ABC

Automatic Business Computing

Introduction

ABC is made to minimize the administration of small companies. Of course administration has to exist if the company wants to stay alive. Meanwhile, administration is time and energy consuming. Especially for people who wish to have an accurate situation about pending business, cash availability, etc., but whose hobby is not paperwork..

The company has to write invoices, orders, price lists and pay suppliers. These are the basic documents. There are many others. Their number and layout depend on the specific activity, context and size of the company. But they have to be created and checked to avoid mistakes which could be expensive. Moreover, these actions have to be translated into accounting records. Then, debtors and creditors have to be constantly tracked. And don't forget the sales tax administration.

On one hand, many document are partially or totally linked to each other. On the other hand, most of the accounting records are direct consequences of business documents. For example, a supplier invoice is, if everything goes well, the supplier version of an order. Of course, an exceptional discount could be granted inbetween. Of course, the invoice should be paid but not too early. Therefore, this invoice becomes automatically a debt. That debt shouldn't be forgotten at expiration time. What a big job.

The first goal of ABC is to reduce all these activities to only two decisional steps. The first decision, in the previous example, is to decide to order something from the supplier and to fix the quantities for each item. The second step is at receipt of the supplier invoice. The user has to approve it according to what he really has received. With ABC, that process is realised by creating automatically a clone of the supplier invoice from the order to which the invoice refers and which should by checked to perform the approval decision. The user could maybe fix the delay for payment. That's it. The debt will be automatically recorded in a credit account (and the company's balance updated). The analytic dispatching will also be made. Later, the payment order will be automatically produced at the correct expiration date and then printed or electronically sent as appropriate. At payment time, the transaction from supplier credit account will automatically be made to the debit account specified. In summary, it leaves only two actions to the user: ordering and approving. Is it possible to come to less?

The second goal is to minimise errors. To reach it, ABC minimises the use of the keyboard. Most manipulations are made by drag & drop. E.g. to create a customer invoice, the user just opens the appropriate editor and then drops the customer address in the recipient hole or field. He does the same with one or more products. Of course, he has to specify the appropriate quantities. The invoice is ready. Shorter than ever. Suppose two customers should receive the same or similar invoice. The user creates the first as described previously. The second one will be produced by dropping the new address in the address hole and then the first invoice in the model hole of the editor. That's it. The system will fill in the document. Of course, if both invoices are similar but not exactly the same, the user has to modify the differences, like adjusting the quantities sold.

The third goal is flexibility. First of all, the system can be adapted to all languages (except for Japanese and other special characters). It accepts several text processors to publish printed or sent versions of the documents. Also, individual and company preferences are available. Further, all the document models and their behaviours are defined according to the company procedures. Following the same idea, terminal accounts, products, addresses, can be simultaneously classified in many ways. Such classification can be permanent or just of action period. These partitions can also be made according to several points of view. The account manager has not the overlook on addresses as the salesman. The first will classify them according to solvability. The second will see different clients groups according to potentiality. An other classification could be a price discount structure. Sales tax balance is nothing else than a reduced view over specific accounts.

Install

The software is delivered in an archive-type file (zip or tar.gz). To install it, extract files into a dedicated directory. Then read the README and run the install procedure. If this is an update, make first a full backup of previous data and distribution.

For a new installation, the system automatically offers a free trial period. Examples are supplied with the distribution. They can be copied in the data space. This allows a first contact with the system to better understand its behaviour. Indeed, ABC allows very deep adaptation, but this is only possible once you have thoroughly understood the way it works. Specifically, definition of documents models and behaviour is not straightforward. Therefore, it is then a good idea to practice with the examples and to modify them in order to study their mechanism before starting with the definition of the company real models.

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