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F.A.Q. - Frequently Asked Questions

• Basic Operator Notes for Accounting
• How to Install Accounting on a new computer
• How to Move Accounting to a new computer
• Your Letters Print Differently on each Computer
• Recovering Data Lost Due to Database Corruption
• Electronic Funds Transfer FAQ
• Importing your Bank Statements into Accounting
• How Secure is YOUR Password

• General Info about how to use our programs
• Backing Up Your Database
• Information about using EFT
• Creating/Changing Standard Letters
• Can't get out of EDIT CONTROL DETAILS screen
• Your program crashes often (possibly SQL errors)
• Sending us a Backup
• What to do if you can't access your database via your network
• Problems with Auto-Email functions in our software
• Windows Task Manager Processes Explanation
• Solutions to SOME problems encountered during Win-XP Setup
• Backing up Your Outlook Express Mail, Address Book, Mail Rules etc
• Computer viruses and how to combat them
• What is Spyware or Adware?
• How to Send/Receive Faxes using Windows-XP in-built Fax Service
• Printing Cheques and/or Receipts
• Balancing to Your Bank Account
• SQL Query Errors
• Illegal Function Call Errors
• General Procedure to Follow if You Are Having Problems with your Program
• Repairing Your Database using Microsoft Access V2
• Cloning Your Database using Microsoft Access V2
• What if no ABN is quoted?
• Identifying your program or database name or location or Windows folder
• Setting up our software on multiple computers
• Copying our software from an existing computer to new computer
• Valid Bank BSB (Bank/State/branch) Codes show up as Invalid or Missing Code
• How to Run SQL Commands on our databases
• Remote Access to Your Database
• How to Email Reports and/or Letters
• Creating Adobe Acrobat PDF files easily (and for free)
• To print or email a screen dump
• Some reports print in landscape instead of portrait mode
• Importing your Bank Statements into Rent Master or Ausbroker
• How to Change Protected Data
• What to do if you are told that you have an incorrect Registration Code for your Program
• Setting the Country and Language correctly for Australia (Win-XP)
• Setting the Country And Language Options correctly for Australia (Vista)
• You Get Errors When Printing Letters
• How to Email Letters as PDF Files
• You have Windows Vista on your computer instead of Windows XP
• Microsoft Update and the "This Not a Genuine Copy of Windows" Error Message
• Windows "Blue Screen" Error Messages

It is possible, however, for ALL computers to access the SAME letters from the server computer. Have a look at the top of the main Accounting screen and you will see the location of your database. Assuming that your database is on drive G: (so it will say G:\Acctng\Acct????.Mdb) then you need to set your letter path to be G:\Acctng\Letters and you can do this in the bottom left hand corner of the letter printing form. Now ALL the computers will be accessing the SAME letters from the SAME place. However the updated letter may have been saved on one of the other computers and so now you won't have access to the latest copy of that letter even on the machine on which it was changed. However, if you do a network program update on each of the computers then the LATEST version of all of the letters, reports (and Accounting itself) will be copied to all of the machines in the network. The LATEST version will ALWAYS be used to overwrite ANY earlier versions no matter WHICH way the network copy has to go.

Another way to always be using the latest copy of the letters is that, each time you change a letter, do a network program update on all of the computers. Once you do this you can continue to access your letters using the letter path of C:\Acctng\Letters on each computer as all of the computers will have the latest letter versions anyway.

You can do a network program update by selecting it from the DATABASE menu in Accounting. This function can also be used to update the Accounting program itself (and the reports) to all of your computers if you have installed a program update onto only one computer in your network.

From time to time (especially if you have lots of people accessing the data) Microsoft Access Databases become corrupted. Microsoft has provided a repair/compact option which we can call from within Accounting and this, in most circumstances, will restore the database integrity without loss of data. Unfortunately Microsoft don't provide any warning if any of the data is lost during this process. In most cases it is the database indexes (which tell the program where to find the data) rather than the actual data that is corrupted and the index data is also stored within the data itself and so corrupted indexes can always be restored with 100% accuracy which is why the repair process almost always works without data loss.

In the event that the repair/compact function from the database menu doesn't work you can also try to do the repair using a copy of Microsoft Access Version 2 (and only Version 2) and you can see further information on this on our site at Repairing Your Database using Microsoft Access V2

If you have lost a few client data records or some transaction records you can actually restore the missing data without losing your current data if you follow the process below. Note that it is ALWAYS better to restore the last known good backup rather than try to patch your database but if all else fails this should work. By the way, if you have a corrupted database and you recover by restoring a backup - make sure that AFTER restoring the backup you shut down your computer, restart it and do a Repair/Compact on your database to make sure that the data that you have restored is put into pristine condition before continuing to process.

To restore missing transactions do the following procedures.

• Shut down and restart your computer
• Do a repair/compact on your current database (from the DATABASE menu in Accounting)
• Backup your current database
• Make a note of what the name and location of your current database is (in the title bar at the top of the screen) eg it might say G:\Acctng\AcctWork.Mdb
• If you need to do a restore to recover an old database which has the data intact then do so however you should be able to just open one of your month end backups directly by clicking on the FILE menu in Accounting and then SELECT NEW DATABASE and then clicking on one of the backup files. For Accounting the backup files should be named Acctyymm.Mdb where the yy and mm are replaced by the year and month when they were copied. (eg April 2005 backup would be saved as Acct0504.Mdb).
• Go to the Database menu in Accounting and choose IMPORT/EXPORT DATA
  • Choose EXPORT DATA
  • Select the TRANSACTIONS data file
  • Select Comma Separated Values Format (CSV)
  • Note down the text file name that it is going to export to
  • Click on the PROCEED button. This will export the transactions from this database into a text file.
• Either change back to your live database (using SELECT NEW DATABASE from the FILE menu in Accounting) or restore the backup of your database that you made earlier (if you had to restore an old backup because you didn't have backup file already on your hard disk drive). Remember that you noted down the name of your current database earlier in this process.
• Go to the Database menu in Accounting and choose IMPORT/EXPORT DATA
  • Choose IMPORT (Add New Records)
  • Select the TRANSACTIONS data file
  • Select Comma Separated Values Format (CSV)
  • Make sure that the text file name is the same as the file that you previously exported
  • Make sure that the check box marked ERASE EXISTING DATA BEFORE IMPORT is NOT ticked!
  • Click on the PROCEED button. This will add back any missing transactions to this database from the text file but will not change any data that is already in the database.
• Run the FIX TRANSACTION TOTALS option from the FIX menu to make sure that the client balances reflect the current state of the transaction file.