Sage 50 Data Corruption

As a Sage Developer, I offer a 'no fix, no fee' data fixing service.  If the data can be fixed, I charge a lot less than Sage would and I can turn the data round far quicker than Sage.  I'd be more than happy to take a look at the data (which, of course, would be treat in the strictest confidence) if you want, email me a backup at jon dot donnelly@btinternet.com

John

Have you been doing back ups? If so print out the audit listing from your current program if you can, restore from the last backup prior to the crash, run a data check to see there are no problems then run an audit listing from the restored data and start re-entering the entries you have lost.

Most of us learn the hard way one time or another and suddenly running a backup becomes a "must do " job. I lost two chargable days when this happened to me so I now back up at the end of every posting session!

You could also try the following which, depending on the corruption, may work:

1. Take a backup

2. Run the Clear Audit Trail routine with a date of 01/01/1980

3. In File -> Maintenance, run Reindex and Compress

4. Run Check Data - if you have no errors, you'll be good to go.

5. If you still have errors, you can either restore a clean backup and reenter all data since the backup or get the data fixed.

John

I've been a Sage user for years and never suffered any data corruption - Sage 2010 did corrupt my data in recurring entries and I run data check every day.

Sage told me that a) the data on every pc suffers corruption every day and is nothing to do with Sage 50, and b) that recurring entries are not covered by the data check function in Sage. You may form your own views on these two statements.

At the time I had Sage Cover and still had to sort out my own problem with recurring entries. If you have a recent backup, you could use it, otherwise you'll be down to thoroughly checking the postings and making manual changes, as I did.

In light of this, I learned to take two backups every day and complain long and loud when necessary.

-- Lin

Whilst it is true that the Recurring Entries are not included in the Check Data routine, I think the issue here is not that the recurring entries are corrupt per se but that the system has crashed when the recurring entries are being posted which has then corrupted the Audit Trail.

If my earlier suggestion does not work then it is a case of either restore and re-enter or get the data fixed by either Sage or a third party.

John

If recurring entries are more likely to cause problems would it be better to not use them and enter them manually?

You should be able to enter any date you want into the field to clear the audit trail - using 01/01/1980 means that no transactions will be removed (as you won't have any prior to that date) but the audit trail is rebuilt which can correct the corruption you have.

I'm not aware of any issues specifically with the posting of Recurring Entries - I use them every month and I've not had any issues.

John

Recurring entries have always saved me a lot of time. I believe my problem was caused by something in Sage 2010, which has a few niggles, so I take your point and you may now well be right. But, so far, it's proved to be a one off problem, and I protect the data by taking at least two backups each day, so I'd rather stick with it - especially as the next Sage upgrade may leave recurring entries unscathed but cause problems with journal entries.

Taking this to a ridiculous conclusion, I could end up journalling everything directly into the nominal ledger and keeping sales and purchase ledgers manually!

Just one tip for anyone new to Sage - sometimes it appears to have hung hopelessly; just stick with it and go to lunch if it's really bad. More often than not it will sort itself out given enough time and you won't have to risk the possible damage to your data caused by using Task Manager to shut it down.

-- Lin

One of the first reported problems I read about with Sage 2010 was something to do with recurring entries, but Sage issued a fix when they became aware of it.

From what Sage said, I'm assuming belgarboy's copy has had that issue fixed.

-- Lin

You're very welcome Peter.

Good luck with Sage and if you need further help you know where to find me

-- Witch-Queen

Just to confirm, a problem was spotted shortly after the release of Sage 50 2010 Accounts with recurring entries in the Bank module, but this was fixed a week or so later.

It would be interesting to know if belgarboy's troubles occurred when entering direct debits in this module, or as general transactions.

jstokdyk the recurring enteries bug was not the problem as this is a new install, not an upgrade, and it is the up to date version.

Yes it was a direct debit entry but the problem was caused by data coruption in the nominals not the transactions. How this happened I've no idea.

Luckily there were only a few enteries in the audit trail which can easily be re-input, so a Rebuild/Reindex/Compress fixed the problem and the Suppliers details, which needed to be kept, were re-imported via CSV.

-- Witch-Queen

“so I'd rather stick with it - especially as the next Sage upgrade may leave recurring entries unscathed but cause problems with journal entries.”

Then would be a good time to start doing recurring entries again! If journal entries become a problem I think Sage would send out an update pretty fast.

“Taking this to a ridiculous conclusion, I could end up journalling everything directly into the nominal ledger and keeping sales and purchase ledgers manually!”

That’s right. They key is to take it only so far and not until it’s ridiculous.

Rather than taking two backups (there’s nothing wrong with two or more!) a day why don’t you take a backup immediately prior to doing recurring journals and then ensure everything is ok before continuing?

Glad you got it sorted although I would have expected Sage to have told you about the rebuild/reimport option when you spoke to them - I assumed that they must have done hence my original offer of the data fixing service.

John

I know this is an old post, but for anyone who is interested in avoiding this situation themselves should try the Accounting Shield software, which automates the backups of your Sage data. Don't want to hijack this thread and will leave the URL if anyone is interested in more information: http://accountingshield.com