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AccountMate in the Cloud

by | May 1, 2020 | V2 Cloud

Dear AccountMate Clients,

Moving applications to The Cloud has been “a thing” for several years—and we have numerous AccountMate clients who have been utilizing this approach for security reasons, or to reduce inhouse IT support effort, or because they’re a distributed organization and need to be able to work-from-anywhere.

But, in the last few weeks with many organizations being FORCED to work-from-home we’ve been deluged with calls on how to move AccountMate and the rest of their office applications to a shared online location.

Caveat: We’re “the accounting software support gang” and not your general IT support. Naturally, they should be in this conversation too, so please invite them!

We’ve worked with several hosting companies over the last decade—including Rackspace, Amazon Web Services, Apogee and Microsoft Azure—and, so far, we’ve been agnostic regarding recommending a hosting service.  But with so many clients clamoring for high-performance hosting compatible with AccountMate at a reasonable cost and the recent deployments we’ve made with V2 Cloud, I’m compelled to make them a firm recommendation.

Of course, V2 Cloud has all the great things application hosting service providers bring to the table—access-from-anywhere, two-step user login authentication, improved application performance, automatic nightly backup for protection from ransomware and natural disaster, reduced capital expenditure, end-user device independence (PC, Mac, tablet, etc.), built-in regulatory compliance for HIPAA, PCI & AICPA, etc.—and they do it in numerous scalable configurations with fantastic transparent pricing.

How “fantastic?” Here’s some pricing examples:

  • SMALL BUSINESS CONFIGURATION for 8 concurrent users on a Windows Server with 4 virtual CPUs, 16 GB RAM and 100 GB storage—priced at $301.25/month
  • MID-SIZE CONFIGURATION for 15 concurrent users on a Windows Server with 8 virtual CPUs, 32 GB RAM and 200 GB storage—priced at $603.75/month
  • Add Microsoft Office Professional Plus (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access & Publisher) for only $15/user per month

Above pricing is valid as of May 1, 2020 and is pay-as-you-go monthly subscription with no server setup fees or minimum order amount. Also, unusual in this market space, no upcharges for bandwidth usage so this is a true fixed cost that won’t vary.

We’re all about flexibility so, unlike other accounting systems, AccountMate runs just as great on premises as in the cloud—and no pressure from us on either option, but wanted to suggest V2 Cloud as the best priced and best performing option we’ve had the pleasure of implementing.

More info here, and we look forward to discussing this approach to improving your business!

Regards,

Kevin E. Stroud
NexLAN, LLC
https://nexlan.com

No Suitable Players Found…

One of the many great benefits of the AccountMate Lifecycle Support Agreement is access to online training videos via <Help><eLearning> in the application. That menu option brings up your web browser, where it’s possible you’ll get an error when attempting to play the videos of “No suitable players found.”

Here’s how to resolve the issue for the two most popular web browsers!

Google Chrome

  1. Click the “View Site Information” icon
  2. In the “Flash” section, select “Always allow on this site”
  3. Click the “Reload” button to apply the new setting and the video will play!

Microsoft Edge

  1. Click the “Show Site Information” button
  2. Click the “Allow Adobe Flash” option

  3. Click the “Refresh” button to refresh the page and the video will play!

AccountMate HQ Training Classes

Due to recent events, the next 3-day Core Product Training class for AccountMate SQL and Express will still be Wednesday-Friday, June 10-12, 2020 but will be presented online only. See the course description here and tuition is $2,000 per attendee, but you receive one seat per year with your Lifecycle subscription so contact us to register.

Also, the 2-day Payroll Training class was so well received last fall that another is scheduled for Wednesday-Thursday, September 16-17, 2020 and is, so far, planned to be at AccountMate’s offices. If you’re considering bringing payroll in-house this is perfect timing for implementation for 2021. And even if you’re already running payroll in-house there’s numerous features, tips and tricks that you’ll pick up in this deep dive into a complex and powerful module. Again, just contact us to register!

Finally, if you have specific training needs—maybe a specific topic or module—then we’re happy to point you to pertinent info or do a short online training session. Remember, training is your best investment!

Tech Note: How AP Open Debit Transactions Affect the AP Past Due Aging Report and GL Account Balances

When validating the balance sheet for the Accounts Payable module, you also must consider vendor open debit transactions from either prepayments or purchase returns.  Our Article #1190: Understanding How Open Debit Transactions Affect the Past-Due Aging Report and GL Account ID Balances discusses how AP open debits are reflected in the Past-Due Aging Report and identifies the journal entries that are generated from transactions.

Tech Note: Tips for Optimizing AccountMate Performance

Several factors may affect AccountMate performance – including data storage devices, processor performance, installation settings, and data size.
Our Article #1205: Tips for Optimizing AccountMate Performance presents tips to help improve AccountMate performance and ensure that AccountMate is optimized to function at its full potential.
See our Workstation Tuning Tips for AccountMate page for additional tips.

Technical Tips

 

Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN with PR
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN with PR
AM8 for LAN with PR

Module: SM

TIP: SQL Server Express, by default, sets the Database Property to AUTO CLOSE. According to Microsoft Docs, when AUTO CLOSE is ON, the database is shut down cleanly and its resources are freed after the last user exits. This poses an issue the next time the database is accessed because it will run a recovery operation to verify that the database is healthy. You can verify this by reviewing your SQL Server logs; you will see “starting up database” entries. This can cause performance degradation on frequently accessed databases because of the increased overhead of opening and closing the database after each connection.
We recommend turning AUTO CLOSE OFF for frequently accessed databases. This is also the same recommendation provided by Microsoft under their Best Practices Recommendations as detailed here.

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Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM8 for LAN
Module: PR
TIP: Form 7200 (Advance Payment of Employer Credits Due to COVID-19) is now available in Tax Forms. Use this form to request an advance payment of the tax credits for qualified sick and qualified family leave wages and the employee retention credit that you will claim on Form 941 (Employer’s Quarterly Tax Return), Form 943 (Employer’s Annual Federal Tax Return for Agricultural Employees), and Form 944 (Employer’s Annual Federal Tax Return). Refer to this link for instructions, https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i7200.pdf.

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Versions: AM11 for SQL and Express
AM10 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM9 for SQL, Express, and LAN
AM8 for LAN
Module: SM
TIP: If you are getting “Error (1234): Subscript is outside defined range.” after login, then verify whether the Microsoft Office version that is installed on the workstation is compatible with the AccountMate version that you are running at Software Requirements for AccountMate. If the Microsoft Office version installed on the workstation is compatible with the AccountMate version, then verify that registry entries are not corrupted for each Microsoft Office application (e.g., Word, Excel, Outlook). Please contact us to verify valid registry entries.

Subscription Information

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