Since Clients & Profits X was designed especially for the advertising industry, you'll probably feel familiar with it after only a few days. It's made to move you smoothly through the steps that every job goes through: estimating, trafficking, costing, and billing -- the same steps you go through now. But instead of using a manual system of job jackets and forms, everything will be in Clients & Profits X.

Time Sheets A time sheet is a collection of a day's time entries for one person. Each time entry is a separate record of a person's work containing the date, job number, task, the number of hours, cost and billing rates, and a short description. Time can be tracked either through time cards or time sheets. There's no real difference between them; in fact, time entered on time cards becomes a time sheet when the time card is saved. But the time card has the advantage of being available to users all day, while they're working.

Accounts Payable Accounts Payable is seamlessly integrated with the vendor files, jobs and tasks, and the general ledger. This means that when an invoice is posted, many things are updated at once: the vendor balance increases; the invoice's cost and gross amounts increase the job's totals; and debit and credit entries are created in the General Ledger. Vendor invoices are also integrated with purchase orders.

Checkbook Clients & Profits X keeps a complete, detailed check register for all of your bank accounts -- and can help you easily reconcile the accounts each month. Checks are numbered automatically as they are written. Different checking accounts should have different numbering sequences, which you can easily set in the Chart of Accounts. You can write checks any time. You can write one check at a time, or many checks at once.

Expense Reports Expenses are job costs that you incur while getting work done. They aren't payables, since there isn't an invoice. And they aren't checks, since you're not actually paying for them. Expenses are unique because you've already paid for them in the course of running the agency, so there's no check to write or invoice to add. There are three kinds of expenses: in-house expenses, employee expense reports, and internal charges.

Internal Charges Internal charges are expenses that you charge to the client on a unit basis. Shops with in-house output, duplication, and production equipment can set up a price list for every kind of internal charge they'd bill to a client. The Internal Charge Items table keeps a detailed listing of items and their prices, which are then used for expense tracking. Charges for internal items can be charged to any job and task, including quantities, which then appear job cost reports -- and eventually on the client invoice.

Job Cost Transfers Cost transfers are always added in pairs: you'll enter the job and task from which the cost is being transferred, then the job and task that will get the transfer. Any cost and gross amount can be transferred, up to the total unbilled cost amounts on the job task. Otherwise, there's no limit to how costs can be transferred.

Billing/Accounts Receivable Everything you do for a client is billed by adding an invoice into Accounts Receivable. Clients can be billed for anything you do -- whether you're billing an estimate, an advance, a retainer, a service charge, or a job's final costs. A/R invoices are seamlessly integrated with jobs and costs, so billing is particularly quick and easy -- and can be mostly automatic.

Client Payments Entries that affect accounts receivable are entered into Client Payments -- including payments from clients, adjustments, and write offs. Entries added into Client Payments affect client balances, unpaid client invoices, and the general ledger at the same time. Client Payments is where you'll account for most of the shop's incoming cash.

General Ledger Clients & Profits X is built around a one-write, double-entry general ledger. This comprehensive, accrual accounting system automatically tracks your income, costs, and expenses using a custom, user-defined Chart of Accounts. Your G/L accounts track activity totals for 24 accounting periods. The system provides agency-tailored financial statements, including income statements, balance sheets, trial balances, detailed general ledgers, journals, and audit trails.