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ARIES Online Overview
ARIES Online is designed to provide relevant information to the owners and staff of small businesses, in order that those businesses can be run effeciently and effectively, and to aid their development.
ARIES Online can be used as a simple analysed cash book, or as a comprehensive double entry bookkeeping system that uses the power of computers to analyse and report management information.
DIFFERENT USERS HAVE DIFFERENT NEEDS
ARIES Online recognises that some users will be concerned about different information, and some will be more conerned with how that information is reported than how it is input. ARIES Online therefore provides multiple ways to view reports seperate from the information reported in the input screens.
ARIES Online is designed to be used for credit control. It reports on aged debtors together with the reminder action taken, and freeform notes of promises made by the customer and other historic information.
ARIES Online reports the current available cash position, as the actual cash/bank balances and bank facilities, together with summary customer debtor and supplier creditor information.
ARIES Online allows bank transactions to be reconciled to bank statements with a single click with a report that can be printed and filed.
ARIES Online analyses sales invoicing, gross profit and gross profit percentage by day, month to date, month, year to date, comparative day, comparative month to date, comparative month, comparative year to date. The accuracy of these figures depends on data input being up to date.
ARIES Online makes data input simple and consistent by displaying existing entries in a report on the data input screen. Default Allocation Codes are recorded for each Contact so that code is prefilled for transactions input with that Contact. For example, the Contact record for the local garage might have the Allocation for Motor Expenses. In invoice from that garage would default to that code, but it can be overwritten with another code, for example for the purchase of a vehicle.
ARIES Online can allow employees to access their own personell records, update their holiday records, expense reports etc.
PERIODS
Every transaction is entered to a recording period. Recording periods have a Period Code and a Period Description. The usual format for a period code is 2010M01 to 2010M12 for monthly periods or 2010W1 to 2010W53 for weekly periods. Period descriptions are freeform up to 50 characters. Example 2010M1 = January 2010, or 2010M1 = Month Ended 31 January 2010.
Recording periods can be locked so that certain information in those entries cannot be changed. The option to lock a period requires confirmation and the entry of an administrators password because locking a period cannot be reversed. This is done deliberately so that the transactions included in a VAT return cannot be amended and ARIES can always reproduce the VAT return report.
Accountants (and others) may extract figures on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, half yearly or annual basis for use in other programs, for detailed analysis or to produce statutory accounts. If it is important that the details on which those extracts are based are not changed, then the recording periods which have been extracted can also be locked in the same way.
If it becomes necessary to made additional entries for a locked period, one (or more) additional periods can be created using letters 'a' to 'z', for example 2010M1a = Month Ended 31 January 2010 (extra). These additional recording periods show as unlocked, and when action to deal with any VAT adjustment etc. has been taken, these additional recording periods will be locked.
ALLOCATIONS
Trained bookkeepers will understand the concept of double entry, and Nominal Ledgers. Allocations are codes anddescriptions of Nominal Ledger accounts, from which a Trial Balance and Management and Financial accounts can be produced.
Every transaction is entered to one or more allocations. Allocations have an Allocation Code and an Allocation Description. The usual format of the first two letters for an allocation code generates the layout of simple managemet accounts and takes the form -
BA Balance Sheet Fixed Assets
BC Balance Sheet Current Assets
BE Balance Sheet Either Current Assets or Liabilities
BL Balance Sheet Current Liabilities
BO Balance Sheet Owners Capital (unincorporated businesses)
BS Balance Sheet Shareholders Funds (incorporated businesses)
IS Income Sales
PC Production Costs (Cost of Goods sold / Direct Labour
SD Sundry income - Dividends
SI Sundry income - Interest and Investment Income
SR Sundry income - Rents
SX Sundry income - eXpenses e.g. deductions from rent
XL eXpenses - Labour costs
XM eXpenses - Motor and Travelling costs
XP eXpenses - Premises costs
XS eXpenses - Sundry costs
XU eXpenses - Finance costs (based on Usury meaning money lending)
XW eXpenses - Write down of assets otherwise known as depreciation
The Allocation Code can be up to 10 alphanumberic characters. The allocation of the remaining eight characters is optional. A suggested format might be XSTel for Telephone, but XS23 is just as acceptable. There may be existing codings that you may want to incorporate.
CONTACTS
Some information is common to your prospective customers, your actual customers, your suppliers, your employees and to other people that you deal with in your business. Why record their addresses and contact details more than once? ARIES Online does not require you to do so, because it uses your list of Contacts for your customer and supplier accounts, your staff and your subcontractors who may also be customers and suppliers. Unlike much accounting software, ARIES Online also recognises that many businesses hold money on behalf of others and uses the same Contacts record for Clients Accounts, used by solicitors, accountants, estate agents, and others.
Contacts have a Contact Code, Contact Name, Contact Address, Contact Phones, Contact Email and lots more. The usual format of the Contact Code is AAANNN, for example Joe Bloggs Ltd might be BLO001.
ARIES Online has an Income Ledger (for customers and sales), an Expenses Ledger (for suppliers and purchases and expenses), as well as a Clients Ledger mentioned above. Joe Bloggs Ltd can have ledger accounts, IBLO001, EBLO001 and CBLO001, all using the same address and contact details. (Provision is also made for other delievery addresses etc.)
MORE IF YOU WANT IT
There are many businesses which can keep more than adequate records based on an analysed cash book, indeed Contact information is not necessary for records which may be quite adequate for purpose. However computerised accounts do provide the opportunity to generate much more management information if transactions are analysed at the point of entry when the input details are conveniently to hand.
ARIES Online can provide additional reports, if additional coding is added to the input of transactions. These are optional at the discretion of the owner of the records -
A Project code could report all the transactions for a building site for a builder, or any other business building new facilities, accross the whole history of the Project with or without reference to Accounting periods.
An Asset code could generate a Fixed Asset Register with the cost, accumulated depreciation, and net written down value for any asset, such as an individual vehicle. The same code can report the running cost of that individual vehicle, or any individual piece of equipment etc.
A Budget code can help monitor the amount a budget holder has spent. An example could be a teacher in a (private) school buying books against an agreed budget, or a marketing person's spending on an advertising campaign, with or without reference to Accounting periods.
An Employee code can provide an analysis of expenses. It can be comparatively easy to identify expenses which need to be consider for reporting on form P11D at the time that the expense is recorded from the primary record. The report can identify all expenses for the tax year ended 5 April 201x. Employee details are held as part of the Contacts table.
PASSWORDS
As the owner of a set of business or personal records that you have set up, you can also allow other people to access your data, either on a read only basis, or to update it. The owner has full access rights, and can choose the access rights allocated to any other user. As an example, a sales rep might be allocated access to their own personell records, update their holiday records, expense reports etc. and access reports on customers sales, outstanding balances, and payment record.
ACCOUNTING YEARS
ARIES Online is designed as a bookkeeping program which produces management reports including Management Financial Accounts. ARIES Online does not produce Statutory Financial Accounts, but it does produce a Trial Balance from which Statutory Financial accounts can be produced. The Accounting Year End can be changed by producing Accounts for a period that is longer or shorter than a year. The balances on certain codes, mainly the income and expenses codes are transferred to other codes, such as P&L Reseves as part of Shareholders Funds at the Accounting Year End. Transactions in respect of earlier years are still retained and can be the source of reports.
RECORDS, CONTROLS, TRANSACTIONS, ANALYSIS
Cash and Bank transactions are entered through 'analysed cash books', either as receipts and bankings, or as payments. Each item is allocated to a Control Account (BExx) which identifies its source, such as Lloyds Current, Barclays Deposit, Cash, or Petty Cash. (Businesses which bank every day may choose to omit Cash etc.)
Within an individual Banking or BGC payment, there may be a number of items from/to different sources, and within each item there may be more than one type of income/expense. Each Banking or Payment generates a 'Record' number within a Control, which may have one or more 'Transactions' with customers and suppliers, and each Transaction may have one or more 'Analysis' amounts. A single payment might include the purchase of a printer (Fixed asset equipment) and stationery (Revenue expense). The cash book input screens have three tabs, a Control tab, a tab for multi part Transactions and a tab for multi part Analysis items, but the complete entry for single part items (such as a cheque for the purchase of stationery) can be entered on the Control tab.
Income(Sales) and Expense(Purchase) invoices are entered through 'analysed day books'. Each invoice is allocated to a Control Account (BEIC or BEEC) which identifies its source and Control ledger, and generates a 'Record' number. A single invoice will only have one Transaction with a customer or supplier, so the day book input screens have two tabs, a Control tab and a tab for multi part Analysis items, but the complete entry for single analysis invoices can be entered on the Control tab.
BROWSERS and SCREEN RESOLUTION
There are differencies in the way individual web browsers render web pages, in particular Internet Explorer 6 has some compatability issues with other browsers. ARIES is written to be compatible with most web browsers including Interenet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6, and Google Chrome 6. However, Google Chrome can be downloaded free of charge, is very quick at the client side processing of ARIES on your computer, you might want to adopt Google Chrome as your browser when using ARIES. We have chosen to make ARIES run a fast as possible in Google Chrome rather than maximise its compatability over the spectrum of possible browsers.
In 2010 when ARIES was first put on the internet, ?% of computers in use had screen resultion with a width in excess of 1,000 pixels. ARIES is designed for computer screens at least 1,000 pixels wide. You may find it helpful to maximise your screen area and use the Full Screen option by toggling F11 in most browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome.