Testimonials: ICPA Accreditation
The following is an excerpt from the Spring 2008 edition of "ICPA Accounting Practice" which is the official magazine for member accountants. Their independent review of Diamond Prelude resulted in it becoming their first 'Accredited' accounting software package.
In business as in life sometimes just sometimes one gets surprised and sometimes the surprise is a pleasant one.
I thought that I knew every accounting package available to my clients. From the seemingly endless “quickbooks” type wannabes who made a virtue of clients being able to completely mess up their accounts AFTER they had been passed to us for preparation all under the guise of making it easy to put right mistakes. To the ubiquitous “Sage” stable which seems to base significant price hikes and annual upgrades on the amount of useless predefined reports added to the package.
Prelude Professional has been a very welcome surprise.
The package is easy to install and for a cost of approx. £90 absolutely “knocks spots of the opposition”. Prelude is the entry level package from Diamond Discovery Software a company based in Bridgend.
It provides a multi-company facility allowing for 100 companies to be maintained, rare at this level. An obvious benefit for practising accountants but also a facility that allows the company to use this function to keep backups at month or quarter end as well as the more obvious year-end. Now should the unthinkable happen and backups need to be restored the whole operation is achieved by simply choosing the latest backup from the Company list.
Software installation and registration are simple and the company setup options should cause no problems. All the usual important defaults are set here including fixing the VAT options of “cash” or “invoicing” which are used in the preparation of the VAT reports. Period numbers are also entered firstly here.
Postings within the program are made in periods and at the end of the period it is “closed off”. Accountants everywhere will be nodding their heads in approval and wondering why a month end closedown procedure vanished from most accounting software in the first place.
The desktop is thankfully uncluttered and all the available menu options are both obvious and necessary. A predefined number of Nominal Accounts are instantly available and adding to the list and deleting from the list is easy. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I opened the list and wasn’t confronted with 000’s of nominal accounts as is the case with “Sage” which then needed deletion to provide a certain degree of clarity in the structure.
The same goes for the predefined reports provided which in total amount to 33 all of which are actually useful.
The sales and purchase ledgers do exactly what sales and purchase ledgers should do, all the obviously required functionality is there and nothing frivolous is provided. Interestingly for an entry-level package the package allows for product and price lists to be maintained which can be used to produce invoices.
The nominal ledger is easy to maintain and by compartmentalising the headings into Current Assets Current Liabilities Establishment Expenses etc. this should a) reduce the possibility of clients entering profit and loss items in the balance sheet and b) when exported to excel or word make reporting easier.
Help is available at all times either from the toolbar or better still by simply pressing the F1 key to bring up detailed and pertinent help based on the screen in use at the time. Support from Diamond Discovery can be accessed via their website or you could actually contact a human to get help.
The bank reconciliation facility will help any non bookkeeper perform this task far better than any “Sage” package that I have used.
Statements and Invoices are available or if you are of a mind to you can use the “design tools” to prepare your own. E-mailing statements direct to customers is offered as well as printing, a very useful facility nowadays.
As I said Prelude is the entry-level package but just compare the features and I don’t think entry level is the first thought that enters one's mind. In brief these are just some of the features contained:
Multi Company, Data Import and Export, Document Export, Design Tools, Email Documents, Sales Purchase and Nominal Ledgers, all the Daybooks, Multiple Bank Accounts and Reconciliations, Management Reports, Vat Reporting, Audit Reports, Trial Balance and Profit and Loss and Balance Sheets.
As the business grows and requires more sophistication then Diamond score again with packages ranging in sophistication and price called “Accounts”, “Business” and the ultimate “Commercial”.
I have thoroughly enjoyed “putting the software through its paces” and I have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending it.
It is the first commercial software that the ICPA have “Accredited” and I hope I have been able to convey just why in this review if not than actually using the package ought to do it.
Prelude Professional Accounts by Diamond Discovery is an exemplary package, delivering functionality and usability at a sensible price whilst offering an easy upgrade route.
It is a serious piece of software which deserves to be a serious contender in the market place and which deserves serious consideration whenever contemplating buying an accounts package.