Stocks under control

Stock Control and Invoicing, Sales and Purchase Ledgers from Systematics International, offer easy-to-use disc-based business programs.

All printouts produced were well-designed and the systems were well-documented.

I will deal first with the stock and invoicing system.

Each stock record consists of an item code, description, cost price, a normal and alternative selling price, slock quantity, re-order level and supplier code.

Unlike many stock systems, the user can assign his own item codes to the stock (up to 10 alphanumeric digits) rather than have to number the items consecutively.

The system records receipts, issues and stock adjustments and will print full stock listings, value listings and a reorder report.

The stock system is integrated with the invoicing system so that quantities invoiced for are subtracted from the relevant slock balance and the selling prices and descriptions can be picked up from the stock file for inclusion in the invoice.

The invoicing system is not integrated with the sales ledger system so that customers' names and addresses have to be typed in full each time.

In addition to the invoice header and footer, up to 16 lines can be included in each invoice.

This could be 16 different items being sold or eight different items, each taking up two lines of description and so on.

Even if the system is being run in conjunction with the stock system, "free" format can be entered at any time to allow the user to insert tailor-made invoice lines.

This might be useful if, for example, special delivery charges were needed.

Discounts and up to 10 different rates of VAT can be handled and invoices can be easily amended at any time.

The sales and purchase ledger systems each deal with up to 400 accounts and 750 transactions.

The ledgers work on the balance forward system in that full details are kept of the current period transactions but only totals arc kept of the transactions from each of the previous periods.

Posting of invoices, credit notes, receipts (or payments as appropriate) and adjustments can be made.

There is no facility to explicitly match up postings to one another in an account.

Invoices are entered into the current period and all other postings are entered against the oldest outstanding balance.

I think that this may not be satisfactory for many users as it easily leads to confusion as to what has actually been paid.

Even staying with a balance forward system. I can see no reason why this cannot be improved by allowing the user to specify against which period amounts arc to be set.

Ledger cards, aged analyses, daybooks, VAT analyses, con trol reports and statements or remittance summaries and remittance advices are all available for printing.

A competent package in a very competitive market, but not particularly outstanding.

Ken Garrett