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System / Accounting Problems

I would really appreciate some feedback from other agencies that have been using C&P for some time, like ourselves, with regard to system posting errors - where only one side of an A/P or A/R transaction posts to the GL. Ever since we purchased C&P we have been experiencing this problem and after 5 years the answer is still the same "check your networking" or "electrical power interruptions". Our IT team swears that it is not a networking problem and we have even enlisted the help of outside technicians to come in and test our lines, however, they did not find any problems. Yet, despite our best efforts and C&P's technical support best efforts, we continue to experience this problem every month. We recently found a client invoice posted in the A/R window, paid for in the Payments window, yet the entire entry was never posted to the GL!?! Needless to say our CFO was not impressed! An automatic double entry system that sporadically loses 1/2 or the entire transaction is a big problem for us and continues to remain unresolved. Is there anyone out there experiencing similar problems or have in the past? If so, what have you done to isolate the root cause? Is there a root cause?

Marva Wilson
HR/Business Administrator
Perennial Inc.

I've been using C&P for just about 6 years. And yes I have experienced posting errors. It is usually caused by a "hiccup" at the station of the person doing the posting. Not a problem in the networking (although I am in California and subject to black & brown outs during peak seasons, causing power failure issues). Computers are subject to so many technical interruptions (a surge, freezes, not enough memory to complete a command etc, etc. ad nauseum...). Once I stopped panicking about this - it really hasn't caused me anymore heartburn. Before I run any reports (and ESPECIALLY if I was going to give financials to principals) I run a balance sheet to see if everything is OK. There I will discover the out-of-balance situation - and I know how to fix it - so it hasn't caused me to suspect C&P accuracy.

Roxanne Cowan
Rutherford Bolen Group Integrated Marketing

Every once and a while I get something weird like that happening, but I always catch it by running the G/L Out of Balance Checker. I run this all the time, at least weekly and I also reconcile my A/R and A/P detail to the B/S amounts weekly to confirm that these amounts are in balance. I don't know of any root cause. Have you been able to track it to any specific clients, vendors, g/l #s or the like?

Shannon Ellis
Business Manager
Tackett Barbaria Design Group

I won't be able to solve your problem directly, but I may be able to help shed some light, and offer some alternatives. Omnis is a single threaded shared file database. In other words you are sharing a file, much like multiple people editing the same Excel spreadsheet at the same time. And by single thread I mean the commands to update the data hit the database one at a time, in order. With no built in vehicle to rollback in the event of an error. That has to be handled by the desktop. So in the example above each step happens in order, one at a time. The invoice is posted, then the payment is posted, then it is posted to the GL. Of course that is an overview, there are many steps involved. That kind of a system, in a high traffic network or a high use application or with desktops prone to crashing is just plain asking for corruption like you describe. And consider a system with medium traffic and desktop crashes and medium use just as bad. It is not one issue, not one bad wire, it is a accumulation of events. Omnis is less expensive, less robust and thus prone to these types of errors. And in C&P's defense, at the time it was by far the best choice, IMHO, to build their system on. It is the stereo typical IT dilemma, cost vs. benefit. We too had the same problems for many years, though not as severe as you describe. Couple of things to look at. Are the desktops using C&P top notch fast machines in perfect working order that don't crash? Is your entire network on switches, rather than hubs to avoid collisions. If your database is on an NT server is opportunistic file locking set correctly? And whatever server it is on, is it a very fast SCSI drive? Write behind turned off? We fixed it by deciding the cost of the SQL version was well worth the benefit of not have ANY of the problems you describe. Oracle or the MS version, does not matter, they are the same animal. Though as most of you have gathered by now I am a disciple of Mr. Gates. When I say we have not had any of these problems since changing I am not exaggerating. Zero corruptions. We had a couple of bugs that C&P had to fix when we got it, I think we may have been the first on the MS version. They did so quickly and that has been the end of the story. Many more benefits also. I back up three times a day now, 10 am, 3 pm and then 11pm, without ever having to kick out the users and they never notice any performance hits. I just got done teaching myself active server pages and a bit of visual basic. We now have any custom report you can ask for published to the web in a day or two, all reusable and updatable by the users. Do it, you wont regret it and will never second guess the move.

Jim Kennedy
Brokaw Inc.

We occasionally have posting problems. What we do is try to limit the amount of data posted. Try only posting one entry at a time when you batch post problems can occur. I noticed if somebody is posting at the same time in a/p, checkbook or a/r this can cause a posting problem.

Ed Miller
Grafica Inc.
Vice President of Finance and Back-Office Operations

Could there be a "bug" in the software? Would reinstalling the software (after backing up all data files) help? We have not experienced (thank goodness) ongoing posting problems as you described.

Anna Parisi
GBL

We have found this only happens sporadically.

Laura Kennedy
Financial Manager
Maier Advertising, Inc.

The only problem our office is experiencing at this time in the area of Accounts Payable. When we enter our enter invoices into the Accounts Payable system, the costs do not show up under the job. I have placed several calls to the helpdesk and everyone has told me that it is because we are on a 408 version. Any further information you may have on this issue would be appreciated.

Monika Rogers
M&I

We have had the same problems as you described. You might also want to keep an eye on your sales tax calculations on the sales tax. Our IT guy hates the program saying it is fragile, We were looking for an integrated system for job costing & accounting. The company was using looking for a more robust job costing and C&P seemed to fit the bill. We evaluated it and going in I knew that the accounting portion was primitive compared to Quickbooks. We (4 of us) attended the C&P training course and seemed to get our questions answered. I converted and ran both systems in parallel from Sept '01 to Nov '01. When I was preparing the 12/31/01 financials we had problems where the balance sheet would not balance and it took about a week to find the errors. I had some single sided postings, postings to a 'beg' period, and a posting to a non-posting account. On a positive note C&P tech support always worked with me to find a solution or 'band aid' to my situation. Then I had a invoice that the sales tax didn't look right and the system didn't calculate tax on one line item that was marked as taxable. In addition by balance sheet was close to $11,000 off for Mar. OK, enough venting, our solution was to have 2 systems, C&P for job costing & Quickbooks for accounting (ap, ar, gl, etc). I have spoken with other people with your same experiences and you are not alone. Bottom line we expected a system that would easily flow data. I found myself spending more time double checking the system.

Ray Williams
CFO
Robert Rytter & Associates, Inc.

The only time I have this problem is when there is a power surge during posting or if I forget to "tab" through all the fields to make sure all accounts are entered. I do not experience these problems frequently.

Allen Corley
Controller
WarrenCreative +

We experience the same thing. It is very frustrating. I have found that almost 99% of the time when this error happens is because an entry has been unposted at some point. We try to minimize the errors by making sure the entry is correct before posting it to the general ledger. I check financials once a week to make sure they are in balance. It is easier to correct at this frequency.

Carol Stano
Controller
Drone & Mueller and Associates, Inc.

I've been using C & P for the past 8 years. I've experienced the problems you're having about three to four times during this time on a Mac based platform. I do have a couple of questions: What version of C & P are you currently using? Is it a Mac or PC platform or both? A system that I've been able to come up with is, at the end of each week, I to make sure my detailed GL (cash balances, AR, & AP) tie back to my schedules (AR aging, AP aging & checkbook balance). Should they differ, I'm able to research them right away and fix the problem immediately. If I wait to the end of the month and realize that there's a problem, the time it takes to do the internal audit is enormous and very time consuming. I can say, in the past, when I've had these problems, it was when another individual was "posting" transactions at the same time (from their home office), therefore, causing an error to occur. Also, there was a case, when there was no apparent reason why it happened, it just happened! The C & P help desk was able to guide me on correcting the problem. But I couldn't pinpoint where it started, which was frustrating. In summary, I can't tell you a real "rhyme & reason" on why this happens, but I have experienced your problems before. Again, by checking my detailed GL & schedules weekly, I'm able to act quickly, should there be an error involved during that particular week. As like you, I'm very interested in hearing if there are other firms who have experienced the same problems.

Dannielle Hernandez
Business Manager
Baker Designed Communications

You are certainly not alone. We have all of the same difficulties you mentioned and haven't been able to find a resolution either. Our accounting department runs the Auditor (Out of Balance Checker) every other day to find the discrepancies and ensure they are resolved promptly. They have notice most of these problems occur after a heavy day of posting (25-40 invoices/payments). I'd be curious to see if there is any commonality with our systems. We are all using Macintosh (iMacs and above), C&P version 4.08, and the server is a G4/450.

Tina Kibodeaux
Systems Manager
The Weston Group

Since we've used the same database software for Clients & Profits for over 10 years, how the database behaves is very well known. Posting problems are the result of a communication failure between the workstation and the file server. Here's why: when a workstation starts posting transactions, it sends the data to the file server to be saved. The file server do not process the data at all; all of that happens on the workstation. The file server just saves the data. But if for some reason the connection between the file server and the workstation is broken, the workstation doesn't know exactly what wasn't saved. So there's no way for the workstation to pick up where posting stopped. While that may seem like a bug, the posting procedures were designed that way for performance reasons. That's because double-checking every posting would effectively double the time a posting takes, which would have put an additional burden on the server (which was probably why there was a problem in the first place). And since these kinds of problems are generally rare, it made sense not to overdue the error-checking. Of course, now that networks and servers are so much faster than a few years ago the performance issue is less critical. But since the Clients & Profits posting code proven over many years we're hesitant to change it. The solution is to track down the cause of the problems and take steps to avoid them. You'll find very good documentation about the causes of data problems in the Clients & Profits Database Guide, which was include in your user guide and is also available online:

http://www.cnp-x.com/support/database_guide/

You'll also find tips for preventing problems here (which includes using a dedicated server for Clients & Profits, and not sharing it with graphic files.

Mark Robillard
Developer, Clients & Profits

I have to say that we have not experienced the level of trouble that some of you are describing. Perhaps for some reason I am missing it, but we are almost always in balance, except for twice in the past year, due to a posting error, which was easily fixed. We are still using Classic version 4.3 - most are on Macs, but my accounting assistant works on a G3 entering job costs and processing billing, I work on a PC running reports and entering overhead accounting. Most other staff are on Macs, entering either timesheets or opening jobs. Our database is housed on a G3 server, OS 9.0.4, 450mhz, and has been stable, as far as I can tell. If nothing is out of balance, or if billing worksheets appear to be in line, I wouldn't know otherwise. We have had sporadic mysterious trouble such as billed items becoming unbilled for no good reason, and some manual adjustments need to be made. Other than that, we rely heavily on the full integration and are happy with most of the basic features. There are certain reports that Classic should provide and does not, such as YTD Client Profit and Loss statements, which can only be printed by each single month. There are profitability reports that should be based on billing periods and not work dates for criteria selections. I've requested these as Wish List items, but I think it does take a while for any of the real beneficial Wish List items to really make an appearance in upgrades. It seems that smaller issues are tackled first, and for the most part, don't really matter to many users. Maybe it is the fact that we are a smaller agency with a simple network. We have 20 staff members and our books are pretty straight-forward and uncomplicated.

Carolyn Lorence
Business Manager
Core Creative, Inc.

Keep in mind that over 2,000 shops use Clients & Profits every day. If there were a fundamental problem with the database's reliability, we simply wouldn't have lasted 17 years. The fact is a lot of people depend on C&P every day and that it does indeed work. Posting problems have very specific -- not random -- causes and are almost always a communication problem with the server. In terms of data corruption, the program itself can't cause a database to be damaged, which is a structural issue that's a function of the OS and the database engine (Omnis). We acknowledged and addressed all of the issues involving the database in the C&P Database Guide, which has been available for over 3 years. It goes into great detail about how database corruption happens, what you can do about it, and how to prevent it. As far as updates go, they rarely introduce new bugs. (Sometimes what some people think are bugs are actually fixes to other people who didn't like the way something worked, such as the job number/terms issue on the A/R Aging). If you look at the revision lists on the web site you'll see that we have a long-term history of fixing and enhancing things that other companies would simply ignore. In fact, you won't find another software developer that documents bugs, known limitations, and revisions like we do. It's simply not true that we push things under the rug. We've helped people troubleshoot problems like this hundreds of times over the years, so it's nothing new. The steps to take are well-documented and proven, but they need to be done completely or else your performance will never improve.

Mark Robillard
Developer, Clients & Profits