Welcome to ManagePLUS for QuickBooks

ManagePLUS is a management information and reporting add-on for QuickBooks. It enhances the information you can get from the QuickBooks records you already keep, giving you valuable information with only a little extra effort. But ManagePLUS is more than just a reporting tool:

•	It lets you manage classes as cost centers and profit centers, for advanced management information and analysis (ManagePLUS Gold version).

•	It gives you easy ways to allocate income and expense (overhead expenses, etc.) to cost centers and profit centers, providing practical, useful cost accounting capabilities (activity-based costing) with even simple cash basis or accrual QuickBooks records (ManagePLUS Gold version).

•	The transactions which allocate revenue and expenses among cost center and profit center classes can be exported to QuickBooks with a single click, or viewed in specialized cost center and profit center analysis reports available in ManagePLUS Gold,

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ManagePLUS supports advanced quantity handling features, such as automatic quantity statistics (price per unit, etc.) on reports, entering transaction quantities as mathematical formulas which remain a part of the QuickBooks transaction whenever desired, and even recording two quantities in each transaction if you want. This dual-quantities feature is extremely valuable in businesses which buy and sell things by weight and count, such as farming and ranching. Wherever dual quantities are used, ManagePLUSreports automatically provide additional per-unit cost information and statistics per count and per weight unit—average weight per pallet, average selling price per each and per pound, etc.).

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ManagePLUS has powerful "visual" features for quickly getting customized reports and analysis of your records. By just dragging column headings around in the Transactions window and making a few mouse clicks you can have a customized analysis of revenue and expenses tailored to your information needs—grouped, sorted, and filtered as you want, and with automatic quantity and financial subtotals and statistics.

•	ManagePLUS builds reports in its own internal spreadsheet. That lets you immediately and directly edit information right there in the report to do a "what-if" analysis on your live accounting data. And you can export reports to Microsoft Excel if you want to do even more.

ManagePLUS benefits a wide range of businesses types: manufacturing, farming and ranching, medical offices, professional services businesses, trucking/transportation/delivery, and many others—any business that wants more detailed management information, and especially any business that makes use of QuickBooks classes.

Think of ManagePLUS for QuickBooks as the "basic" version and ManagePLUS Gold for QuickBooks as the "deluxe" version.

ManagePLUS for QuickBooks provides features for advanced quantity handling (including support for two quantities in your QuickBooks transactions) and quantity reporting, with detailed and expanded quantity information in Profit & Loss reports. It also supports detailed management information in reports—things like per-unit income and expense analysis, per-unit costs for things you buy and sell, and numerous other features. The enhanced Profit & Loss with Classes report provides a better-formatted and much easier to use Classes report than you can get from QuickBooks, and it includes all of the same expanded quantity reporting and per-unit information as mentioned above, but for Classes as well as Accounts.

ManagePLUS Gold for QuickBooks has a superset of the features in ManagePLUS for QuickBooks. That is, it includes the same core features but additionally supports working with QuickBooks Classes as cost centers and profit centers. This includes the ability to designate Classes as either cost centers or profit centers, easy-to-use features for allocating income and expenses to those Classes, enhanced information about the amounts assigned to Classes by your QuickBooks transactions, and special reports for evaluating at the profitability of individual cost centers and profit centers. (The Profit Analysis report is essentially a Profit and Loss report which includes allocations and per-management-unit statistics, for a single cost center or profit center.)

Where this Help system mentions "ManagePLUS" it is referring to both versions. The term "ManagePLUS Gold" is only used when describing features specific to that version.

If you try ManagePLUS before you buy it (something we highly recommend) you'll have full access to the ManagePLUS Gold features during the 30-day free trial. And if you purchase a license for ManagePLUS, then later decide you want to try out ManagePLUS Gold, contact us and we can send you a trial registration code to "unlock" the ManagePLUS Gold features for 30 days, for free.

Both versions of ManagePLUS have the same computer hardware and software requirements:

•	Works with Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Solutions editions of U.S. QuickBooks 2003 and later, as well as many UK and Canadian QuickBooks releases. Support for Australian QuickBooks is planned for the future.

This list may change as new ManagePLUS versions are released. An up-to-date list of specifications and requirements can be found on the

ManagePLUS Downloads page of our Web site.

ManagePLUS Design Philosophy...

ManagePLUS should give you the maximum amount of management information possible from the records you already keep, before suggesting that you must change accounting practices or procedures to get more or better management information.

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Every part of ManagePLUS is designed to automatically glean management information from your records wherever possible, with little effort on your part. This is true even if your QuickBooks records could be classified as "not the best" or "not as complete as I'd like them to be"...or even "a bit of a mess". If you believe that mining whatever management information exists in your records is a step in the right direction then ManagePLUS is a tool that can help.

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While ManagePLUS does not turn QuickBooks into a full-fledged cost accounting system, its enhanced support for using classes profit centers and cost centers, and its ability to allocate costs among classes (in ManagePLUS Gold) brings it close to being just that...but only if you want it to use it that way! ManagePLUS doesn't force a rigid accounting structure or procedures on you. It works with however your records are structured and whatever level of accounting expertise you may have—whether you mostly want to keep simple cash-basis records for tax purposes or your goal is to have top-notch cost information for making management decisions in your business.

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The main point of the two prior paragraphs is that ManagePLUS bridges the gap between getting "a little" management information and getting "a lot".

Some people see cost accounting as something that must be implemented as a comprehensive system—requiring major changes in day-to-day accounting habits and work flow. This idea turns many people away from implementing it: "...not in a business the size of ours. Maybe someday when we're bigger, or when we can hire a full-time accountant...". But in most cases "someday" never comes, so long as you believe that managerial accounting is not something you can work toward gradually. But that is exactly what ManagePLUS makes possible...

What if you could gradually "grow" your accounting system and record keeping procedures over a period of time, to yield higher and higher levels of management information?

What if you didn't have to tackle the job all at once, but could expand your accounting procedures whenever you see a need for more management information about some part of your business?

What if you could wait until the potential value of the information was so clear, that there would be little question of the payoff for the extra effort required?

ManagePLUS makes the process easier because it lets you "go slowly" on building management information practices into your record keeping system. It lets you make accounting changes as your information needs dictate, and as your accounting experience grows, without requiring a bunch of all-at-once changes in how you do your accounting.

By helping you get more information from the accounting records you already have—and by letting you get started right now—ManagePLUS lets you have immediate success on the road to better management information. And small successes can encourage you to do more, as you see your efforts paying off in terms of better information.