Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/acctg/payus311/backup.txt

Text File | 1991-04-03 | 10KB | 260 lines

                ANTHISTLE SYSTEMS & PROGRAMMING LTD.
                         563 Patricia Drive,
                         Oakville, Ontario,
                           CANADA L6K 1M4

Telephone [phone] (Area Code will change to 905 Oct.4th. 1993)


                                                   3rd. April 1991


                MAKING BACKUPS OF YOUR EMPLOYEE DATA
                ====================================

We STRONGLY recommend that you keep backup copies of your employee
data as it was going into each pay cycle. We suggest you keep as
many pay cycles as you have room for, up to say a years worth, but
at least keep the last two. The backups should ideally be made on
real diskettes in case of a head crash or other catastrophic damage
to the hard disk.


PAYROLL USA WILL MANAGE THE BACKUP FOR YOU.
-------------------------------------------

After running a pay cycle access Choice "F1 ADD OR UPDATE EMPLOYEE
INFO. / ENTER HOURS" from the MAIN PAY MENU.  You will see our
message about the run control flag and if you give the normal reply
of "N" and confirm it is O.K. to copy the output files you will then
be offered a chance to make a backup of the input to the last pay
cycle before the output is copied forward. If all your employees are
salaried and you have no hours to enter or other changes to make
that would cause you to use the F1 Choice then the same prompt will
appear next time you access Choice "F2 RUN A PAY CYCLE (CREATES
REPORT FILES, ETC.)"

The automatic backup creates a directory on the backup drive which
is named for the pay date the files were input to. This also allows
you to backup several pay cycles on the same disk, space permitting,
(because each is in its own directory).

Example:

 Volume in drive A is ANTHISTLE
 Directory of  A:\

910315IN     <DIR>      3-15-91   2:33p
910329IN     <DIR>      3-29-91   2:37p
        2 File(s)    221856 bytes free

The files in the above directory were INput to the pay cycle dated
910329 (1991, March, 29th.) . This directory will contain a copy of
everything that was on the PAYROLL USA input directory (normally
\PAYIN ) plus the PAYUSA.CNF file from the program directory
(normally \PAYPGMS). Example A:\910329IN might contain:

 Volume in drive A is ANTHISTLE
 Directory of  A:\910329IN

.            <DIR>      3-29-91   2:37p
..           <DIR>      3-29-91   2:37p
PAYUS941 DTA     3456   3-15-91   2:52p
PAYUSA   DTA    44800   3-30-91   4:59p
PAYUSA   INX     1280   3-31-91   5:11p
PAYUSA   CNF     8192   3-31-91   5:12p
        6 File(s)    221856 bytes free

The purpose of backing up the input directory rather than the output
directory is that the output directory can easily be re-created by
restoring the input directory and re-running the backed up pay
cycle. (You might of course want to use the F1 choice to make
changes to the Employees before the pay cycle if it were not just a
straight re-run). This also assumes you are using the same version
of the program (i.e. Federal Taxes have not changed since the
backup).


RESTORING THE PAYROLL USA BACKUP (IF NECESSARY)
-----------------------------------------------

Backups are like an insurance policy. You hope you will never need
them. But, once in a while you might and then you will be glad you
took the trouble to create them. If it is necessary to restore a
backup follow these steps:

1. From the MAIN PAY MENU select Choice "F5 CONFIGURATION & OTHER
   UTILITIES"

2. Another menu will appear, from that menu select Choice
   "F5 = RESTORE EMPLOYEE BACKUPS MADE BY PAYROLL USA".  Further
   information will then appear on your screen before the restore -
   press the Print Screen Key the first time you do it so you have
   some notes to follow after the restore.


LARGE EMPLOYEE FILES
--------------------

The PAYROLL USA backup is a FULL SIZE backup to ONLY ONE DISKETTE.
It has no provision for splitting files between several diskettes.
If the employee files will not fit on a single diskette you have two
choices:

1. Use the DOS BACKUP.COM program (and DOS RESTORE.COM if you need
   to put them back).

If you are doing this you have to do it from the DOS prompt. You
will not need to use our backup procedure (reply N when prompted for
it) but do your own backup of \PAYIN immediately after each pay
cycle. Full instructions for the use of these programs will be found
in your DOS Manual. They do a full size backup, but will spread it
over several diskettes if the files are too big to go on one
diskette. Assuming BACKUP.COM (and RESTORE.COM) is on drive C:
directory \DOS and your backup disk is in drive A: the command is

C:\DOS\BACKUP C:\PAYIN\*.* A:

Anything already on the diskette in Drive A: will be erased.

To restore a DOS backup put your backup disk in Drive A .

C:\DOS\RESTORE A: C:\PAYIN\*.*

Note that if more than one diskette is involved they are a matched
set. They must be restored in the same sequence as they were backed
up - label them with pay date and sequence numbers as they are
created by BACKUP.COM Keep the disk sets for several pay periods and
rotate them so the oldest set is re-used each pay. The filenames
themselves will not contain the pay date, but the file creation
dates will give you a clue which is which if the external labels are
lost.

- OR -

2. Compress the Files using PKARC or PKZIP.

(i) PKARC / PKXARC
------------------
This is a ShareWare data compression programs which will squeeze
your files to about 15 or 20% of their original size. Ideal for
making your own backups of LARGE employee files (which might not
otherwise fit on a diskette). If you are doing this you have to do
it from the DOS Prompt. You will not need to use our backup
procedure (reply N when prompted for it) but do your own backup of
\PAYIN immediately after each pay cycle (before you get to our
prompt).

Assuming this program is on drive C: directory \UTILITY and your
backup disk is in drive A: and the pay cycle for 29th. March 1991
has just been done then

A:
CD \
C:\UTILITY\PKARC A 910329IN.ARC C:\PAYIN\*.*

will create the backup file. No matter how many files were on \PAYIN
only one file will appear on A: but it will contain all of \PAYIN.
Squeezed files have to be restored to full size and the component
files seperated, before they can be used. PKARC has a companion
program PKXARC.EXE for this purpose. To restore a squeezed backup
put your backup disk in Drive A .


A:
CD \
DIR

will give you a list of available file names ( pay dates ) to pick
from. Assuming 910329IN.ARC is required then

C:
CD \PAYIN
\UTILITY\PKXARC A:\910329IN.ARC

then you can start up PAYROLL USA with

CD \PAYPGMS
PAYUSA



(ii) PKZIP / PKUNZIP
--------------------

PKARC and PKXARC were authored by PKWARE, Inc. and may still be
available on the ShareWare market but due to a mid 1988 lawsuit from
System Enhancement Associates the authors of ARC claiming these
programs infringe on their proprietory use of the ARC name and
compression methods they were replaced Feb. 1989 by PKWARE, Inc.
with a new set of programs PKZIP and PKUNZIP using a different
compression routine and different file extension name (.ZIP instead
of .ARC). Note that because of the terms of the settlement of the
lawsuit .ZIP files could not be made compatible with .ARC files,
therefore PKUNZIP cannot be used to decompress a .ARC file. Whatever
program you use to compress the files with, you must later use the
appropriate (matching) decompression program to decompress them
again.  In our experience PKZIP takes a little longer to do the
compression but produces a smaller output file than PKARC.

Equivalent instructions for using PKZIP and PKUNZIP are:

A:
CD \
C:\UTILITY\PKZIP -a 910329IN.ZIP C:\PAYIN\*.*

will create the backup file. No matter how many files were on \PAYIN
only one file will appear on A: but it will contain all of \PAYIN.
Squeezed files have to be restored to full