Atrex and 3rd Party Accounting Software

Overview:

While there is no GL, Atrex will do everything that an accounting application does short of payroll. It may not appear that way to you because not all the reports associated with an account package (e.g., P&L, Balance Sheet) are included. The data required to manage your business and report to the various regulatory bodies can be captured via the receivables, payables, and banking functions. Any additional report can be added using the included report designer.

That being said, many Atrex users continue to use an accounting application in conjunction with Atrex for two reasons: the bookkeeper knows the accounting application and the accountant wants the data in the accounting application. If these reasons apply to your business, you are better to live with the two products.  If you are run an accounting application beside Atrex, the process of transferring information from Atrex to the accounting application which for most Atrex users requires entering around eight journal entries in the accounting application per period.

Integrating With Accounting Application:

A direct integration between Atrex and any accounting application is not available. We have investigated integrating with the likes of QuickBooks several times and have always found limitations that when poised to our users, caused us to discontinue our work. These accounting applications (e.g., QuickBooks, Simply Accounting) do not support the range of transaction types available in Atrex and provide no way to allow the features Atrex users desire (e.g., merging customers).

Atrex does include the bookkeeping functions necessary to run a business. That said, many users choose to use an accounting application in conjunction with Atrex for two reasons: the bookkeeper knows the accounting application and the accountant wants the data in a specific format. If these reasons apply to your business, you are better to live with the two products.

When using an accounting application in conjunction with Atrex, the standard approach is to perform AR in Atrex and all other functions in your accounting application. At the end of period (e.g., monthly), you run the appropriate reports in Atrex and then do the necessary journal entries in the accounting application (usually less than a dozen numbers). The reports that you want to investigate are the revenue report (Reports - Receivables - Revenue) and the tax reports (Reports - Sales - Tax Report and if service orders are created, Reports - Service - Tax Report). With these two reports, all the information that most users require is available.