Software Review: MAS 200

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Logical interfaces; handles many users well

Cons: Accounts Receivable invoices

The Bottom Line:

You'll find some quirks here

But software is mostly good

And easy to learn

Easy to Learn and Use Accounting Program

When I was in college (way back in the mid-90's), I was an accounting major. And we spent no time learning accounting software. The argument was that we needed to know what the accounting software was doing behind the scenes. If we understood that, we could pick up any accounting software while on the job. Since graduating from college, I have had exactly one job. And that job has used MAS 90 or now MAS 200. As a result, I can't compare it to other accounting software's on the market. But I have found this software easy to use and logical in my ten years of everyday on the job use.

What's in a Name?

When I first started my job, we were using MAS 90. Sometime after the turn of the millennium, they decided that MAS 90 sounded so last century, so they changed the name to MAS 200. That's the version we've been using for the last few years, but the program is the same. (And if you're wondering, MAS stands for Master Accounting Software.)

The software manufacturer has also changed their name over the years. When I started, they were Sage Software. Our current version says it was made by Best Software, Inc. What's the difference? I'm not quite sure, but now you know.

A Little About Us

Just so you have some clue how my experience might translate to your company, here's a little about where I work.

I work for my alma mater, a small, private liberal arts college. We have about 1,000 students, 250 full time employees, but over 600 when you factor in student workers. And we've got around 50 departments on campus.

The number of people using the software has varied over the years. The most we've ever had has been 12. We've got about 9 currently.

About the Software

Mas 200 offers their customers a series of "Modules." Each traditional accounting sub-department has their own module. For example, we most often use General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, and Bank Reconciliation. We've also got some others involving importing data from other programs. For example, we use an Excel spreadsheet to record various deposits, then we use the Visual Integrator module to actually import the data.

When you buy the software, you get one license and the basic program. Each module you need costs more. And each employee who needs access to the software costs an additional license fee.

The modules themselves are fairly straight forward to use. The General Ledger module, for example, has separate screens to look up information on a particular general ledger account, print our reports, and input journal entries. My boss has spent a long time creating custom reports, and we use those each month to send to the various departments so they have some idea how they are doing financially.

In Accounts Payable, you create a unique vendor ID for every company, then you use that ID to input invoices and print checks.

Accounts Receivable allows you to track each customer by ID, input payments, and track delinquent accounts.

Checks and payments automatically update into the Bank Reconciliation module, which makes it easy to reconcile the bank. You can track multiple bank accounts at once with this module. We actively use 6 right now and have used more in the past.

Payroll not only allows you to pay employees, but it also tracks benefit deductions and information for quarterly and annual reports, which makes creating those a breeze. It also prints out W-2's and collects the information for state payroll taxes.

These are the modules I am most familiar with. As I said earlier, we use others. For example, Magnetic Media gives us the information needed for our state filing in the correct format so we can save it to a disc and send it in each quarter.

Our Experiences

Each time you ask MAS 200 to do a new task, it opens a new window for you. It took me no time at all to learn the software as the windows are very logical. In fact, I recently had to print a check, something I haven't done since I first started. I figured out how to do it without any problems.

As I hinted earlier, we track expenses for each department separately. As a result, you should see our chart of accounts. MAS 200 is set up to handle that. Every department has their own separate chart of accounts, and the program keeps track of the separate information and combines it all with ease. I know my boss has spent a lot of time setting all this up. But once it is set up, it works well.

When I first started, you could actually go too fast for the program. If I got going doing data inputting, I would move faster then it was ready for, leaving me with some blank fields and no data input. With the most recent upgrade, that's no longer been a problem. In fact, I tried to trip it up, and I couldn't.

As soon as the calendar year changes, the program wants to put everything in the new year. We've always got a couple weeks where we are processing stuff for January and December at the same time. Since we normally don't have to input the year, everyone inadvertently puts something in December of the new year. It's always easy enough to fix, but it would be nice if the program were smart enough to put things in the correct December.

Being a small company, we don't often have conflicts, but they do come up. For example, when I am reconciling the bank, no one can update check runs or deposits. When this happens, the program lets the "blocked" user know they can't complete that task right then. The error message retries frequently, and when the conflict goes away it proceeds with the update.

The biggest problem we have had is with the Accounts Receivable system. The statements that it generated were almost impossible for students and parents to follow. I know I never figured them out when I was a student. A few years after I started, we created our own database program and use that to track student accounts. That's made the students much happier. It takes a little more work to get the information into MAS 200 for financial report purposes and bank reconciliation, but we figured it out. We have to run special programs to update MAS 200 every so often, but they do work.

And I swear there is a ghost in the system. It seems every January when we start a new year for Payroll, one person's deductions get changed at random. We never have figured out this phenomenon, but it means you have to keep reconciling accounts to make sure things are working right. Since that's part of my job, it means job security.

Conclusion

MAS 200 has a few issues, most noticeably the Accounts Receivable invoices. But it is basically a solid accounting program that works well for our small accounting department.