Best Buy

In its May '98 issue, PC World reviewed the top 8 Windows based accounting software packages.

Not surprisingly, the magazine accorded Wings Accounting the "Best Buy" award.

Reproduced here is the software review carried by the magazine.

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Scope of Package

WOW, as Wings Business Systems P. Ltd. likes to call its Windows-based financial accounting Package, contains forms and reports to handle general ledger, inventory and point-of-sale transactions. This well designed package was a delight to go through.

Ease of Use

The appearance and interface of this package is very Win 95. Especially worth mentioning is the use of trees to depict grouping of accounts and allocation elements. You can cut and paste (but not drag and drop) groups of accounts from one group to another. Groups can contain sub-groups to seemingly unlimited levels (I quit trying after a dozen levels). Very usefully, grouping can be changed at any time without affecting existing transactions.

Most forms have some level of modifiability. Some of the field labels on the input forms can be changed. For example, you can change the text "DC No." on the screen to "Challan No.", for better understanding. You can add up to sixteen text fields per document or voucher and another five additional text fields per transaction or detail record. Another useful feature was the existence of multiple price lists that make it easy to handle a complex pricing structure.

The manual is well printed and fairly explicit but lacks an index and graphical depiction of screens.

However, I found it odd that the fact that despite recognising accounts as debtors, creditors, balance sheet etc. the pulldowns for customer names show ledger heads besides the debtors.

Reporting and Analysis

Wings's tree-based grouping makes it very easy to modify accounts and inventory consolidation. Four allocation heads: Branch, location, project and division are available with each transaction entry. Further, branches and locations can be grouped to unlimited levels.

All reports are martix-based and fairly modifiable. Each report appears on screen with controls to modify the columns in it. Columns can have sub-columns, which in turn can have sub-columns, and so on. Then you specify which input fields should be displayed in each column. Further, you can specify a logical criterion (using the IF, AND and OR operators) for displaying data in a column. Once a report's layout has been modified, it can be saved with a unique name for use later with fresh data. The report modification tools are very good and designed more for use by an accountant than a programmer. However, you might find it limiting not to be able set the sort order for printing or to create reports with vertical subtotals.

External Links

WOW's data is stored in a proprietary format and is therefore not accessible through external software. However, company sources indicated that an ODBC compliant backend implementation is in the offing. Also missing is a facility to export data.

Suitability

WOW's ability to link excise duty rates with the period for which the rate is applicable makes it very useful for organizations that need to track excise duty payments. Wings does not yet handle transactions relating to production, jobbing and stock transfers.

Pros and Cons

Excellent ease-of-use and powerful customisation capabilities, combine to make it a powerful choice. Lack of production-related documents restrict usage for manufacturing units. Lack of export capability reduces reporting flexibility.

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