Keeping tabs on the cash flow

Cash Book Accounting and Final Accounts by Gemini make up a package suitable for use in a cash-based business, replacing the conventional manual cash book.

Using the first program details of all amounts spent and received - both cash and bank transactions - are typed in and the program will produce a trial balance at any time.

The Final Accounts program produces a complete trading and profit and loss account and balance sheet. The programs do not attempt to maintain debtors' or creditors' ledgers.

The programs cost £59.95 each, although they are cheaper if bought as one of Gemini's combination packs.

Cash Book Accounting is generally well-designed and easy to use.

The only time that much technical accounting knowledge is needed in this program is when the journal option is used to make adjustments to the accounts.

As adjustments can often be left until the end of accounting periods, a user can get on with recording the day-to-day cash and bank transactions, leaving the adjustments for an accountant to deal with later.

Ensuring that data entered is accurate and complete is a very important aspect of all com puterised accounting systems. This program uses the common method of batch control to minimise the chance of errors getting through.

Gemini state that this program provides a full audit trail, on the assumption that the user always prints out batch sum maries. However, even if this were done I think that using the audit trail would be very difficult.

Each account, including those for cash and bank, records only the current balance and no detail is kept on file of the transactions which have resulted in that balance.

The batch detail printouts would, of course, show invoice details and so on and would help.

However, over the course of a year there are likely to be many such printouts each containing many transactions, and each would have to be examined to see if it contained anything relevant to the account in question.

In the case of a busy account made up from many transactions, this would be a long process.

A solution to the problem would be if after each set of updating runs a printout were produced which would show for each account, the brought forward balance, details of all amounts updated in those runs and the resulting carried forward balance.

This printout would show the transactions summarised by account which would make checking much easier.

With the Final Accounts program the user can ask at any time for a balance sheet and profit and loss account along with comparative figures.

The layouts of the balance sheet and profit and loss account are quite adequate for small businesses and these documents can give an easily obtained picture of how a business is doing.

Ken Garrett