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Product update 4.40.0.2 coming soon

Sage released a notice today to business partners that the new product update will be coming soon. This will be the second release to the 4.4 version of Sage MAS 90 and 200. The first pre-release notification for 4.40.0.1 noted new features such as Record Wire Transfers in Account Payable and Search by Lot or Serial Number in Inventory. In this pre-release notification for 4.4.0.2 Sage noted new features like a Recalculate Outstanding Entries Totals Utility for Bank Reconciliation and Positive Pay Export Wizard. New features that Sage has added to the product along with existing Extended Solutions that have been encorparated into the product continue to make Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 a very strong product that continues to grow. We can all help Sage in their process of making Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 a strong product by suggesting product enhancements. Here is what was in the announcement from Sage:

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Is Your Software Worth What You Paid For It?

Accounting principles teach us to value business assets at acquisition cost. Dutifully, you’ve booked your Sage MAS 90 or Sage MAS 200 ERP software at its purchase price. But is this truly what it is worth to your business? Accounting software is just a tool, like a lathe or a milling machine. What that investment actually contributes to the welfare of your business depends heavily on the skill of the operator running it.

User Training – Getting What You Paid For

Much of the value paid for in the purchase price of software is lost when its users have inadequate training to operate it. If your users got half the training they needed, how can you expect all of what the software is capable of doing? For most businesses, good employees are the most important aspect of a successful and thriving operation. But what makes an employee good? Can you make them better by paying them more money? Not really. We do know there is a relationship between compensation and ability. In most cases, more knowledgeable employees cost more money. But paying an employee more money doesn’t make them more knowledgeable. Rather, it is money invested in training that makes an employee more knowledgeable, and therefore, more valuable to your business.

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Service Update 18 reposted

Sage announced on Tuesday that Service Update 18 has been reposted on the website. The following is Sage's announcement:

Sage MAS 90 and 200 Service Update 18 (SU18) reposted

As of today, Tuesday, May 4th, the Sage MAS 90 and 200 Service Update 18 (SU18) is reposted on Sage Software Online.The revised SU18 installation files contain the following additions to address existing company data file corruption causing the update to abort:

  • The user is prompted to confirm they have a backup prior to applying the update.
  • Data dictionaries are copied to the Uninstall Information directory in the event the update fails.
  • An error message alerting the user that the upgrade aborted and identification of the file names that the conversion process has detected will cause issues unless repaired. However, this may not be a comprehensive list of corrupted files.

The 4.3 Service Update was pulled in a preventative measure last week. We found that databases with existing company data file corruption could cause the process of conversion that occurs during the installation of SU18 to fail without notice.

If this occurs, a full system and data restoration from backup is required to recover. Once the system is restored and the affected files are corrected, the installation and conversion can then proceed unhindered.

Please note: Restoring from a backup and correcting the corrupted files is required if you apply SU18 and it fails. If a viable backup is not available, Sage Customer Support intervention is most likely required to help you restore the system using the dictionary files that will now be copied as part of the installation process.

Also, please note that 4.4 PU1 was recalled and then reposted immediately last week, as a preventive measure, with no changes to the PU1 file.

 

Troubleshooting PHP ODBC Connections to MAS 90

We are seeing more customers wanting to connect to their MAS 90 data and in doing so they are creating .net application or PHP applications that read ODBC. We already addressed how to do this in a previous article with .net. This article will assist in a few common issues when trying to connect PHP to MAS 90. We will not cover the PHP code to create the DSN or connect to ODBC. Instead we will address an issue when you try to connect that says "Table is not accessible, SQL state S0000 in SQLExecDirect".

When an error shows "Table is not accessible" the first thing that should come to mind is path and permissions. Here are the things you should first look at to see if your connection to MAS 90 should work. This is for version 4.x or greater.

Path

  1. It is best to use your own system ODBC DSN. If you use the SOTAMAS90 DSN, the settings can be changed when a user on the machine logs into MAS 90. To make sure that the DSN path doesn't change, a system DSN should be created (you may also create the DSN string in your PHP, either way works).
  2. Make sure that the path in the DSN is correct.

If you are using a Mapped drive in the path for DDF it will give you the error noted in this article.

Permissions

  1. When running apache as a service it usually installs with the log on as set to local system account. If you are still having issues accessing the ODBC for MAS 90 it could be that the user running the PHP query does not have the correct permissions. In this case, change the log on as to an account that has permissions to read execute and write to the MAS 90 directory.

These are the most common reasons for your connection not to work from PHP to MAS 90. One thing to remember about the ODBC driver for MAS 90 is that it is read only. We have tested in the past using the read write ODBC driver with ProvideX and it had serious data corruption and issues that made it unreliable. Therefore we do not recommend using this driver to write back. If you need to write back to MAS 90 some options are:

  1. Use VI to import a CSV file exported from your system on a schedule basis
  2. Use Web Services 4.4 or greater. Web services are not for all modules or functions.
  3. Use Business Objects in MAS 90 to write back (you can also use this to read data). You are limited to the objects function.
  4. Have a Master Developer create an interface.

 MBA Business Software is here to help if you need a Master Developer create an interface to your system or website. We have worked with different application and web site developers to create links to MAS 90 data. Call us today to find out what we can do for you.

 

Windows 7 Support for Sage MAS 90 and 200

Sage Software is now supporting Windows 7, Windows 7 - 64 bit, and Windows 2008 Server 64-bit Terminal Server as workstations for Sage MAS 90 and 200 version 4.3 and 4.4. This was implemented with the following program fixes:

Note: After installing the program fix, run Workstation Setup at the server and at all workstations, including workstations with operating systems other than 64-bit. For detailed instructions, please review the program fix documentation.

 
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