Peachtree Year End Close / Corrupt Data

[zandstra]

I consider myself pretty adept at peachtree, this past year end I have had numerous calls that peachtree has corrupted data when performing the year end close. I use version 7 and I have had no problems rolling data forward. Clients who were using newer versions than 7 were reporting that the data would get to 70 - 80% done, then it would freeze up the computer. When they would reboot, the data would be corrupted and they would have to restore from a backup. Some of my clients are currently working with a somewhat broken data file, and have to periodically "rebuild" or repair the company data. Other than that there did not seem to be any common element that would cause this, some were single users, some were 4 - 5 users, some networks and some standalone. Has anyone else had similar problems? What did you do to fix the problem? Tech support from peachtree was no help at all.

Any help would be great!
Thanks
dzandstra@crowechizek.com

[Tmason1206]

That's a bit scary! I've used PT for years and have been very happy with it. I haven't had a problem like this, however just upgraded my clients software. I'd like to know if this is a problem for anyone else! I too find PT support very little help. I wonder if there is anything we can do about THAT???

[Robert Walraven]

Corruptions can occur in the Peachtree data files. This is not anything that Peachtree itself is doing, but is a sign of hardware or system problems. See the article

http://www.goldstarsoftware.com/papers/filemaint.htm

for more information.

Think of driving your car down a road where you occasionally run over a nail. Things like faulty networks, use of home versions of Windows (which allows applications to step on each other), bad fragmentation of your disks, etc., all drop more nails on the road. You may have driven for a long time without a problem but, because of more nails appearing on the road, you start to get punctures. You may get a really bad blowout (your database cannot be opened by Peachtree) or a small leak (a few records in one of the files corrupted.) If you have a small leak you may not even be aware of the problem during normal day-to-day operations. But if you decide to drive across country (upgrading Peachtree, closing the year, purging) your tire is going to go flat.
The problem really has nothing to do with your car or its tires, it has to do with driving down roads with nails - that is something you should try to avoid if possible.

Frequent backups can give you some protection from major problems, but won't help you if just a few records get corrupted in one of the files and this goes undetected (because you don't reference those records in your normal operations) until you try to upgrade, close the year, or purge.

In many cases the problems can be corrected, but it is probably best to intrust this to an expert who is experienced in recovering Peachtree data. You may want to check out the "Data Damaged?" link at the top of this page - an expert will look at your data and if it can't be repaired you are not charged anything.

Bob Walraven
Architect of PawCom

[Diane Koers]

Robert! What a great analogy. OK to use it with my clients?

[zandstra]

Thanks for your response, this really helps. Is there a way to find out before performing a year end close that your data has "holes" in it? Peachtree users have to drive cross country every year.

And can you give me an idea of what this data repair service actually does?

The reason I ask is because 2 of my clients send their data to peachtree, per tech support, and when it was returned to them, it was just as broken as when they sent it.

Thanks,
Doug Zandstra CPA
dzandstra@crowechizek.com

[Shannon Tucker]

Our data repair service is not the same as sending it to Peachtree.

We have proprietary software tools that allow us to analyze the data and make changes to it. Our high success rate allows us to guarantee that we can fix the data problem, or else there is no charge to the client.

We test the data thoroughly before sending it back so that downtime and followup issues are minimized.

More info. about data repair services here (http://peachtreeusers.com/datarepair.htm)

[Robert Walraven]

Originally posted by Diane Koers
Robert! What a great analogy. OK to use it with my clients?
Sure. Be my guest.