A Review of
Small Business Manager

With Edits By: J. Carlton Collins, CPA

Small Business Manager’s Core Modules and Sub Modules:  

To help you understand how to evaluate an accounting software product's list of modules, please refer to these two documents:

Carlton's Guide to Accounting Software Modules
Carlton's Checklist of the 90 Most Popular Modules

1.      General Ledger
        a.       Bank Reconciliation
2.      Accounts Payable
        a.       Purchase Order
3.      Accounts Receivable
4.      Sales Order
        a.       Sales Tax
5.      Payroll
6.      Inventory
7.      Job Cost
8.      System Manager

Small Business Manager’s Modules Review:  

Small Business Manager's  Financial Module
SBM’s financials allows users to maintain tight control of business finances with flexible account structures, true double-entry accounting, period-end closing, and tools for monitoring financial goals and managing cash flow.

Basic formats for a Balance Sheet, a Statement of Cash Flows, a Profit and Loss Statement, and a Statement of Retained Earnings are provided with the standard system. Users can view the basic draft layout information in the Financial Reports Setup window, or can use the window to define or modify layouts for financial statements. Advanced Financial Analysis provides several general report types to help create reports that record and analyze the financial standing of a company. Types are included to customize reports for a company’s specific needs, such as a Balance Sheet, a Profit and Loss Statement, a Statement of Retained Earnings, and a Statement of Cash Flows. An additional report type allows users to create more general forms of reports that can be used to measure a company’s financial success.

A user can define up to 13 fiscal periods in Small Business Manager to track weekly, monthly, and quarterly activity. The period can begin at mid-month, or whatever makes sense for the business, and each period can have a unique number of days.

Once period end procedures have been completed, users can then prevent future posting to that period by marking it as closed in the fiscal period setup window. Year-end closing is made flexible for company’s following a traditional 12 periods, by providing a 13^th “closing” period as preparation is made for a final year end close with auditors.

Banking 

SBM’s banking capabilities integrates all cash, check, and credit card transactions, traces bank account balances, and automates monthly reconciliation for all of a typical company’s business finances.

When a user enters customer transactions such as payments received customers appear as receipts that can be included in a deposit. When a user enters vendor transactions, payments made to vendors appear as check transactions in the checkbook register.

The cash flow calendar displays the availability of cash on a specific date and allows  a user to see cash receipts and disbursements for a month at a time. This information can help users schedule purchases and payments to their advantage and alerts to unacceptable delays in collecting outstanding receivables.

Users can define cash flow forecasts that include balances for one or more checkbooks, and the balance of a general ledger account selected.

Three forecasts have been set up.  Users can modify them, as necessary, to include or exclude transactions or documents as appropriate for their business.

The Reconcile Checkbooks window and the Select Bank Transactions window is used to reconcile the checkbook transactions entered in Small Business Manager with transactions as they were recorded by the bank and listed on the bank statement.

Users can reconcile a checkbook with a bank statement by selecting the transactions that have cleared the bank and by verifying the amounts against those that appear on the statement.

If a transaction cleared the bank for a different amount than was recorded, users can enter the difference and distribute the amount to the posting account that is chosen. Users also can record adjusting entries to track interest income, other expenses, other income, and service charges, so that the checkbook can be properly reconciled.

Checkbook transactions become historical records once they’ve been reconciled.

Inventory

SBM’s inventory functionality allows users to manage inventory levels and costs with flexible pricing and cost methods, offers multiple ways to track individual items and kits, and provides backorder management and real-time inventory adjustments.

Small Business Manager does maintain kits.  Quantities are tracked for the components of a kit, but not for the kit itself. Costs are associated with the components of a kit, and the quantity sold is tracked when these components are used at the time of sale. Users can also specify the components and the number of each component that should be included in a kit.

Users can specify a single price for an item, or they can create up to five price levels for an item. Using multiple price levels, when a user enters a sales transaction for an item, the default price level for the item is available, or up to four additional price levels can be selected.

To use a single price for an item, the user can enter the price in the Items window. Users can also change the price at any time.

To use multiple price levels, users must use the Item Prices window to choose a price type—a method for calculating pricing for the item—and to enter values that are used to calculate the price. The price types that are available for an item depend on the item’s cost method.

Sales

SBM’s sales features has integrated quotes, orders, invoices, fulfillments, and payments. The product is able to track customer histories to identify top customers, and monitor sales efforts using reporting capabilities.

SBM has the capability of generating quotes, invoices, orders, and returns.   SBM can also generate debit memos, finance charges, service/repairs, warranties and credit memos.

Users can print sales documents for quotes, orders, invoices, and returns. Users can also print packing slips for orders and invoices and picking tickets for orders, invoices, and returns. Packing slips display the items and quantities included for an order or invoice. Picking tickets display the items and quantities needed to complete an order or invoice.

Users can use the Customer Payments Entry window to record payments received from customers. After a cash receipt is entered, it can be applied to other sales transactions.

Users also can send customers statements showing how much they have paid or still owe. To be sure customer statements are correct, users must complete tasks to determine the balances due for each customer, including applying credits, returns, and receipts, and assessing finance charges.

Users can adjust sales transactions to reverse finance charges or to track checks that are returned because of non-sufficient funds (NSF). Users can also can void posted sales transactions to correct errors.

Once a user has entered information for their customers, it’s sometimes necessary to make changes to existing transactions and documents. For instance,  a transaction might need to be voided or an NSF check may need to be entered for a customer.  Users can change, void, and delete existing sales documents.

 

Purchasing

SBM’s features allows users to manage vendor relationships and control costs with integrated purchase orders, item receipts, invoices, payments. Users can also track vendor balances and history and manage overall spending.

Vendor records are used to track the status of vendors and to print reports. SBM keeps this information up to date to reflect a company’s current activity.

Users can maintain vendor records by updating information or by placing vendor records on hold. When there’s no longer a business relationship with a vendor, a user can inactivate and delete vendor records.

To get an accurate picture of the financial condition of a company, a user can enter the beginning or outstanding balances owed to each vendor. Entering vendor history gives the historical background needed to use reports and windows to compare amounts for previous years with the current year. Vendor history is updated continually as transactions are entered and posted.

Payables transactions include invoices, credit memos, returns, finance charges, and miscellaneous charges. A user can make payments to vendors by entering  a payment at the same time transaction is entered, create a manual payment for check, credit card, or cash payments or just process a computer check run.

Users can correct unposted transactions when transactions are entered incorrectly or when last-minute changes are made. Users can apply documents or amounts to transactions..

Microsoft SBM allows the user to enter, modify, print, and delete purchase orders.

Users can also receive and invoice items using the Receive/Invoice Items window. Receipt/invoices can be saved, edited if necessary, and then posted so that they become part of the permanent accounting records. Users also can correct receipt/invoices before posting and delete or void unposted receipt/invoices.  

There is a point of sale add-on product for SBM and there is credit card processing functionality. 

US Payroll

Microsoft Small Business comes with a complete payroll module for up to one hundred employees.  The module has integrated payroll processes that include tax table updates, check printing, direct deposit, and government forms.

Reporting
Small Business Manager allows users to locate, pinpoint, and analyze information needed using their SmartList query tools, drill-back capabilities, and more than 100 customizable reports.  The program allows easy exporting of data to Excel for further analysis. Users can employ Advanced Financial Analysis to create new report layouts and modify those layouts or existing financial statements. Report layouts can also be copied and customized.

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