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Moderator note: This QuickBooks - Tax Invoice thread refers. Rather than derail that thread, the banter between QuickBooks and Pastel fans has been moved here. (Don't take it too seriously, please - they're both good products )
So then Dave A said
And all the Pastel users are going "What? That easy?"
And then the fun started...
Last edited by Dave A; 18-Oct-13, 11:03 AM.
Reason: context note added
Well ... actually ... there are no steps required as it has "Tax Invoice" already as the default.
How colloquial. That must go down a treat in parts of the world where an invoice is an invoice is an invoice, period.
(Which reminds me - what's this period end stuff you have to do in Pastel? It just seems so unnecessary.)
Rather than trashing this thread, maybe we should start a QuickBooks vs Pastel thread, with the proviso that it should be light hearted jousting rather than a serious duel.
p.s. I'm quite happy to concede Pastel is ahead of QuickBooks when it comes to out-the-box compliance with the SA regulatory environment.
Good one Dave! Yes I agree that it should be light-hearted. Life is too short to make a big deal out of a preference. But isn't Pastel and Quickbooks both products from the same company -"Softline" (or now "Sage")?
I will leave Neville to answer the difficult bits. To be honest I have never used Quickbooks so can't really compare. Pastel is very nice once you are all set up and trained, but can be very daunting for a person who just buys it off the shelf.
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. - Aesop "The Lion and the Mouse"
Good one Dave! Yes I agree that it should be light-hearted. Life is too short to make a big deal out of a preference. But isn't Pastel and Quickbooks both products from the same company -"Softline" (or now "Sage")?
Yes, but this is simply because it is a local company representing 2 products under the same company banner. Pastel and Quickbooks are two separate software companies.
I remember many years back when Pastel first came out, they reckon that they could import any data base into Pastel. When the company I was a director off purchased Pastell, it could not import, so had to be done manually. It was too late at that stage to get another package, and our auditors at the time insisted we use it. The only reason we purchased Pastell at that time was for the quick import of the data base.
We did struggle for years with Pastel, can not remember what it was now.
What irked me about Pastel then was the license fees we had to pay yearly, and pay for any support requested which was created by Pastell, something about the data base getting corrupt.
When I started my own company, I decided to go the Quickbooks route.
Victor - Knowledge is a blessing or a curse, your current circumstances make you decide! Solar pumping, Solar Geyser & Solar Security lighting solutions - www.microsolve.co.za
The history of Pastel is very much wrapped up in the history off accountiing software and the history of South Africa. Not much of this is documented and most of it I have to dredge up from failing memory, with the result that I can’t pinpoint years all that accurately.
To really grasp how these different packages came about, you really have to adopt the modern view of so-called Channels.
THE ADVENT OF DESKTOP COMPUTERS
At the time when IBM finally gave desktop computers business respectability, all financial and accounting software ran on mainframes. Cobol programming dominated the accounting environment and it was dramatically out of reach of all but large corporations and conglomerates.
Smaller businesses all over, and pointedly, their accountants and auditors were left with largely manual written systems. This was not so long ago; up to the early 80’s. For smaller businesses, this was really a problem when it came to being audited. Those days there were not the restrictions and auditor services that there are today; auditors took books beyond trial balance and did absolutely everything else.
This meant they simply had to have the books. Businesses could not do without the books, so auditors had no choice but to arrive en-masse and do the work at clients; getting in the way, endless tea and biscuits, boardroom occupied for weeks on end someone was always unproductive because “the audtors are busy with my journal”.
The time was ripe for computerized accounting systems where the “books” could simply be printed out multiple times and the auditors could simply get on with it.
The scene in South Africa at the time was somewhat bleak. Disinvestment and sanctions were rife and we were always lagging so it was natural that the industry looked towards a local solution.
THE BEDFORD ACCOUNTING / COMPUTER ASSOCIATES CHANNEL
In the mid 80’s there was a product called Bedford Accounting. I have no idea who owned or developed it. This product soon caught the attention of Computer Associates and in the late 80’s they bought it, prettied it up and launched it is Accpac Simply Accounting. This was during MS-DOS days.
It was stable, simple to use and blazingly fast by todays standards, like all MS-DOS applications were.
It was a modular system, initially consisting of GL, Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. Each were a stand alone product but that interfaced on an ad-hoc basis; in GL you imported the generated Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable batches.
By now, if you are an old fart like me and remember early Pastel, it should sound familiar.
There were a bunch of competitors “developing” similar products, but Computer Associates had an ace up the sleeve. In the late 80’s they also bought a spreadsheet program that was packaged with Osborne portable computers, called VisiCalc. They jazzed it up and re-launched it as SuperCalc. At the time, it’s main competitor was Lotus123.
But they were smart; they gave SuperCalc direct access to AccPac’s database. Suddenly accountants could do magic. Extracting data from multiple accounting databases meant they could compile presentation financial statements directly from the source, combine multiple companies and basically look like heroes.
I recall in the late 80’s having to compile monthly management information for FNB for a retail group that I worked for. I used this combination of products to produce usefull management information (MIS was a dark art those days). Within days I had a delegation from FNB management at my office requesting that they be allowed to present the report pack as an example to the other clients of what management statements should actually look like!
THE PASTEL CHANNEL
During this time, Pastel released their product. It was modular, like AccPac. It worked, was easy to use, ran in MS-DOS and because it was locally made, somewhat cheaper.
I remember evaluating it and comparing it to Accpac. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing; the similarities were astonishing. Even the account numbers allocated to the default set of accounts were the exact same as Accpac, and they still are today! At the time, sanction busting was the norm and any intellectual property was fair game in SA. Why it amused me so was CA acquired the product from Bedford at an undisclosed price, but it would have been substantial, whereas the Pastel guys acquired it for nothing.
When GST arrived in SA, it was a simple matter for AccPac users. It was already built in and you simply switched it on and set the percentage. Other folk, including the original Pastel users, had a difficult time of it at first.
The Accounting profession loved Pastel. It was relatively cheap and they unwittingly “marketed” it pretty aggressively to their clients. Now all they had to do was install a backup on their system and they had their own copy of client data. Now they could use all manner of sampling and computer assisted audit techniques (CAATS) without leaving their office. Previously we had to write Cobol programs to interrogate data, book computer time at the IT department and almost always had to run them after hours. Now we HAD the actual DATA and could do all manner of things.
There was a rumour in the late 80’s and early 90’s that the term “Partner “ linked to Pastel products was an oblique reference to Audit Partners.
There is more to relate; how other channels really accelerated and how Pastel didn’t. But I’ll bore you.
And are you happy with it? Is there anything that you could do on Pastel that you can't do on Quickbooks?
Can not complain, it does what I want. Drs Crs, age analysis, outstanding Drs/Crs, transaction report and VAT.
You can do it with out going on a course, and off course no yearly license fee required
Victor - Knowledge is a blessing or a curse, your current circumstances make you decide! Solar pumping, Solar Geyser & Solar Security lighting solutions - www.microsolve.co.za
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