This tax type is used for taxes that are made up of two or more tax codes or sub-taxes. You would use this code. For example: if the 8% tax rate you record on sales is the combined total of a 5% state sales tax rate and a 3% city sales tax rate you would set up a consolidated tax.

You can only consolidate tax codes that are in your tax code list. Make sure you first create the individual tax codes.

Payment Information   
The details you enter here will be applied to all new contact cards for your customers. You can change these options for specific contacts after your customer list is set up.

Linked Accounts   
In this window, select the account where your customer payments will be deposited into. You also need to choose an account into which all undeposited funds will be recorded until you record a bank deposit.

When you receive a payment from a customer, you can choose to deposit it into the account for customer receipts or the account for undeposited funds.

Customer Cards   
In this step, you can add contact cards for your customers. You can add your customer information one at a time or via import.

Historical Sales   
Enter information about any sales that your customers haven’t paid in full as of your conversion month and fiscal year selection.

If the total of all historical sales does not equal the opening balance of your receivables account, an out of balance amount will be displayed. Ensure that you have entered all historical sales correctly and that the opening balance of your receivables account is correct.

In this section of the Easy Setup Assistant, you can set up default preferences about your vendors and other purchases-related information.

Layout   
AccountEdge offers multiple layouts to choose from for entering a new purchase transaction. Make sure you choose a layout that best fits your needs. The layout you choose will be the default selection when you create a new purchase for a vendor. You can change the layout selection when creating a new purchase.

Buying Details   
The details you enter here will be applied to new contact cards for your vendors and will be used when recording purchases. You can change these options for specific contacts after your vendor list is set up.

Sales Tax   
Enter the sales tax codes that you normally pay when purchasing from your vendors.

Payment Information   
The details you enter here will be applied to all new contact cards for your vendors. You can change these options for specific contacts after your vendor list is set up.

Linked Accounts   
In this step, select the default account for paying vendor bills. This should be the account you will make most of your vendor payments from. You can change this account when you record the vendor payment.

Vendor Cards   
In this step, you can add contact cards for your vendors. You can add in your vendor information one at a time or via import.

Historical Purchases   
You can enter information about any purchases that you haven’t paid in full as of your conversion month and fiscal year selection.

The total of all historical purchases should equal the opening balance of your payables account. If it does not, an out of balance amount will appear. Ensure that you have entered all of your historical purchases correctly and that the opening balance of your payables account is correct.

In this section of the Easy Setup Assistant, you'll enter information about the payroll taxes your company pays, the current payroll year and the accounts you want to use to track payroll information about your employees.

If you do not plan to process payroll from AccountEdge, you can skip this section.

Tax Tables   
Payroll taxes are amounts that are calculated and deducted from employee paychecks according to the rules established by the federal, state/ province and local government taxation authorities.

In AccountEdge, these calculation rules are stored in a tax table file that you need to load directly into your company file.

If you would like to receive payroll tax updates as they change during the year, you should enroll in the AccountEdge Payroll Tax Service. You will also receive any upgrades to AccountEdge that are released during your membership term.

Payroll Year   
In this step of the assistant, you will enter your current payroll year. Your payroll year is always 12 months long and ranges from January to December.

Since your payroll year is always January through December you may have a few months that your Fiscal Year and Payroll Year are different within AccountEdge.

Payroll Information   
Use this window to enter general information that’s required by AccountEdge in order to process payroll for your employees. You will be able to define how many hours make up a typically work week. You can also add your Federal Tax ID, Federal Unemployment Tax Rate, and select your state/province tax.

Linked Accounts   
In this step, select the default accounts that will automatically be used for your payroll transactions.

Payroll Categories   
Use this window to review your payroll categories. Wage categories include hourly and salary payments that you make, such as salary, bonus, sales person commission, vacation pay, sick pay and overtime.

Some other forms of payment, such as employee benefits, are also considered wages for tax purposes, and are referred to as non-cash wages. Non-cash wages are forms of payment not actually distributed as money by an employer, but included in an employee's gross pay total so the wages are subject to deductions and withholdings. Company car benefits, excess life insurance and incentive travel costs are all examples of non-cash wages.

• Wages: All money paid to an employee for labor or services rendered on an hourly or salary basis.
• Accruals: Items such as vacation and sick leave, which employees accrue under the terms of their work agreement.
• Deductions: Money withheld by the employer and paid to other organizations on behalf of the employee, for example: union fees.
• Employer Expenses: Employer-paid benefits (ie: medical insurance).
• Taxes: Amounts withheld by the employer from the employee’s paycheck and paid to a federal, state/ province, or local government.

Employee Cards   
Use this step in the Easy Setup Assistant to add cards for each of your employees. Manually enter your employee contact information, or import an existing employee list.

Timesheets   
On this window, select if you would like to use timesheets to track employee time for payroll. Timesheets enable you to track the hours worked by your employees and can help you calculate payroll more accurately.

General Preferences

Preferences window. This window will list all available preferences. To view this window, go to SETUP on the top menu bar and choose PREFERENCES.

Some preferences you should consider choosing prior to entering transactions include:

• Use Audit Trail Tracking: If you want to keep a record of transaction, tax, account, and system changes, select this option. This is useful if more than one person will be entering transactions into your file.
• Transactions CAN’T be Changed; They Must be Reversed: If you don’t want to allow users to edit or delete transactions, select this option. If they want to change or delete a transaction, they will need to do so by recording a reversal transaction.
• I Deal in Multiple Currencies: If you want to enable multi-currency accounting, select this option. Please note that this cannot be turned off once you've used the multi-currency option on a card or transaction.