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Does Pegasus Opera II export to Excel?
We need to access data from within Pegasus Opera II for further analysis work and reporting. Can Pegasus Opera II produce a CSV or Tab delimited file for use within Excel? Our client seems to think that while pdf is an available format, CSV or something useable by Excel is not.Can anyone help with this without having to spend money on a custom XRL package from Pegasus?
Jon Stacey
Number of comments: 7
AccountingWEB.co.uk 5-Jul-2006
Categories: ExcelZone News, Any Answers, Management Reporting, Software
Times read: 1929
I don't doubt the improvement in functionality you report, but I would question that users should expect to pay for it. Accounting packages have ignored users reporting requirements for too long.
I have no hesitation in recommending an investment in proper reporting tools; that is part of what I do for a living. But for far too long users of accounting packages have had to live with an underspecified set of "standard" reports, and in the real new world of "off the shelf" any project to implement a new accounting application has to include a significant amount of the budget on bespoke reporting (am waiting on the edge of my seat to see if SaaS will buck this trend), working with an arcane chart of accounts that is often poorly documented.
Mark up languages have offered the earth, but failed to deliver yet.
Personally I think that the software house that hits this head on and provides proper reporting as part of the basic price will gain a competetive advantage to envy.
Alastair, last month we ran an AW seminar with Pegasus on reporting tools where I saw XRL for the first time. It is terrific and I've recently managed to get Pegasus to install a copy on my machine (FOC, but that's one of the perks of the job).
We are currently seeing a whole raft of new packages which are basically Report Writers which work from within Excel. XRL is one, others are Excelsius, Intelligent Apps, XLCubed, olap2com, Alchemex - to name just a few.
These are brilliant to use, and I think it will soon become necessary for accountants to acquire competence in them as part of their IT skill set.
Basic Excel/Access will take you so far, but these are the reporting tools of the future. Excel is cheap and cheerful, but these packages have lots of extra features and they deserve to be paid for.
but I would object at having to pay for what should be standard functionality, and as such I can understand and support the original questioner.
Alastair
OII is written in Visual Foxpro and you can do an ODBC Link to the data files, but I would use XRL to write reports from Opera II instead of ODBC as it has a nice front end which is easy to use, at the end of the day if you know what you are doing in Excel and can link to the data files using ODBC then fair enough but most users can't do this and that is why XRL is the tool to use.
As another poster has mentioned you can write reports in the Reporter and output to Excel or CSV, but I can't see the point when XRL can be purchased, it's like having a dog and barking yourself otherwise.
Regards
John
that if you have to buy an add on to get data out of your accounting application you would probably do better to put the money towards a new accounting application.
Any application worth its salt should provide as standard a set of tools to import and export data using csv as the medium. I would also expect it to provide ODBC connectivity and provide a data dictionary.
I have never worked directly with Opera, but according to their website it supports export to Excel.
Jon
As a trainer on this particular product I would recommend your customer spending the money so they can get the information they require straight from their accounting software.
Over the past twelve months we have installed XRL into some very large sites, prior to moving to Opera II and XRL they prepared their reports in Excel, this would take up to 10 days per month for two of customers concerned as they were reporting over 20 plus cost centres, since moving to OII and XRL this has now been cut down to hours instead of days.
Personally I feel this is the best product to come out of Pegasus, and I have been dealing with Pegasus since the mid eighties, don't forget all accounting applications can take information in, it's what comes out, and how it comes out, and that is what counts at the end of the day.
Don't forget with XRL you can also send budget information and update price lists back to Opera II.
Book a demo with your local dealer, you will not be disappointed
Regards
John
Hi Jon
Within Pegasus Opera II you can use the Reporter - Report Manager to create a report and select an Export Format for Excel. Export format for CSV and TXT are also available.
Although you mentioned that you do not want to 'spend money on a custom XRL package', If you (or your client) are creating a lot of different reports, I would highly recommend that you look at the Pegasus XRL software, http://www.acctsoft.co.uk/xrl.html as it is a great reporting tool that extracts data directly from Pegasus straight into Excel, it could save your client a lot of time (and money).
Bharat
