I've got a bookkeeper that looks after all my accounts - I send him my invoices and receipts and he puts it all into Sage Instant Accounts for me as accounting makes my head hurt.

For those not familiar with them, Sage is the Microsoft of the UK accounting industry. They operate internationally, but they have the UK SMB accounting market almost to themselves. Instant accounts is their entry-level package. Like all accounting software, it is a mishmash of old Windows 3 code that never got updated, poor interface design and bizarre approaches to otherwise simple tasks. It's designed to lock you in and keep you buying their annual support and expensive pre-printed stationery. It's everything that's bad about business software in one easy to swallow pill.</rant>

A couple of weeks ago, he had to reinstall his PC for some reason and made a backup of his Sage data. Sage only provides one method for backing up or transferring data to another computer - a proprietary archive file that contains hundreds of files from the Program Files directory, most of which aren't even necessary (it backs up the .bmp file for the splash screen, for example).

When the time came to restore the data back into a freshly installed copy of Sage, it appeared to read the file fine, listing all the files it has restored, but once complete, all the ledgers, reports, etc were empty, as if nothing had been restored.

He even tried a known-good backup file (it was sent to my accountant to do the end of year report last year, so is known to be a good file) and that failed with the same problem.

I also tried restoring both files multiple times, to no avail. We even sent the file to the accountant to see if he had any luck, again no joy and just like us, he couldn't restore the same file that he'd used just a few months before.

So we're stumped. Known-good backup files aren't restoring for any of us. Something is up, but we don't know what. I've searched around the net, but all references to restoring Sage data never mention what to do if it fails. Sage's website doesn't mention anything like this and they won't talk to me unless I pay them £80-odd for 'SageCover'. This also includes a data recovery service, but the last thing I want to do is give them more money with no guarantee of them being able to do anything.

I've been unable to find an accounting forum where there is any mention of Sage to ask questions - does anyone have anywhere to suggest?

Anyone here familiar with Sage able to provide any help or suggestions?

Sorry can't help but know exactly how you feel. we use Pegasus at work which is based on Foxpro 2.6 I can't believe they get away with charging so much money for stuff that is total crap.

There might be somebody here that can help:

http://www.aardvarkbusiness.net/

They have a forum with a lot of small UK business people

This may seem obvious, but have you tried reinstalling the software?

I don't know why this is, and it hurts my head to even think such a thing is possible, but I've found that Microsoft stuff installs with different errors on multiple install trys on the same machine. I used to have to install NT4 on a compaq work station 3 to 5 times to get a stable (hah!) install. An install of NT4 was usually good for about a year... Euuu... I finally convinced the company to upgrade all the machines to Windows98, prior to winders 2000 coming out.

I've also seen older CDs that have oxidized and bits of the code become unusable, you may want to try installing from another CD.

Have any path's or drive letters changed?

Typical. After posting here, I've found the problem. It was restoring the files to the wrong place.

All the data was being put in a directory called 'archives' rather than 'accdata'. Copied the files across and it works fine.

I'm guessing it was something to do with the age of the data - the backup file that had worked before wasn't working now either, so maybe Sage decided it would archive it or something.

I'm so glad I don't have to use this software every day.

Mmm. Accounting software. My company has a 17 license seat of Great Plains Dynamics, a Microsoft mid-size client/server accounting package. Just today I had a new install with the message 'A get/change operation on the table 'pref_mrp_sys' failed access SQL data'. The answer was (clearly ) to install Microsoft's MDAC 2.8!

So, I can completely sympathize with the horrors of accounting software management. And what was said about interfaces, I'll second that whole-heartedly.

-Zeke

Good to hear that it's working again.

One thing I highly recommend to small businesses (including my own), is that the accounting s/w be installed inside a working VMWare windows installation. That way, it becomes portable across hardware, O/S, and platform upgrades.

We just dump the entire VMWare virtual disk to DVD-R once in a while for a complete backup of data + toolset.

Cheers

Hmm... That's actually a really good idea. Surprised that it's not widely done.

Sorry, but what is VMWare?

Thanks, I'll look at it later

Okay, bonzi: is that avatar really you, or a miniature Peter Jackson?

Just curious!

The company I work for used to sell Pegasus Opera. Yes, accounting software is usually very old and there is a LOT of messing around when things go wrong, usually manual modification of the underlying databases.

That said, for SME's the time saving aspects can be massive - I know of one company who used to manually calculate all the payroll stuff and it took one person all day every week. After that it took about 1/2hr.

Gareth

And for those of you with a Microsoft leaning they also have their own Virtual PC, which they bought from Connectix. If I had to go out and buy some virtual machine software for Windows I would probably end up buying VMWare, but I've got MSDN Universal, which includes Virtual PC.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/default.mspx

One is a Hobbit, and the other just behaves like one.

Both are filthy rich (now).