Society Manager and AISA include an integrated accounting system. Both the accounts receivable and accounts payable modules are tied directly to the master list. Each individual or organization in the master list has its own A/R ledger and its own A/P ledger. Either type of transaction can be recorded in the appropriate ledger of any individual or organization in the master list. (At first glance this may seem unusual, but it makes managing refunds a snap, and makes it easy for you to manage bursary, employment and management programs.) You may record as many transactions to any ledger as you wish. Revenue and expenses for any transaction can be split among as many general ledger accounts as necessary.
The inventory management and sales order entry sub-systems are also integrated with the accounts receivable system. You can define an unlimited number of inventory items. Sales order entry invoices are supported in the system and the layout of the invoice is completely user-definable although default form definitions are supplied with the system. Inventory items can be defined as unlimited in quantity (in which case no stock checking is done) or can be defined as having a quantity on hand, in which case quantities on hand are automatically updated by the system. Inventory items may also be defined as serially numbered items, in which case the system records a history of serial numbers for items sold to individuals or organizations. Inventory items may also be defined as master list reference items, so that the item points to another master list record (which record is selectable when the invoice is created or edited) to allow you to implement personal service items (instruction, tutoring, etc.) and to show the details of who provided the service on the invoice itself and on other management reports. When a personal service item is sold the system also automatically generates a time management entry in the correct individual's time management ledger.
You also use the master list as the accounts payable vendor file as well. You can restrict access to the accounts payable ledger for each member of the master list to specified users and you may also restrict users who have lower access levels from even seeing selected master list records. The accounts payable module allows purchases and payments to be tracked, and includes a cheque printing module. Accounts payable aging, purchases journal, disbursements journal and vendor history reports are all available.
Additionally, all transactions recorded under either the accounts payable or accounts receivable ledgers automatically update the general ledger. General ledger transactions may also be input manually. There are over thirty pre-formatted accounting reports available from the system including, in addition to the ones mentioned above, accounts receivable aging, cheque register, trial balance, income statement and balance sheet. In addition, all of the user-defined reports may be programmed to access the master list record transaction ledgers to generate detail or summary information on those ledgers.
The accounting system has a sophisticated on-line enquiry system, which allows the user to display accounting transactions selected by amount (minimum, maximum or both), date range, project code, general ledger account or any combination of all of the above. The master list query function also supports queries for master list records which either do or do not have specified transaction records in their ledgers, in combination with the other items that can be queried.
The accounting system supports multiple open periods, and validates dates automatically. It is impossible to enter an unbalanced transaction anywhere in the system. It is not necessary to close months or fiscal years before generating financial statements for succeeding periods. Society Manager and AISA will both perform virtual month ends and virtual year ends so that current and prior period information on the balance sheet and income statements are correctly calculated for the period selected on the report. These virtual period end processes have no effect on the data recorded in the system.
Society Manager and AISA also support an unlimited number of projects to identify different classes of transactions. Projects may also be used to implement fund accounting.
Society Manager and AISA support unlimited numbers of projects. Projects are used to categorize activities (both financial and other) within your organization. A membership related organization might well create projects to identify new member recruitment activities, education related activities, political action activities, public relations activities etc. Profit making organizations could define projects to identify marketing activities, customer support and training activities, staff training and related activities and others.
Projects have both a financial component (transactions can be assigned to various projects as necessary), and a labor component (through the time management functions and reports). Transactions can be distributed to multiple projects within a single transaction entry. Projects are also used to implement fund accounting. If you enable fund accounting each project you define becomes a fund. The system automatically ensures that all transactions recorded balance in all respects for each project identified within the transaction. For example, if fund accounting is enabled and you create a sale transaction that credits the revenue and liability portion of the transaction to three different project codes, the system will automatically create three debit entries, one for each project.
This facility also allows you to run a multi-company set of books on a single data set. You can create all the financial reports (including the balance sheet, when fund accounting is enabled) for any single project, any range of projects or for all transactions irrespective of project.
The inventory management sub-system in Society Manager and AISA allows you to define and track normal inventory items, non-stock items, serialized items and personal service inventory items. The system tracks purchases and sales of items, automatically performs asset management for those items where you want asset management and includes a flexible and easy to use sales order entry process.
The definition of inventory items is also infinitely expandable by defining attributes for inventory items in exactly the same way the attributes are defined for master list records. For example, if you needed to record the exact dimensions of an item in your inventory (for the generation of a catalogue, perhaps) you could simply create three attributes - height, width and depth, and by assigning those attributes to the inventory item you could record those three dimensions in the definition of the item.
The system supports recipes for inventory items as well. If an item is tagged as a "sale only" item, then a recipe table is enabled for that item. When the item is sold, the recipe table is consulted and the quantities on hand for the component items are adjusted as appropriate.
Both programs include a sophisticated touchscreen compatible POS interface. This POS interface is suitable for both retail and food & beverage operations, and is used in our golf and country club configuration. The POS interface also supports barcode scanners, employee card swipe login and is far more configurable than any other POS interface we've encountered.
You can also generate searches of the master list based on the presence or absence of sales orders with specific characteristics. For example, you can generate a list of people who have purchased a specific product (or range of products) in a certain time frame. From this query you can create mailing labels, word processing merge files or any number of different reports.
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