SoftMaker.com

Here in the UK, it is customary, in formal accounting documents, to show negative numbers in round brackets, e.g. (1,000) for -1,000. It is possible to set up such a format in Excel (all versions) and OpenOffice, but I have not found a way to do it in PlanMaker. When I open a sheet with this formatting in PlanMaker, the brackets are not shown, and the program assumes that the minus sign should be suppressed, which is exactly what I do not want!

Is it possible to create a custom format which meets this requirement? Obviously, not only should the negative numbers be in brackets, but figures in columns should align fully. If the facility doesn't at present exist, could it be added? If you wish to achieve significant market penetration in the UK, this is likely to become a significant requirement.

Thank you for your help.

David

Hello,

such a special setting is on our wishlist but unfortunately not implemented yet. I raised the priority.

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Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Thank you for the quick response. I think that SoftMaker Office is all that it claims to be, and has the potential to increase market share if it is able to deal with these national peculiarities. Unfortunately, without the proper number format, it cannot be used for accounting purposes in this country, except for very small, local organisations, and no professional accountant would use the software for this reason.

David

I was disappointed to see that this issue was not addressed in revision 579, though I recognise that my request may have come too late for that. But I hope I can persuade you that the problem is as urgent for Softmaker as it is for me.

Both Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Calc provide a capability to format negative numbers differently from positive numbers; in that respect PlanMaker, which does not provide this capability, is less compatible than it should be. The knock-on effect of this is that cells formatted separately for negative numbers are not treated consistently by PlanMaker; I noted this in my original post, and a user of spreadsheets generated by Quickbooks (another David) has noted something very similar in another thread. From my perspective, this appears to be unintended by both user and programmer; in other words, it is a bug.

More importantly, as I have said before, your software cannot expect to compete in the UK if it does not provide what anyone using it for accounting purposes would regard as a core feature. At the moment, Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student edition (with a free upgrade to Office 2010) can be purchased here for about £65, that is virtually the same price as Softmaker Office, for the same number of licenses. For all sorts of reasons, I think that Softmaker Office is the better product, but I cannot recommend it to friends who do accounting because of this one formatting issue.

I hope that this is sufficiently convincing.

David

I hope you don't mind my bumping this one a little. Is there any news as to whether the standard UK (and US) accounting format for negative numbers will be implemented in the next Service Pack?

David

No, there is no time frame for finishing the support of the UK Accounting number format. I raised the priority.

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Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Thank you.

David

I was disappointed that you did not include this fix in the latest Service Pack, though, as you had not undertaken to do so, I can hardly complain. But it occurs to me that I probably asked for the fix in the wrong way, by making, in effect, a feature request. In practice there is also a significant incompatibility with Excel.

The following illustration shows part of a spreadsheet containing a set of accounts, open in both PlanMaker and the Excel viewer. I have marked the incompatibilities.



Not only is PlanMaker not displaying the bracketed format for negative numbers, it is actually showing them as positive, which is clearly incorrect.

I hope that this explains things rather better.

David

Hello David,

thank you for your feedback. Is it possible to send us the file: Accounts 2008.xls?
For our developers it would be very useful.

Please mail it to: forum(at)softmaker.de

Many thanks for your help!

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Philip Jedamzik
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Thank you, Philip. I have emailed the spreadsheet as requested.

David

Hello David,

the attached xls-file was written by PlanMaker. But we need the original xls-file written by Excel.
Please mail it to: forum(at)softmaker.de - Thank you!

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Philip Jedamzik
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Thank you, Philip. I'm afraid I am confused by your request. The file in question was not created or saved at any time in PlanMaker. It was saved in OpenOffice (I forget which version); the layout is copied from the previous year's accounts, and originated (over 10 years ago) in Excel 97. What particularly confuses me is the statement by your team that it is a PlanMaker document, when it contains formatting that PlanMaker cannot reproduce.

I shall look in my archives to see if I can find a document in accounting format that I know was created in Excel 97.

Later ... I have now emailed you a file with the relevant formatting, which I have taken from a CD archive made in March 1999, so I know that the file was created by Excel. I have not opened the file in any office program on my current machine; I made a copy so that I could check that the file does indeed use the formatting under discussion.

David

Is there any news on this? Was the file I sent in what the team wanted?

David

Our developers are still working on the support of UK accounting number format. We will inform you as soon as it has been finished.

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Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH

I would like to support previous comments about the UK number formatting (negative numbers in bracket). This is critical. Without this function I am unable to produce reports to present to others. This means that I have to rely on either Excel or Openoffice for number formatting, which is a shame because I like Planmaker in all other respects.

Are there any plans to add a pivot table function?