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I hate to hog this form but after using nv2 for about a month now I am anoyed by the indexing or disk access that delays typing input. It seems that if you hesatate for just a second or two NV2 goes into its data disk acessing mode and you have to wait to continue working. How about giving us about 10 seconds before this happens. It would improve the user functionality. Thanks
Glad to see someone using nv2 commenting on its operation.
Martin must be too busy answering questions over the phone.
Post Edited (06-28-05 23:19)
This is not in direct response to your request but I am wondering, having used NV2 for a month, if you feel the productivity level is where it should be. From what we have seen in our somewhat limited testing of NV2, the report printing feature is woefully inadequate for what we have in NV1 & I am not sure that we can get anywhere near the time efficiency of NV1. We do a lot of bookkeeping for small business clients & we have no room to increase chargable time on any files. Can NV2 perform to our expectations or do we have to bail on the licenses for a year until product is refined? Any comments for similar users?
DennisHaving used NV1 since 1986, it was second nature for me to use the slash keyboard shortcuts and my custom templates for various chores. But NV1 was not very user friendly and if you needed custom npl programming it could drive you crazy. The lack of modern printer support also was a pain. Running a DOS program under windows xp is not the best thing either. I patiently awaited NV2. Finally it’s here and the first problem I have is with conversion. I kept getting an error because of a line in one of my payroll report files. I have a city tax = to none for a employee under 18 years old. I sent the conversion log file to Martin and he sent back a way to fix it. I converted again. This time It worked but I couldn’t pay bills. Back to the documentation. Oh, I forgot to run “ATYPE” on my files. So I convert again. Now everything is running.
NV2 has a lot of nice features. I can use all of my 19” monitor to see a lot more information at one time than in NV1. Some things work the same as NV1. I like the sort feature on the column heads, (except you can’t sort on all columns as you can in excel). I’ve played around with the custom analysis and it works well but it’s not intuitive. I keep wanting to go to the column header to make changes. The excel templates are very useful and easy to change to your needs. I have already made my own custom statement and check templates. The function key f3 is useful but it only works on certain columns. I would like to add my own edit assists to it when it’s on “Reference” or “Description”.
Overall I would say it’s too early yet to make any sort of judgment. There is always a learning curve with new software. The time savers like block copy and past with the save and pick have to be redone, and I am still trying to stop my finger from going to the “slash” key. I wish more people would post their experiences here so we could help each other. I will continue to post my impressions and wish list in the hope of improving user functionality and ease of use.
Have you not found that the export to Excel for printing is very limited in that Excel does not recognize the numbers as such but as characters so you can’t really work “downstream” mathematically? One of our problems is trying to duplicate some complex print templates that we have setup in NV1 for different clients, with % analysis in statements.
Do you do any bookkeeping for clients that you bill based on time? I am trying to determine if Nv2=NV1 for overall functionality & efficiency. If not, then we can’t use it commercially in our practice.
Wish I could help more but I am still learning the in’s and out’s of NV2. It looks like the export funtion isn’t ready yet. In NV1 you could print to a “dif” file and then open it with excel.
I’m just an individual user with a lot of software experince. I’ve been a beta tester for a lot of differnt software (but not NV2) and always provide my feedback in the hopes that the developer will improve it. I would suggest you continue in trial mode until you have all your questions answered and feel comfortable with the functionality. NV2 is a little quirky in that it doen’t strickly follow the windows shema. The right mouse click doesn’t work as you would expect in a windows program. It brings up a large menu which is not totaly useful. (choose “export” and “casework” and it will bring up an “under construction message”.) In my opinion the right mouse click should only bring up the relavent choices depending on where you are. They seem to have used the bed sheet approach. The “Search Help” function is very limited. It’s not easy to find out how to do things. ( I opened a details window and couldn’t find out how to close it. No “-” block to minimize the window. I finally found by trial and error that I had to max the window above.) I would say that in these areas this is still like a beta release and not ready for prime time.
They promissed that you could customize with an open source programing language Tcl. Well here’s another learning curve. We need a guide to doing this, as there was for using NPL with NV1. It would be nice to see some examples of code to do different things and how to intigrate this with NV2. Again I would say that the documentation is certainly beta.
Frank Mucklo
mucklo@adelphia.netIn response to FMuklo’s posting of June 28, 2005.
We need a more precise description of what you are doing when you experience these delays.
NV2 auto commits every “row” (if necessary) when the cursor moves to a new row or another document – exactly as in NV1. If the typing input you refer to is causing the row to change (e.g. arrow up or down) then the old row is committed. This can take some time (more on performance below). If the keystrokes you are typing are in a description column and you experience an annoying delay, we would like to investigate this further with you.
NV2 performance will receive constant attention, and will only improve. NV1 is “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy”, or so our programmers like to joke. NV1 is written in assembler, it has a file system with fixed length records (e.g. 10 character account name limit), no detail on total accounts (just monthy and yearly summaries), single user access, a handful of hardwired windows, and so on.
NV2 is written in C++ and Tcl. Tcl provides a great interface for modifying and extending NV2 but it is interpreted. As time goes by we convert hardened Tcl code to C++. The NV2 file system has variable length records (e.g. no limit to the length of any value). NV2 maintains full posting history for all total accounts (e.g. weekly or daily reporting, monthly reporting prior to the last fiscal year, etc.). Most important of all, it is multiuser and significant new performance issues arise.
Every new release of NV2 will be, in some way, faster than the prior release.
In response to FMucklo’s posting of June 29, 2005.
While it is true you cannot sort all columns (like you can in Excel) NV2 does provide sorting on columns that we thought were the most useful. Excel is a spreadsheet not an accounting program and vice versa for NV2. Creating indexes for each column would make an NV2 set of books grow enormously larger than they currently are.
In regards to adding edit assists (F3) to description and reference columns, what would you expect to see if an edit assist was available?
In NV2 you can export am NV2 document to Excel by selecting print all (or block) as well as print checks (also Pay Account in NewViews Accounts Accounts Payable). When the printing window appears, select your destination (file, printer, display) and click Print or continue to have your output appear in the destination of your choosing.
The menu that is displayed when your right mouse click does display all of the relevant options of where you are in the books. If the menu is too large for your liking you can hold your control key down and scroll with your mouse wheel to make the menu smaller or larger. The same is true for your NV2 documents. The NewViews menu (right mouse click) choices show the same choices as the Microsoft menu choices at the top of your books.
Each window in your NV2 books has a button on the right hand side of the window title which you can click to restore or maximize. If the window is maximized, the button appears as two small squares (exactly the same behaviour as a Microsoft Window). If minimied, the button appears as a single large square (same as a Microsoft Window).
In regards to the NV2 documentation which is constantly being updated and improved. Send me an email at schapple@qwpage.com in regards to improvements you think are appropriate.
In response to DGlezos posting of June 29, 2005.
The custom analysis view of all NV2 documents will updated in version 2.03 with most of the features of the NV1 analysis view and will be complete in version 2.04.
In NV1, the procedures EXP123 and REPORT (to name two) exported the analysis view data to a spreadsheet program like Excel using characters. NV2 does the same. NV1 exported to a file which then had to be imported into the spreadsheet program and then formatted. NV2 displays the information in Excel without the importing/formatting steps.
If anyone has any suggestions on how the manual can be improved, please submit your suggestions to schapple@qwpage.com with the subject NV2 Manual Suggestion.
Regards to All,
Martin
Post Edited (07-07-05 17:49)
A “more precise description of the time delays”. Well, doing data entry, in an hour’s worth of input, 43 minutes of that were spent waiting for the data disk writing operations to finish so that I could enter another piece of data. (Just because I am perverse, I actually put a stopwatch on it.) The “type-ahead” function only works if I am in the same window so, in most cases, I can’t simply type ahead and hope that NV2 finishes whatever it is doing with the disk writes.
If I type a new data entry immediately, the input responsiveness stays active but if I pause, I watch my shoes depreciate before it will let me enter the next item.
>Re: Adjust time delay
>Posted by: DGlezos (110.218.228.216.cpe.axion.ca)
>Date: June 29, 2005 02:32PM
>
>Have you not found that the export to Excel for printing is very limited in that >Excel does not recognize the numbers as such but as characters so you can’t really >work “downstream” mathematically?Can you explain that problem a bit more? In every test I’ve concocted, numbers arrive in Excel as numbers, not text. So I’m curious about where this is happening to you.
Bob Halpin
In our testing, the Excel spreadsheet values generated from NV2 cannot be formatted (rounded or decimal setting) or mathematically manipulated – summed, put into formulae. All of the generally simple keystokes that we apply when building speadsheets or analysis leadsheets in other areas of our accounting practice in Excel do not seem to apply to these print templates.
Excel speadsheet values generated from NV2 are numbers. If you Print All/Block, you can autosum, round, etc.
How are you exporting to Excel?
I am exporting the way I am supposed to – print/all or block & then print
It seems to be working intermittantly. I printed a report where in fact I could autosum and format (round) the values.
I printed a GL acc. where I could format the entry value but not the accumulating balance line.
I printed another report where I couldn’t format the values. If I overtyped a number, the new value would then appear formatted (i.e. rounded)
This is still a major pain in the neck. I haven’t seen a response to this problem from QW Page. Work flow is interupted constantly while waiting for NV2 to do whatever it is doing. I think that this is more than just an anoyance. it really makes working in NV2 a pain.
Speed issues are being addressed and will be implemented in an NV2 version which is about a month or two away.
We have not forgotten about your request and keep them coming. It motivates us!
Regards,
Martin
Like many people, we enter a massive number of transactions each day, and NV1 has been great for handling quantities of data that would take considerably longer to enter in most other programs. How does NV2 compare, in terms of raw data entry (posting invoices, receivables, etc.)?
To me it seems slower, in addition to requiring an extra keystroke (Alt A), but we are still in the process of transitioning and have not tried to enter a full day of posting in NV2 yet.
Does anyone who is up and running with NV2 have a sense of the comparative data entry time?
Thank you,
Tamara
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