Q1. How do I know if Realtimme will suit my needs?

Q2. I am not account trained; will I be able to use Realtimme?

Q3. Can I start with my accounts first and the billing modules few months later or vice versa?

Q4. We are currently using other computerized accounting system. Can the  customer, supplier and stock profiles migrate over to Realtimme?

Q5. Can more than one person process an order at any one time without
corrupting or overriding each transaction

Q6. How many years of information can be kept?

Q7. Can we use Realtimme to maintain several sets of companies' accounts?

Q8. Currently, only one person is handling the Accounts & Invoicing in my company. Can I add more users in the future?

Q9. I am mid-way through my financial year? Should I wait for my next financial year before I can implement Realtimme Accounting?

Q10. My company is a service oriented company. I need to keep track of the costing for individual Jobs & Projects?

Q11. Our business is simple, so we just need a good and cheap accounting software

Q12. What Accounting Software Should We Buy?

Q13. So many people are using it, so it cannot be wrong right?

Q14. I don’t really know what I need now, so I start with the cheapest software that gives me the most of the requirements that I need, I can change the software few years later, meanwhile I would not waste or commit to much money in the accounting software.

Q15. Why do we have to pay service / support fee for the accounting software for the subsequent usage of the software?

Q16. What if I choose not to sign up the maintenance service?

A1. Realtimme Accounting is very versatile and feature-packed to accommodate very wide industrial requirement.

Back To Top

A2. Realtimme Accounting is easy to set up, easy to use. We stress on stability and user-friendliness in our products.

We already have many users who are non-accounts trained. Your admin clerk would be able to manage almost all the accounting tasks after attending our structured training programmes.

Back To Top

A3. While it is a full set of Accounts, you need not use all the modules if you don't want to. Just use the modules you need and integrate your order processing later to the accounts module.

Back To Top

A4. Depend on the data format of your existing software. We need to study and do a
test run. We had migrated for many of our users. A fee would be charged for the migration.

Back To Top

A5. Yes, Realtimme is a true multi-users program, allowing multi users to access the same submenu at the same time, unlike other accounting software, only allows one user to access one menu at any one time.

Back To Top

A6. You can keep many years of data as you wish. With a reasonably powerful computer, you should not feel any slowness in your system even you have many years of data inside.

Back To Top

A7. We do not limit the number of companies' accounts you want to maintain.
You can buy one user license but maintain as many sets of accounts as you want. We have bookkeepers or management consulting firm using Realtimme to maintain their clients' accounts.

Back To Top

A8. You can start off Realtimme on a standalone computer with one person handling the full set of Accounts. As your company grows, you can purchase additional user license such that several users can access the software concurrently over a computer network. As promised, we start with you…. We grow with you.

Back To Top

A9. You can start using Realtimme almost immediately, keep your first half of the accounts in your existing software and continue with the second half in Realtimme thereafter

Back To Top

A10. With the project optional module, allows you to easily define Jobs or Projects. You can charge your related sales, purchases & expenses transactions to these Jobs or Projects. A separate project profit and loss accounts with ledgers can be generated from the system.

Back To Top

A11. It is very natural to have a “ Cheap and good” mentality. There is nothing wrong with it.
If you had managed to get one , then good luck to you. However, not many companies
can get away with it, not until they had done a thorough homework of what they need. However, not many people are as well informed or discerning enough that they fell into
the “Cheap” trap, later to realise that the software provides a fraction of the solution, or it is used to issue invoice only, or even live with it not knowing that there is better accounting software that could do more with a few hundreds dollars more.

It is important to size up your needs, identify your problems and a wish lists and if available, your company’s expansion plan in 2 years ahead, bearing in mind you buy a software not to solve present problems but also to stay relevant for the years to come
if possible.

Never start off with a believe or underestimate your requirements to be simple and straightforward, which many a times leads you to set unrealistic budgets for your investments. The next question in your mind is : Then how much is realistic?
The answer is again back to you that you have to prioritise your needs and wants.
Within the needs, there are some that are urgent, others are less urgent. Within the wants, again some are good to haves that usually add on to the costs of the investments. Go to www.realtimme.com\downloads\questionnaires. By answering the questionnaires there would give you and your potential vendor a good feel of your needs and requirements.

Back To Top

A12. There is no one right answer to this question. To understand why, imagine answering the question, What's the best car to buy? In order to answer, you would first need to ask questions such as: How many passengers do you normally have?(Number of users) What features are important to you? (Foreign currency features? with inventory control?) The car is to be used on rough terrain or normal road? (Retail or Service industries) One of these considerations might outweigh all of the others. Once you have all the information, there might be two or three cars which meet the criteria. The final decision will be based on personal preference and budgets. A similar set of questions and circumstances can be applied to selecting an accounting software package.

Back To Top

A13. Wrong. There is not going to have a one size fits all shoe, so is the accounting software. You will aspire your business to grow, so must your software, to grow with you. Why people have to change software every alternate year? This is because their business have outgrown the software, it could not manage the dynamism of what the growing business requires now, or because they never look beyond the years ahead while they acquire their first accounting software.

Back To Top

A14. Investing in accounting software is not like buying your lunch where you can change your preference tomorrow. It involves continuity. On your part, a lot of time and effort is spent in building up the fundamental information databases of your customers profile, supplier profiles and Stock profiles, to be re-entered again if you change accounting software?
Software migration is a lengthy process that must be carried out cautiously and may be a strain to your existing resources. We, at Realtimme, will be able to advise you as to how and steps to carry out successfully, and hopefully, at the shortest possible time and a less painful process.

The next thing to look out for is that the accounting software must have a wide range of versions to meet the various stages of your business growth. Start off with the lowest
range with a couple of hundred of dollars of investments. Upgrade to higher versions if
your needs increases by just paying for a upgrade fee, with all your historical data still intact.

In Realtimme, our mission statements says that we start with you… we grow with you.
We have products that start with hundreds of dollars to several thousands of dollars and other add-ons optional features to choose from.

Back To Top

A15. You have the choice to decide whether or not to subscribe to the service/support.
Study the scope of the work on the part of the vendor and on your part as a user. Service support  fee to the vendor would be a continuous revenue to the company so as to sustain them or in economic sense, profitable enough to continue running their business and to further their research and development of the software so as to harness the latest technologies, incorporating into the latest versions of the software. In the end, you as a user and all their users would benefit from their latest release.

Back To Top

A16. The least expected of you is that you must be capable of install, uninstall or reinstall the software from one computer to another or to reconfigure the network to access the software in each workstation. (You should find all these steps in the user manual)
Run a Disaster Recovery exercise by simulating a server crash or a system failure
(Due to hardware failure or virus attack or data corruption). Appoint an administrator in each location to carry out the restoration work. You have to quantify the tangible and intangible losses that may resulted in a system failure, can your business go on without a system for more than half an hour? Are the procedures documented as to what is to be done during such time? Do you have a “wet weather program” or a manual invoice to fall back on in case when the computer cannot generate the invoice?

Even though you have the vendor to commit a 2 hour response time, or a 24/7 service contract, it is not good enough as time is needed to troubleshoot the problem. Therefore it is important to have properly documented recovery procedures that the administrator is capable of carrying out. The danger here now is that since it is not common incident. The administrator may not be able to carry out properly. As such management should consider outsourcing this area to the professional, i.e. the vendor.
However, as mentioned earlier, whether you sign up the service contract or not, it is the duty of the company to carry out the backup procedures diligently and the physical backup storage media must be safely kept away, if deem necessary, away from the premise.
Signing up a service contract with the vendor is liken to buying a burglary insurance policy but it is your due diligence to lock up the place everyday before you go.
It is recommended that you appoint a senior staff to carry out the backup routine. But the risk is that, if things are not carried out properly, they often give excuses that they are not IT trained and they do not want to assume responsibility. By then damage is done and at most you can do is to fire the person but you are still left with the mass that you have to pick it up.
If the above proof to much of a hassle for your company or the staff to take, it is best that you consult the vendor as to how best they can support your disaster recovery program.
They should be able to custom-made their support services depending on how extensive and how regular the procedures to be carried out. Bear in mind all the above comes with
a price tag and you have to measure the relevance and cost effect and benefit analysis.
After all that is being said and done, you may be put off by the idea of computerising the operation. However, not all is lost as these are just some of the potential events that may occur if precautionary steps are not taken or are taken lightly. Again it is liken to buying a car but if it is not maintained regularly, accidents will happen and even lives will be lost, but if managed properly(and it can be managed), we are gaining the benefits that technology brings more than the ill effects that it comes along.

Back To Top