A full ERP system designed by Roundtable Software.
At $979 list price for 24 of the most feature-rich accounting modules available for small and medium size business, RTS-Advantage offers a performance/price combination that can’t be beat. The PC version is out-of-the-box networkable and there are no seat licenses - up to 100 simultaneous users are supported.
The Roundtable Software Advantage Accounting System, available for PC and Unix stand-alone and network platforms, is a truly mature product (the original release was in 1983) that is still being regularly enhanced with the features that businesses demand.
The Accounts Payable module makes vendor account management easier for your and your business. Invoices can be manually posted to a vendor’s account through this module or can be updated from the Purchase Orders module. You can pay off as many invoices as you like with one check. Custom check formats can be created through the Modify Reports program of System Administrator. You can view the current status of any vendor at any time or view a vendor’s history. For optimal cash management, the program can produce an aging/forecasting report detailing the amounts owed in each of 5 user-defined brackets.
Accounts Payable can be used stand-alone, or can interact with other modules as needed. Purchase Orders can create invoices in Accounts Payable for received goods; Job Cost can apply payables data to specific work orders and functions; General Ledger can be updated with either detailed or summarized invoice and check data; and Bank Reconciliation can gather checks from Accounts Payable.
This powerful yet flexible module makes credit management and customer account administration easier for you and your business. You can track payments by cash, check, 5 different credit cards and miscellaneous (coupons, etc). The due and discount dates for each invoice are computed automatically and can be different for each customer. You can print the minimum payment due and custom messages on customer statements, as well as selectively print service charges, budget totals and deposits. Your receivables can be aged into 5 different user-defined brackets. This module also maintains sales tax details for use in the invoicing modules as well as salesperson commission data.
Accounts Receivable can be used stand-alone or can be integrated with Point of Sale, Billing/Order Entry, Job Cost, Time Billing, and Quick Sale. Each of these modules pull customer data as well as information about sales departments, salespersons and sales tax from Accounts Receivable, while also updating invoice transactions to receivables. In turn, Accounts Receivable can then update consolidated postings to General Ledger for the receivables side of your business.
When used in conjunction with the Inventory module, customer-specific pricing can be set up. This can be done through a customer’s pricing class that assigns discounts to groups of Inventory items or through contract pricing where each item is assigned a unique price for a given customer. The two methods are complimentary: the system will use contract pricing if it finds it or the pricing class discount if applicable.
The RTS-Bank Reconciliation for Windows module is easier to work with than the DOS version and helps you make quick work of the reconciliation of your bank statement with the data in the system. The Windows Bank Reconciliation module is 100% data-compatible with the DOS version of RTS-Advantage. You can run the two products side-by-side on your system and use them alongside each other. This module may be used stand-alone, but can gather checks from Payroll, Accounts Payable and General Ledger as well as deposit data from General Ledger. It can accommodate multiple bank accounts and produce a separate reconciliation for each bank. In addition to checks and deposits, you can enter other types of transactions such as bank fees and adjustments. As part of the monthly reconciliation process, the figures posted to this module are balanced with the cash account totals from General Ledger.
In addition to all the features common to both the DOS and Windows version of the Bank Reconciliation module, the Windows module has:
The Bank Reconciliation module helps you make quick work of the reconciliation of your bank statement with the data in the system. This module may be used stand-alone, but can gather checks from Payroll, Accounts Payable and General Ledger as well as deposit data from General Ledger. It can accommodate multiple bank accounts and produce a separate reconciliation for each bank. In addition to checks and deposits, you can enter other types of transactions such as bank fees and adjustments. As part of the monthly reconciliation process, the figures posted to this module are balanced with the cash account totals from General Ledger.
The Advantage Billing module gives you a simple, efficient and reliable way to gain control over your billing process. When interacting with the Inventory and Order Entry modules, it gives your business a powerful and complete ordering/invoicing package.
After orders are entered in the Order Entry module, they are transferred to the Billing module for shipping and invoicing. The quantity shipped, ordered and backordered is shown for each item on an order and you can choose to also include items that are completely backordered but not shipped with the current invoice. Entire ranges of orders can be transferred at one time or you can pick and choose specific orders to transfer. The built–in flexibility of these modules allows you to determine what you do and when you do it.
The Billing module allows you to assign invoice numbers manually or you can have the system generate them automatically. Your billing period can be as long or as short as you choose–you don’t have to print or update any program on a regular basis. Of course, to record monthly figures in Accounts Receivable, you would want to close Billing at least once per month. After invoices are updated, they can be retained for reference purposes in either the live data or a separate, archive company. This historical archive allows you to quickly retrieve any invoice and create powerful management reports.
The software allows for up to 255 different ship-to addresses for each customer. Freight charges may be automatically calculated and displayed on each invoice based on the zip code of the ship–to address and the total weight or value of the items being invoiced. Your billing person has the option to change carrier selection, payment terms, discounts, customer’s automatic discounting class, tax codes, drop ship status, and other shipping details such as COD and acknowledgment of delivery.
The Customer Information module is a simple yet powerful database designed to keep track of several different types of data from other modules. Data such as mailing addresses and phone numbers can be captured in Point of Sale from your walk in customers and updated to the Customer Information module to allow you to do sophisticated marketing. This can be combined with customer data from Accounts Receivable to allow you to target the widest possible range of your customer base. From Inventory, sales data for serialized items such as date sold, price paid and who bought it can be updated to Customer Information to help you track and maintain product warranty information. This module can also be used in a variety of other ways such as tracking your company’s promotional events or keeping tabs on important distributor data.
The eFile Prep module generates the files for submitting W-2 and 1099-MISC reports for government filing. In 1987, the Federal government ruled that any company submitting over 250 W-2 or 1099 forms per year (and not eligible for a hardship waiver) must file these returns electronically. Once the file is generated, you can submit it to the appropriate government agency by sending the file electronically via the internet. Both the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration have given basic approval for the files generated by eFile Prep. However, it is each user’s responsibility to ensure that the data sent is acceptable. In each particular application, it is possible that the file(s) generated will not conform to IRS/SSA requirements.
The File Fixer module provides a method of removing invalid data from Advantage files. This module also has the option to shrink the size of files when they’ve gotten larger than is needed. The Analyze option allows you to review files for potential problems without actually changing anything. Depending on the printed results of the Analyze, you may need to run the Repair option or make adjustments within the module to correct the detected problems.
The Repair option fixes the problems by either resetting header data or clearing fields of the invalid data. After Repairing files, the user may still need to work with the data within the module to recreate the lost data. The Shrink option recaptures unused records within the file and at the end of the file. After Shrinking, files must be expanded to accommodate normal processing. The Fast Shrink option recaptures the unused records at the end of a file-this is especially useful immediately after a file has been oversized in error.
The File Maintenance module provides a powerful tool for editing and analyzing your data and records. It allows you to directly view and edit the fields in your Advantage data files. Because of the powerful potential inherent in the direct editing of data fields, only experienced users should ever attempt to edit data with this module. The Edit option allows you to directly access the fields in your Advantage data files. Any data file in Advantage can be accessed and the overwhelming majority of fields can be edited. The View option allows you to look at data without modifying it. The Delete option allows you to remove the selected record from the file. This is an extremely potent option and should only be used in extraordinary circumstances. All three options allow you to search for specific data in a file.
Accounting for asset depreciation has never been easier than with the Advantage Fixed Assets module. Five of the most common depreciation methods and the 4 most common first year conventions are available for calculating and tracking depreciation amounts. You can choose either automatic or manual computations and you can print your reports sorted by one of 16 different fields. With quick on-screen inquiries, you can track assets for tax and financial reporting. The module records asset locations, serial numbers and up to 12 asset types, 4 of which are user-defined.
The General Ledger module is a stand-alone module that can also be integrated with other Advantage modules. The General Ledger module can produce financial statements based on check and journal entries that can be entered directly into this module or can be updated from other modules. Both 12 and 13 period accounting cycles are supported. Historical totals are retained for each period in the preceding year which is then used to produce comparative analyses and other reports.
General Ledger can receive posting data from any or all of the following modules: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, Job Cost and Fixed Assets. The Bank Reconciliation module can gather check and deposit data from General Ledger as part of the bank statement reconciliation process.
The RTS-Advantage General Ledger module can have an unlimited number of accounts and users can enter an unlimited number of postings. As transactions are entered within General Ledger, several key numbers are displayed and updated: current profit/loss amount; total document amount; and zero proof. Users can also establish recurring journal entries to be posted periodically and can also define automated distributions to department and sub-accounts.
Entries can be posted to the Chart of Accounts whenever you need to and you can post multiple times within a period. As entries are posted, you may manually enter a net profit amount or have the system calculate and post it automatically. Prior period entries are credited to the proper historical periods automatically and flow through to the present to keep your financial statements current.
This module allows you to transfer master record information from other databases into Advantage. The source import file can have multiple record types. Because Import Data can only import from files with fixed length fields, a program is included that will massage delimited data, producing a file that the import program can process. Data can be imported into the customer master of Accounts Receivable; the item master of Inventory Control; the vendor master of Accounts Payable and the customer master of Customer Information.
The Inventory Control module gives you the ability to handle your inventory your way. As one of the most flexible and comprehensive modules in the Advantage package, you can choose the level of control that best suits your specific business needs. Your inventory can be valued on a LIFO, FIFO or Average cost basis. You can choose to use parts explosions, serialized inventory, parts allocations, vendors, warehouses and an audit trail. The system can also track the quantity sold for each item for the last 12 months and, using this data, provides a sales analysis report to help you better manage your stock. Financing is aided by the serialized aged report that shows which serialized items have been in your inventory the longest and how much you have outstanding. Pricing can be standardized by rounding to a given factor or by being set to a specific suffix. With the Below Minimum report, reordering stock is automatic and accurate. Inventory Control is a stand–alone module that can also be integrated with Purchase Orders, Point of Sale, Billing/Order Entry, Job Cost, Time Billing and Quick Sale.
No job is too tough for the Job Cost module of RTS-Advantage. From construction to light manufacturing, if you need to track costs, you can rely on Job Cost to meet your needs.
Complex job estimates can be prepared quickly and easily and, when approved, quickly turned into active work orders. All costs–employee, material, overhead for labor and material and other - can be tracked in detail for all phases of a job. A huge variety of management reports give you the detail you need to control many jobs at once. Labor costs can be updated from Payroll; purchase orders for required material can be generated by Job Cost; and material can be pulled from Inventory or from the job site stock. Several reports allow you to see at a glance how the actual data posted to a job compares to your estimated requirements.
The Order Entry module of RTS-Advantage, like so many of the Advantage modules, sets the standard for flexibility. Separate processes for order entry and billing gives you the ability to have one group responsible for posting shipments into the system and another group responsible for shipping to and invoicing the customer.
In addition to orders, you can prepare estimates for customer approval before the order is actually placed into the processing stream. When the estimate is approved it can be turned into an order with a few keystrokes. After allocating the inventory item and reducing the quantity available for sale, the module can produce reports based on Inventory data which tell you what items need to be purchased to fulfill outstanding orders. Picking tickets can be produced that give your warehouse personnel a clear picture of which items to pull and where they are. After the pulled items are posted as picked, the order is ready to be transferred to Billing for shipment and invoicing. If necessary, Order Entry can also generate Purchase Orders for drop shipments, thereby ensuring your customers get what they ordered. Service data, such as a problem description and up to 5 resources assigned to the order, can be entered.
The credit security feature of Order Entry helps you monitor customers who have exceeded their assigned credit limit or are over a user–defined number of days past due. This allows you to catch possible credit risks before they become major headaches.
The RTS-Advantage Payroll module brings a new level of flexibility to the payroll process. It can handle everything from the simplest to the most complex payroll applications. It can be used stand-alone or integrated with General Ledger, Job Cost and Bank Reconciliation.
Pay can be computed for hourly, salary, commissioned and contract employees. Deductions can be established for taxes as well as elective benefits. Deductions can be flat amounts or can be calculated through user-defined tables. Deduction tables for federal and all state taxes are supplied with the software.
The module computes and tracks not only employee deductions, but also employer costs for FUTA, SUI/SDI, worker’s compensation and employee benefits such as sick and vacation time. It also allows for personal deductions and the number of dependents to differ between employees. Multiple state and locality taxing can be processed with ease. Up to 255 different union dues calculations can be handled.
Additional employee information may be retained, such as comments on promotions or probation, review instructions and any statements that are not part of the regular employee data. An unlimited amount of data can be entered for each employee.
The RTS-Advantage Point of Sale module brings a new level of automation to the retail sales process. It acts as a counter sales system and is dependent on the receivables module to function. Point of Sale can also interact with the Inventory Control and Customer Information modules to give you the power you need to operate your retail business more efficiently.
This module prepares taxable and non–taxable invoices for both cash and AR customers. Cash customer information can be transferred to the Customer Information module to allow you to gather data for future marketing campaigns. As invoices are entered, the system automatically knows what, if any, taxes to calculate and what, if any, discounts to automatically apply.
You have the ability to generate estimates or put an invoice on hold to be retrieved later for final processing. Picking tickets and receipts may be printed in either a 40 or 80 column format. The Point of Sale module also has an option to allow you to view item detail such as discounts, references, warehouse quantities and serial data. Preset items can be established and used to represent non–inventory items such as delivery or set up fees or presets can be a shorthand way of retrieving inventory items. Kits may be built on the fly for items that are priced as a package deal and you can control what detail prints on the invoice for a given kit.
The module can interface with electronic cash drawers, display bars, bar code scanners and can process credit cards in real time through an interface with the X-Charge credit card processing software.
The RTS-Advantage Purchase Orders module goes to extraordinary lengths to keep your purchasing headaches gone for good. Never again will you have to wonder where your materials are, how much you will need and who gave you the best price on a certain item the last time you ordered it. This module is designed to prepare orders to send to vendors for both stock and non-stock items.
With the Purchase Orders module, you can review your level of activity with each vendor, giving you leverage in negotiating better pricing. Purchase orders can be generated automatically or manually and can be changed or deleted at any time. You can order and receive stock for several locations and the program will even help you plan for future scheduled deliveries. Product can be received into stock and made available for sale with or without an invoice from your vendor.
While the Purchase Orders module can be used stand-alone, it really shines when interfaced with Inventory, Accounts Payable, Job Cost and Order Entry, giving you complete control over the purchasing of your stock.
The Office module of Quick Sale is used in conjunction with the Store module. This module is loaded on the central location’s computer and handles the processing of files between the home office and the remote locations. The Office module creates an export file of customer and item data from the Accounts Receivable and Inventory modules. This export file can be general for all stores or can be specific so that each store only has a subset of your customers and/or items. After the remote locations generate and send the transactional update file to the home office, this module then processes those sales into the central A/R and Inventory.
The Quick Sale module of RTS-Advantage allows your computer to function as an electronic cash register in a high-volume retail environment. Invoices are processed extremely fast and your back office is not locked out of crucial data thanks to the batch processing design of this module. This batch processing also makes Quick Sale the ideal module for invoicing at remote locations that then update your central office at day’s end.
To keep overall processing time to a minimum, you can specify which fields the cursor should stop at and which fields to skip for each cashier. Just like a grocery store cash register, items are printed on the receipt as they are entered on the invoice. The drawer reconciliation within Quick Sale is a powerful tool to control employee theft.
Quick Sale can work with bar code scanners, alphanumeric display bars, electronic cash drawers and the X-Charge credit card and check guarantee software.
This powerful module enables you to create custom reports based on multiple data files and merge information between various RTS-Advantage modules. In addition to generating reports based on combinations of fields from different modules, you can add your own numeric fields that perform calculations under conditions you select. This module creates new reports defined to meet your specific needs.
The Screen Builder module gives you the ability to customize RTS-Advantage data entry screens, tailoring them to the specific needs of your business. These changes may be simple, such as changing the word Customer to Client or they may be more extensive, such as translating entire screens into a foreign language. You also have a limited ability to move fields and to alter how the data in those fields is displayed.
This powerful module allows you to summarize the data generated in other modules through one simple procedure. Summit gives top management a timely snapshot of important information essential for the day-to-day operation of your business. The totals of various accounting functions can be captured and retained to give you an instant look at specific areas of your business as well as tracking historical patterns. These totals can be compiled from the General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Inventory, Purchase Orders, Point of Sale, Billing, Order Entry, Job Cost and Time Billing modules. You can choose to report on these activities simultaneously or individually.
There are a total of 63 pre-defined data elements available from which to build your reports. You can view selected account balances, profit percentage, value of inventory and total labor/materials posted. You can create separate reports to reflect purchasing activity, retail activity, aging and forecasting of Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable balances plus a host of other possibilities.
The System Administrator module is the primary module for system–level access and control of Advantage. The module provides simple, menu-driven methods for you to establish how the software will work for your business. It also includes a suite of features designed for fast and easy management of common data and program functions in Advantage. If you have needs which extend beyond the common or default settings, the System Administrator module offers you advanced methods to set up the level of functionality that matches your business operations. These advanced methods enable users to define the terminals and printers used throughout the software; create a login security scheme that can be as rigid as you choose; create custom user-specific menus; create and maintain data files; modify standard reports; customize help info and error messages; and maintain macro scripts. The backup and restore feature allows users to make quick backups to the hard drive anytime.
The RTS-Advantage Time Billing module is designed to meet the unique needs of those businesses and professionals that require the billing of time–accounting for every minute of every day. From law offices to plumbing contractors, the Time Billing module can handle your application.
By tracking all resources used to complete procedures and all procedures required for a project, Time Billing provides you with accurate cost and profit figures for each phase of your work. This data also provides you with a picture of which resources (employees or items) and which clients are the most or least profitable.
To make this module easy to use in a wide variety of businesses, the user can define the labels for the three tracking units: resources, procedures and projects. Therefore, rather than posting resources, the user can post time/material; rather than working on a project, the user is working on a case.
The module handles various billing methods including cost plus percent, percent of recovery, flat rate and capped billing, as well as actual. It also allows for escrow, retainage and deposits. Invoices can be consolidated by client or by project.
You work hard maintaining your business records in an accounting system. Now you can take what is normally a cost of doing business and leverage all that effort into a burgeoning profit center by interfacing it with your web-based storefront. RTS-Advantage’s Web Commerce module, coupled with PDG Software’s webstore building tools, puts your data to work for you.
Use the RTS-Advantage Web Commerce module as a two-way link between your accounting data and your webstore presence. Use this link to put your inventory on the web, complete with pricing structures, product categories, and stocking levels. Create webstore customer accounts directly from your Accounts Receivable so your existing customer base can make their first visit to your webstore as a valued client, not an anonymous visitor. And when the orders come rolling in, don’t waste your business profits on the time-consuming process of manual order entry–let Web Commerce do all the work, creating complete, ready to ship orders in RTS-Advantage.
Provided you spend enough time to discover all the features available you will realize that very little was missed by the developers. It was easy because all the modules were already in place they just had to make it work in a Windows environment. The few burps in the system are normal and can easily fixed.
I first started using the early version of this software CP/M based; back in the late 1980’s I think. CPM operating system was designed by Gary Kildall in 1974, to run on microcomputers with an 8080 processor and 8-inch IBM floppy disks. However, it was designed to be portable to many different machine architectures, DOS kind of pushed it into oblivion and of course the Mouse won the race…but Armour Accounting already had all these modules that you see today and actually working; and that is lot to say, those days very few thinks worked.
To be able to make an entry in 2013 and auto update all the years between, to 2020
This is the worst “accounting” software I have encountered in my 30+ years providing consulting services. Clearly there was no one with any accounting knowledge on the design team.
There is not one thing I can think of that I thought this software did well.
This is not an intuitive or user friendly software by any stretch. Basic accounting functions are clunky and require multiple levels of processing when it should be integrated.
I have been using this software since it came out in 1992. I like this software, even though I still find new things it will do.
The software is user friendly. All you have to do is look!
Can’t think of anything