A minor update to accounts package Prophet is now available from Elesar Ltd. The software was originally developed by Apricote Studios (now known as Accountz), and hadn’t seen any further updates for many years until Elesar stepped in and took on sales and further development to the package. Initially ensuring it was fully 32-bit compatible, and therefore fully functional on modern RISC OS systems so that anyone still using it could be assured of still being able to do so, the company has also added an important (optional extra) feature for those who need it – the ability to submit VAT returns under the UK’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) scheme.
The requirements for VAT submissions under the scheme now include three additional pieces of information to be provided by the software, which were previously optional, but HM Revenue and Customs now records as part of their fraud prevention measures. Prophet now submits these as necessary.
As well as complying with the latest requirements, the update to version 4.06 also gains an improvement to its ‘Prophile’ databases, which are no longer restricted to 10 character filenames – although for display purposes, excessively long ones are truncated and appear with an ellipsis to indicate the missing part.
A couple of bugs have also been shown the door in this version; there was a missing message token that was stopping the ‘Best sellers’ feature from completing, and there was a risk of database loss if the user clicked ‘Yes’ in response to a ‘Quit without saving?’ prompt and the database was in the current selected directory.
Existing users of version 3.93 or later – i.e. the versions released by Elesar – can simply re-run their installer program, and it will download the update, including the 266-page PDF manual, with no charge. Anyone using an older 3.xx version of the software can upgrade to the latest Elesar release for £58.00 plus VAT (£69.60 inclusive), and new licences can be purchased for £79.00 plus VAT (£94.80). The MTD option can be added to either of these for £45.00 plus VAT (£54.00). All of these options are available from the Prophet product page on Elesar’s shop.