PRODUCT REVIEW

PROGRAM: Church Accounting System

FORMAT: PC Compatible

COST: Shareware

Keeping track of finances can be a difficult job at the best of times as I know in my secular job as an accountants clerk with a firm of accountants in Newquay. When a computer program comes along to ";make the task easier,"; it tends to make me groan, because I see the end result and there is generally a lot more work involved for me at the end of the day. Also, if the program is not well written, trying to sort out the resultant mess can be a bit of a nightmare.

People tend to buy these programs "so the computer does all the work for me." What is often not realised is that there is often at least as much work involved in keeping the computer program up to date as in a manual system and always a great deal of work involved in setting them up in the first place. That aside, provided the program is well written and used properly, they are a great aid to accuracy when preparing the figures at the end of the day and I know I would far rather sit down in front of the computer with a list of invoices or cheques than to a manual book if I had to do it.

Finding the right program for the job, therefore, becomes very important. This Church Accounting System could be exactly what you require. It runs on a PC or compatible (and will run under the Acorn PC Emulator) and requires 640k of RAM, DOS 3.0 or better and a minimum of two floppy disks, although a hard disk is recommended. It is available as shareware from the CCCU public domain library and costs $99 to register with SonShine Software, Inc, PO Box 4761, Dublin, Georgia, 31040, U.S.A. They also do other church based software for membership, sermon indexing etc.

The program itself requires setting up with the account headings you require, although the author has included an example in the manual which can be viewed on screen or printed out. The format of the account headings appears fairly logical and should be clear to anyone using the printouts produced. The program provides for multiple 'fund' accounts, i.e. General fund, Building fund, Piano fund, etc. which are used as 'checking' (sic) accounts. Yes, unfortunately, this is an American program, using American spellings but that is the only drawback I have found in the short time I have been using it for this review. The program as a whole seems to be very well put together and gives me a greater feeling of confidence than even the program I use at work. Certainly it is better than some of the other packages around that I have seen through my work, both public domain and commercial.

The programs menu system is logical, well set out and easy to follow, the main menu giving access to sub-menus dealing with the processing of the data. That processing is fairly comprehensive, from being able to reconcile bank accounts to ensure that you don't go overdrawn to preparing and producing budgets. There is also a comprehensive list of reports, with the offer to include new reports for registered users should they feel one is necessary. Among the reports already produced are an income statement, a balance sheet, a trial balance, a general ledger, a 'check' book statement, and comparisons between actual figures and both budget and previous period results. Another useful feature is the ability to make backups of the data to floppy disk automatically from the main menu so you have no excuse if you lose all the data on it.

Overall this seems a well written program which, provided you are prepared to give it the time required in setting up, is certainly capable of handling your computer accounting requirements unless they are highly specialised. My feeling is this would be a good program for anyone to use, not necessarily just for keeping the church accounts on, although VAT accounting is not automatically supported and would require you to break down any amounts manually.

Screenshots (24k approx)