Many thanks for the info Shaun. Like you its now on my to do list.

Debbie

Hi,

It was a complete accident that I found them.

I had a meeting with an chartered freind this week and ended up as a discussion in relation to what they are paying for accounts production software compared to myself.

There was a £8k difference between my software costs per year and theirs yet looking at the end result you cannot really see any difference either in content or time to produce and file.

The real killer for them was the lack of training material out there for their staff if they were to move from their current package which prompted me to go and have a look on accountingweb where VT is a favorite of many accountancy practices across there.

With VT I always feel that because nobody taught me and there are so many ways of getting to the same result that I must have been doing things wrong but whether by accident or design I seem to pretty much follow what seems to be the generally accepted approaches.

The main difference it seems between my approach and those videos is that the top left hand window that I always have open on the home page is the Ledgers view where Ray Stewart has the key items view.

I think that my freind has been using her software for too many years to change but at least seeing VT work may put her in a better negotiating position at next renewal.

If you have a different machine available try downloading another trial when you are ready to test it properly.

The way that I originally learnt the software was to have accounts prepared in Sage and all of the original input and then worked on it until my results were identical. Took about a week including one disaster to really gets to grips with it and I've been finding new features ever since.

I really don't feel that I could now go back to more restrictive software although if I took on any box stackers and haulers I may have to as there is no stock control within VT.

For all other business types though its perfect and for some practices even keeping their Sage bill down by hiving off all of the service business to VT could prove a real saving over the client tax.

kind regards,

Shaun.

Sorry, not something that I can help with.

Personally I would not lock accounts in VT. (I don't lock periods either).

If its a paid subscription to VT+ rather than the cashbook software you get five free calls to VT within the licence and they may be able to help with the lost password.

Bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut but you could take all data to excell and then load into a new company but that would cause you no end of headaches, take a few hours out of your life and put a few grey hairs on your head as the process to reload is not always intuitive (why VT cannot keep the same heading names accross screens I don't know).

Actually, if your using Cashbook rather than VT+ you don't actually have that option anyway.

Whatever you do make a couple of copies of your company file first as the last thing that you want to do in fixing this is lose everything else!

Good luck Adrian and keep us informed as to how you get on.

Shaun.

Same here (although you know far more about it than I do).

I keep trying to give all the Sage users on the site an epiphany (well either that or an aneurism!) but they're a difficult bunch to convince.

If you wrote a guide I for one would buy it as although I can make VT do what I want it to I'm sure that there are tricks that I'm missing.

Also, if you go down that route could I suggest a .vtr file data download for people to work along with the guide.

Maybe take the reader through a simulation of a psuedo real business... Great isn't it when other people start planning your time for you! lol

Last time that this subject was breachedw Shiela was on board with the idea... Any idea whats happened to her as she's not been on the site for well over a year. Hope she's ok.

kind regards,

Shaun.