Setting up your enterprise with Compeat software is accomplished in the following three general steps, regardless of the particularities of your business:
Installing and Configuring Compeat issues of computer networking, file management, and hardware setup are usually handled by your information technology people in conjunction with Compeat's Technical Support staff. Please contact our Technical Support department for more information on installing and configuring Compeat.
Setting Up Accounting This is done from the Setup menu and is discussed below.
Setting Up Inventory This is done on the Inventory menu > Setup submenu. See the help topic Inventory Setup Overview for information.
We recommend that you first accomplish enterprise- or company-wide steps, and then go on to restaurant- or entity-specific steps. Even if you are a one-restaurant operation, go through Compeat setup screens in the following order to set up your system of accounting:
I. Enterprise-Wide Steps:
Security First, define user groups, and then the users themselves in order to allow employees access to the parts of the application they need.
Chart of Accounts This is the master list of all of your company's accounts, including account-type information for each.
Enterprise Definitions Here you can select whether to group your restaurants into subsets, and how much vendor order history you want pre-filled onto new orders.
Entities Define your various restaurants here, giving them names and numbers; define any accounting entities (modules that don't sell food); and set up any commissaries (in-company vendors) and commissary departments you choose to use.
Inter-Company Here is where you define cross-entity account relationships, allowing one entity to pay another's bills.
II. Entity-Specific Steps:
Periods Each entity can have its own fiscal calendar; define it for each entity, or for all entities at once, using this screen.
Banking Setting up the bank accounts of your company is an important prerequisite for Compeat accounting. All bank accounts are entity-specific, though they can be created from any entity in the system.
DSR Setup The Daily Sales Report is the foundation of your sales journal entry, even if you don't use POS polling. The DSR transaction screen needs to be configured for each restaurant. Access the DSR setup options under Setup menu > DSR.
Accounts Payable Set up your various vendors and terms on the Setup menu > Accounts Payable submenu by following the basic order of the submenu's screens.
Other Definitions The Setup menu > Other Definitions screen gathers various configuration choices, mostly having to do with vouchers and inventory, that are required in order to use Compeat.
III. Optional Steps:
Budgets You can define one budget for each entity, or else multiple entities can use the same budget. You can create budgets directly within Compeat, or you can create the budget file within Excel and use the Import Budgets utility to import them into Compeat.
Outside Sales (commissary entities only) This is where you set up the sales part of commissary functionality for the sale of food items to companies other than your own.
Accounts Receivable These are in-restaurant charge accounts available to certain customers you specify. With Compeat, you can create and manage your house accounts, integrating them into your financial system.
Payroll Departments Define employee categories so that, even if you are not using Compeat Payroll software, you can assign payroll departments to generate additional information from your DSR polling.
IV. POS Interfaces
As a final accounting setup step, you need to configure Compeat to work with the POS polling module of your choice. Some work will have been done in the initial configuration of Compeat; these screens let you finish the configuration process.