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Contents
[image: cogs, Pastel Xpress]

 

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  1. System Explorer

    The Explorer gives you quick access to customer, supplier, inventory and general ledger records. From here, you can access common editing and processing functions used for these accounts. For example, you can create new accounts or process invoices. You can access this function in one of two ways:
    • Manually show and hide Pastel Explorer by clicking the Pastel Explorer icon in the toolbar
    • Set up Pastel Explorer to load automatically when there are no program functions open. You set this per user in the Users > Passwords function

  2. Placing documents on hold

    Pastel Xpress 2009 allows users to place both customer and supplier documents on hold. This useful feature allows you to postpone the updating of documents until the clerk is confident that the invoice is complete. This is particularly helpful when the year-end has to be run but not all documents are ready to be updated. Once year-end has been completed, the user has the ability to change the dates on those particular documents, to reflect the correct dates for the current financial year.

  3. Grace Period

    Completing a year-end is a stressful task. Often, the final figures are not available from your accountant, which makes it difficult to complete the year-end while still continuing with day-to-day processing. More often than not, you need to process your transactions manually until the final figures are received.

    This feature gives you more time to finalise accounts by issuing a grace period that allows work in the following year to continue while the current year is finalised. You can do this by clicking Setup > Periods, changing the number of periods to 13 and selecting the option to Use Last Period as First Period of Next Year. When running the year-end procedure, the last period transactions and balances become the transactions and balances in the first period of the following year.

  4. Count Inventory

    Pastel Xpress 2009 has a helpful new feature that enables you to reconcile your theoretical stock with the physical items in your store. If there are differences, the system creates inventory journals to correct the theoretical quantities. You can access this feature by clicking on Process > Count Inventory. See the Year End Guide on the Customer Zone for step-by-step instructions on how to use this feature effectively.

  5. User defined fields

    When processing customer and supplier documents, users sometimes require additional fields that can display on the invoice, for example, the delivery method used by the customer as shown in the example below. Activate this feature by ticking the Customer User Defined Fields on the document.

    Enter the information you wish to display on the invoice for the customer's account by selecting Edit > Customers > Accounts and select the User Defined Fields tab.

  6. Supplier categories

    You can group suppliers into different categories such as type of product or area. This makes reporting easier since you are able to view your supplier listing by the specific categories setup. Create categories by going into Edit > Suppliers > Categories. Thereafter, assign categories to suppliers by selecting the category in Edit > Suppliers > Accounts.

  7. Processing in journals and cash books

    Save processing time when entering transactions in journals or cashbooks by typing in a comma or fullstop in the description column. When inserting a comma in the description column, the name of the account selected will display. Type in a fullstop and the month of the period selected will be displayed.

  8. Force cost codes

    Cost codes can be used to track or allocate income and expenditure to different cost centres, which could be a branch, department, job or even an employee. For more accurate reporting on each cost centre, Pastel Xpress can force users to enter a cost code when processing transactions. To force cost code usage, go to Setup > Entry Types and select the Force Cost Codes option for the different transaction types that make use of cost centres.

  9. Paying open item suppliers

    To let Pastel calculate how much you need to pay an open item supplier, create a payment transaction for the supplier with a zero amount. In the open item allocation screen, click the Auto Match button. Pastel looks at the outstanding invoices and the supplier's payment terms and determines how much to pay. This saves you time while ensuring that correct payments are made and allocated to relevant invoices.

  10. Find customers quickly

    In the Zoom facility, you can search for any text field on the master file record by using the Find button. For example, a user could enter a telephone number for a customer and Pastel will find the records that contain that number.

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