Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/acctg/payr222/re_run.stx

Text File | 1990-03-05 | 7KB | 113 lines

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 01

In this section we will be looking at how to make the last pay cycle permanent
and how backups are made. Running the pay cycle causes a switch to be set in
the configuration file which indicates there are now two copies of the employee
file, as described in the above message.  This message appears when you next
access the employee update program after running the pay cycle (example, when
you start keying in hours or making any other changes for the next pay).  If
your employees are all salaried and you have no reason to access the employee
update program between pay cycles then this message will appear in the pay
cycle program before you run the next pay cycle.  This message keeps on
appearing until such time as you clear the configuration switch by replying to
messages on the next few screens in such a way that the output from the last
pay cycle is copied over to the input directory (which makes the last pay cycle
permanent).

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 02

Some people find the above message a little confusing at first. It looks a
little more complex than it is because we tried to word in such a way that it
could not be misinterpreted, we may have gone a little too far on the side of
caution and may re-write it for a future release.

If you press Y at this point the remaining screens in this section will be
skipped and you will be looking at the employee records that were input to the
last pay cycle. You only need to press Y if you know there was an entry error
in the last pay cycle and you want to fix it then re-run it.  If you do press Y
then the message will repeat next time you access either the employee update
program or the pay cycle program.  If you are intending to re-run the pay cycle
then reply Y each time it repeats untill AFTER the pay cycle has been re-run
correctly.

Normally, everything in the last pay cycle will be fine and you can press N to
make that last pay cycle permanent, then you will not see this message again
until after then next pay cycle.

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 03

Before doing the copy we give you an extra chance to access the original input
file in case you arrived here in error by giving the wrong response to the
question on the previous screen (which has scrolled to the top of this screen).
If you arrived here intentionally then press Y at the message "Normal Reply is
Y to Copy,  else N to access the OLD file".  Before the input directory is
overwritten with the output you are asked if you "Want to create a backup on a
diskette NOW ?", normally you would reply Y.

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 04

Unless your employee file is too large to fit on a diskette then reply Y to the
message "O.K. to back up file FULL SIZE ?  (Press Y or N )".  The file names
and sizes are then displayed and you are asked which disk you want the backup
on.  In most cases the reply will be A, but if you have lots of spare space on
your hard disk you can reply C or D or whichever hard disk you want to use.
This is a backup of your employee files only, it is not a backup of your entire
hard disk.

Normally diskettes are the preferred backup medium because if something goes
wrong on the hard disk (head crash etc.) you may not be able to access any of
the files on it, and if you do not regularly backup the entire hard disk (as
most people do not) you will then lose your pay backups as well as the
originals. The diskette needs to have been already formatted, you can either
buy them pre-formatted (at extra cost) or if you prefer to buy the regular
unformatted diskettes then format them first with the DOS FORMAT command.
Because each backup is kept in a seperate directory named for the pay date you
can store more than one backup on a diskette.  You can store as many as will
fit without overwriting the previous backup.  If there is not sufficient space
on the diskette you will be told about it by the program before it starts the
backup and given an opportunity to replace it with a new diskette.

Backing up the entire hard disk regularly is not a substitute for making
individual backups of your employee files.  A backup of the entire disk can
only restore the most recent employee files (and then with some difficulty in
finding individual files on the big backup).  Using PAYROLL USA's backup of
employee files means you can quickly restore the input to a pay cycle of your
choice that might have been a week ago, 3 weeks ago, 3 months ago, etc.  How
many you keep is up to you, you probably should keep at least the whole of the
last quarter plus this quarter to date, you probably do not need to keep more
than the last 12 or 13 months.  Backups are like insurance, you probably will
not need to restore them but they are darned handy to have around if the need
arises. Old backup diskettes can be re-used, the easiest way is to just re-
FORMAT them when the files they contain are too old to be needed any longer.

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 05

Because some of our users have multiple employee files we have started writing
and checking internal disk labels.  If you have this situation you should use a
seperate series of backup diskettes for each employee file.  You can still put
more than one backup on a diskette, but every backup on that diskette should be
of the same group of employees. On the above screen we had inserted a diskette
that was labelled incorrectly.

Screenfile RE_RUN.SCN   Screen# 06

Before writing a backup on the incorrectly labelled diskette we are shown a
directory of it and given an opportunity to replace it. This directory shows
there are no files other than the label on the ANTHISTLE diskette (because the
label is more than 8 characters long it is shown here as though it were a file
called ANTHISTL.E). We decide to use the diskette so the program changes the
internal label from ANTHISTLE to SMITH (so it will not be queried again next
time it is used for SMITH) then it does the backup on it.  After the backup
(which is of the input directory) the employee files are copied from the output
directory to the input directory and will be used from this point on.

If necessary, backups made in this way can be later restored as a menu choice
from the Utilities sub menu of the main PAYUSA menu, full instructions appear
on the screen as the restore is done (we suggest you press Print Screen to
print them out the first time you do a restore).  If, instead of using this
method, you used PKZIP or similar to make a compressed backup of large employee
files, or if you used the DOS backup to make a full size backup of large files
that will not fit on one diskette, then see the documentation file BACKUP.TXT
for instructions on how to restore those backups.