Peachtree offers a significant amount of customization capability for the reports and forms generated by the product.  Sometimes in our rush to make  modifications to existing reports, to suit our specific needs, we neglect to think through an organizational structure for managing these changes, resulting in what we term “Turbo Chaos”.

Here are a few tips for managing your modifications to Peachtree reports and forms:

1. As soon as you begin to make changes to a standard report, change the report title from the “standard” title to something more descriptive of the specific objective you are trying to achieve (e.g., Bookkeeper’s A/R Reconciliation”). With each revision to the report, save it as a “new” version, with the version number in the title, until you have it exactly as you originally envisioned the report. Then – and only then – delete all the “earlier” versions, and change the report title to reflect what you want to appear each time you run it.

< /br>

2. When modifying Peachtree forms, include the date of the revision in the name of the form (e.g., TriStar AP Check 021508). Again, track versions with each “save” until you get the form the way you want it, then delete all the versions except the one you want to use. Retain the date in the form name so that you will be able to easily track when it was originally designed.

< /br>

3. Peachtree organizes the Reports Menu, by default, with all “custom” reports listed first within a report group, followed by all “standard” reports. Within these two groups individual reports are sorted in standard “computer sort” order, which is to say numbers (treated as text) first, followed by letters. Thus 1 and 10 come before 2, and all three come before “a”. So, if you have a desired order for your custom reports on the menu, apply a little creativity to the naming convention, using a combination of numbers and letters to achieve the desired result.