Converting from NV1 to NV2

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The Conversion Process

The conversion is a two step process:

  1. Running the NVEXPORT procedure to export the information from your books to a file that NV2 can import.
  2. Running NV2 and importing the file created in the first step.

The information provided below deals with the first step only. It guides you through the process running an export In your books.

Additional Procedures

The NVEXPORT procedure library also contains a new version of the NOTES procedure called NOTES2. In NOTES2, the supplier and customer information prompts have been revised to provide separate fields for street address, state/province, zip/postal code, etc. This is in contrast to the older “free-form” address lines you are used to. Use of this procedure is entirely optional. Please read the section titled Editing Customer and Supplier Notes for more information.

If it is required, additional technical support for the NVEXPORT procedure library is available to users currently enrolled in either a Basic or Premium support plan. Assistance for DOS users not enrolled in a support plan is available on a pay-per-call basis (currently $2.50/minute with a minimum $25.00 charge).

At this time, support enquiries on these procedures are limited to:

  • Downloading and installing the NVEXPORT procedure library
  • Basic operation of the NVEXPORT and NOTES2 procedures
  • Correction of errors detected by NVEXPORT

Our experience with numerous sets of sample books shows that most journal errors are quite easy to correct, and the Technical Support department is prepared to assist you with these corrections should you require help. However, we have also encountered a small number of books where the methods used to record journal transactions are well outside the rules outlined above. In these cases, the method and purpose of the entries can very difficult to understand and our ability to provide support will be limited.

You MUST  install NV2 on your computer before performing the steps below.

  • In the NewViews Shell, select the “Books” option to open your books.
  • From anywhere in the books, run the GETLIB procedure.
  • In the procedure prompt, type c:\nv2\NVEXPORT (or c:\nv2_nph\NVEXPORT for NewViews for Non-Profit Housing) and press [F5].NOTE:  The path specified above assumes that you have installed NV2 in the default directory c:\nv2 (or c:\nv2_nph for Non-Profit Housing). If you installed NV2 or NewViews for Non-Profit Housing in a different directory, substitute the correct path.

If you want to run NVEXPORT in other books, repeat the steps above in each set of books to install the NVEXPORT procedure library.

NV2 will allow much more flexibility in selecting and sorting supplier and customer accounts (e.g. by city, state/province, etc.). To use this feature, however, the address information stored in your current NewViews for DOS books needs to be converted from a “free-form” style to a more concise format where the individual pieces of the address are identified and stored separately. The NOTES2 procedure allows you to perform this conversion now, before upgrading to NV2.

NOTE

Converting your customer and supplier notes is optional. The current name and address information in your books will be exported to NV2 and will be available for printing on checks, invoices, statements, etc. Therefore, if you do not want to use customer or supplier information for anything other than printing, you may choose not to re-enter the information before converting to NV2. You may also choose to perform this task after converting to NV2. This procedure is supplied for users who want to convert their customer and supplier notes now, in order to save time when performing the actual upgrade to NV2.

Running NOTES2

Running NOTES2 is no different than running the original NOTES procedure. It may be run on the Setup or Analysis view of a report, or from any view of an account. Information entered on the supplier and customer address prompts is stored completely separately from the existing address information; editing one does not change the other.

Supplier Notes

When run on a supplier account, NOTES2 displays contact, address, and phone number fields in the top half of the screen. The existing “free-form” address is displayed in the bottom half of the screen for reference.

Customer Notes

When run on a customer account, NOTES2 provides two prompt screens, one for the billing address and one for the shipping address. To switch from one to the other use the [PgDn] or [PgUp] keys. Both screens display the new address and phone number fields in the top half of the screen and the existing “free-form” billing or shipping address in the bottom half.

“Automatic” Conversion

The first time you run NOTES2 on an account, the procedure looks for existing address information in the Notes view. When it is found, the procedure extracts and fills in the following prompt fields automatically:

  • Company name
  • Street Address
  • Phone Number
  • Fax Number

Unfortunately, the remaining parts of the address are nearly impossible for a procedure to separate with any degree of accuracy.

A Note on Custom Procedures

NOTES2 stores the information you enter in the “record” view of your supplier and customer accounts. This view can only be accessed by procedures, and the information stored there by NOTES2 will not conflict with any other data stored by NewViews procedures.

However, it is possible that your books contain custom procedures written by you or purchased from a third-party programmer, and it is also possible that these procedures already use the record view of accounts to store information. In this case, running NOTES2 on these accounts could overwrite other data stored there. If NOTES2 detects this condition it will display the error message:

    Error: Account records already contain information.

If you encounter this error when running NOTES2 on an account, then a custom procedure has already written information to the record range that NOTES is attempting to use. In this event you should contact the author of the custom procedure and provide them with the following information.

NOTES2 Use of the Record View

By default, the range of records used by NOTES2 to record name & address information is from record 1,000,000 and consumes approximately 100 records. The starting record number can be adjusted to accommodate situations where a 3rd party procedure has already used this record range. To adjust the starting record number:

  • On the Home document, cursor to “Procedures” and issue the command /Document Expand
  • Issue the command /Go Item, select the NOTES2 procedure, and press [Enter]
  • On the NOTES2 procedure, issue /Document Expand, then /Document View. Type “N” and press [Enter]

On the Notes view you will see two lines of text:

    @RECORDBASE1=1000000

    @RECORDBASE2=1000000

The first line sets the base record number for supplier accounts. The second line sets the base record number for customer accounts.

If, for example, you encountered the above error message when attempting to record supplier name & address information, you would edit the number in the first line. You could try changing the number to 2000000 (note: no commas in the number). If the error is still present when you attempt to run NOTES2 again, try 3000000, etc. Any number may be used from 100 up to 99999999999900.

Warning: If you receive this error and make use of the instructions above to find an unused record range, we cannot guarantee that the 3rd-party procedure that originally used the account’s record view will continue to operate correctly. Unless you are sure that using NOTES2 to write information to a record range will not interfere with the 3rd-party procedure, we suggest that you do not attempt to use these instructions to continue further. Q.W.Page cannot be held responsible for any loss of data or functionality in 3rd-party procedures.

In NV1 books, an account is an account. For example, there is no difference between an expense account and a receivable account, other than the type of transactions you post to it, and where you total the account.

In NV2, expense and receivable accounts are different, and it is important to ensure that when your books are imported into NV2, the correct account types are used. To do this you should run the ATYPE procedure to identify your account types for NV2.

You can run ATYPE from the following locations in your books:
  • A block of reports on the Home document (all accounts on the reports blocked will be set to the account type chosen).
  • A block of accounts on a report (all accounts in the block will be set to the account type chosen).
  • Any view of an account (Ledger, Open Items, etc.) (the account is set to the account type chosen).
Nine account types are available:
  • General
  • Bank
  • Customer (AR)
  • Expense
  • Inventory
  • Employee
  • Revenue
  • Vendor (AP)

The account types above are self-explanatory. The only special consideration is the “Employee” type, which is described as:

  • All employee earning and deduction accounts (including past employees).
  • Employee accrued wages accounts (if using accrual payroll).
The following accounts should NOT be included:
  • Withholding and remitted accounts on the Payroll Withholdings report.
  • Payroll-related expense or accrual accounts on financial statements or the General Ledger.
  • All employee accounts on the Government Totals report (not applicable to users of US Cash Payroll).

Note: If you do not use NewViews payroll in your DOS books, you can skip marking any accounts as “employee” type accounts.

If you mark one or more accounts with the wrong type you can simply run the procedure again and choose the correct type. ATYPE may be run multiple times without any ill effects.

Once you are done running ATYPE for all the various types of accounts, you can now proceed to running the NVEXPORT procedure.

The NVEXPORT procedure exports all the data from a NewViews for DOS set of books, for importing into a new set of NV2 books.

NVEXPORT operates very much like the “Check Books” program in the NewViews Shell:

  • The procedure does not change the data in your books in any way.
  • You can terminate the procedure at any time by pressing [Ctrl-Break] and then [Esc].
Before Running NVEXPORT

Run Check Books

Before running NVEXPORT, we strongly advise you to run the NewViews “Check Books” program first:

  • In the NewViews shell, cursor to “Check Books” and press [Enter].
  • In the directory select box, cursor to the name of the books you want to check and press [Enter].

Running Check Books ensures that there are no errors in your books that may cause NVEXPORT to fail, or to produce false or misleading error messages.

Turn Edit Reconcile On

For NVEXPORT to operate correctly, the Shell option “Edit Reconcile” must be set to “On”.*

  • In the NewViews Shell, cursor to “Options” and press [Enter].
  • Ensure the setting “Edit Reconcile” is set to “On”. If it is set to “Off”, cursor to line and press [Enter] to change the setting.
  • Press [Esc] to exit from the Options menu.

* Note that the NVEXPORT procedure does not edit or change any entries in your books.

Running NVEXPORT
  • Open the books in which NVEXPORT is installed. If passwords are set in the books, use the “Auditor” level password.
  • On the Home document, cursor to “Odds & Ends” and issue the /Document Expand command.
  • If the Auditor Edit Date has been set, cursor to it and change it to zero.*
  • Issue /Document Contract to return to the Home document
  • Issue /Go Runproc, and select the NVEXPORT procedure.
  • Enter the name of your journal report (if you have one).
  • Press [F5]

* The NVEXPORT procedure does not edit or change any entries in your books.

Time to Complete

While NVEXPORT is running, a progress prompt is displayed showing the number of report, accounts, transactions, etc. that are in your books, and the number of items that have been processed so far. This display can give you a general idea of the time remaining for the procedure to complete its task.

The actual time required for NVEXPORT to complete depends on several factors such as the size of your books, the speed of your system, and the “mix” of accounts vs. transactions in your books. (In general, books in which the majority of data is made up of accounts will export faster than books in which the majority of data is transactions.)

The exporting of transactions can at times become quite slow when individual account ledgers contain many thousands of items. Occasionally, the “Elapsed time” figure on the prompt may appear to “freeze” for several seconds. This is usually not a sign of trouble, and normally the progress will resume within a short time. If at any point you become concerned that NewViews has “hung”, do the following:

  • Hold down the [Ctrl] key
  • Press the [Break] key

If you hear a “beep” and “[Esc]/[Ret]” appears in the top-left corner, then NewViews is still working; press [Enter] to allow the procedure to continue. (If you press [Esc] the NVEXPORT procedure will terminate with no ill effects.)

Results

When the NVEXPORT procedure has finished running, it writes a short export statistics report to its own Notes view, and the Notes view is displayed in the NewViews window.
A sample report is shown below:

NVEXPORT version 72, Mon. Aug. 4,2008 11:40 a.m.
Books path:
Books size:
Journal report:
Run time:
Errors:
Warnings:
Export Counts:
C:NVMYBOOKS
2,429,952
JR
54 Sec
0
0
0
     Reports
Accounts
Journals
Total Tos
Journal Entries
Ledgers
Distributions
Printers
Procedures
Notes
Records
19
204
5
278
152
874
451
34
246
3365
1077
FATAL ERRORS

The following two errors both indicate a condition that will prevent the export from completing properly.

FATAL: Edit reconcile is not on, cannot continue.

For NVEXPORT to operate correctly, the books must opened with “Edit Reconcile” set to “On” in the NewViews Shell Options.

To correct this problem:

  • Issue /Document Shut to return to the NewViews Shell.
  • Cursor to “Options” and press [Enter].
  • Cursor to “Edit Reconcile”.
  • Press [Enter] to change the setting from “Off” to “On”.
  • Press [Esc] to exit from the Options menu.
  • Open the books and run the NVEXPORT procedure again.

Account history error(s) found.

This means that at some time in the past your books have sustained minor damage to the historical balance of one or more accounts. Because of this damage, the total debits do not equal the total credits in your books for one or more history periods. While this error is extremely rare, it must be corrected before attempting an actual conversion to NV2.

If you encounter this error, please contact NewViews Technical Support for further instructions. (Note: Running the “Reorganize books” program will not correct this error.)

GENERAL WARNINGS

NVEXPORT will record a warning in the log (found on the Notes view of the NVEXPORT procedure) when it encounters a transaction dated prior to January 1,1970. This warning was added to help uncover transactions that likely have an incorrect date. For example, in the years prior to 2000 it was a common data entry error to enter a date such as October 25, 1999 with the keystrokes 25101199 instead of 25101999. If the date format set in Odds & Ends did not display all four digits of the year, then the date could be displayed as “Oct 25,99”, and the error would not be obvious.

JOURNAL ERRORS

NV1 Journal Entries

NV2 journals are quite different from the journals you may have become accustomed to using in NV1. In NV1, a journal is simply an account like any other in the books, the only difference is in how it is used. It is possible to enter an unbalanced journal entry in NV1, but this is impossible in NV2.

NVEXPORT has been enhanced to “group” multiple transactions that make up a complete journal entry in your NV1 journals, and export them as NV2 journal entries. To do this, some general rules are used to identify errors in journals. For example, two ledger items that make up a journal entry must have the same date and reference, and the sum of the amounts must be zero. Any journal entries that do not follow the rules will result in an error line being added to the log written to the Notes view of the NVEXPORT procedure.

As in any other accounting system (including manual bookkeeping), a journal does not appear on any financial report such as the Balance Sheet, Accounts Receivable, etc. Therefore, in NewViews, accounts used as journals are normally created on a report devoted purely to journals, and journals are never totaled to accounts not on the journal report.

Transactions entered in the journal that debit or credit other accounts must balance to 0.00. This is accomplished either by entering distribution items that net to 0.00, or by entering a pair of transactions with the same date and reference that net to 0.00. In the latter case, one of the entries may contain distribution items. The transaction, or transaction pair, is considered to be a “journal entry”.

Because journal entries balance to 0.00, the balance of the journal account after every journal entry is 0.00.

An unbalanced journal entry will put your books out of balance. For example, if a transaction is entered in the journal that cross-talks a debit to a bank account, and no balancing entry is created, the journal will be out of balance, and assets in the books will be higher than the liabilities. The only remedy is to post a corresponding credit from the journal to another account.

In the case of journal entries composed of transaction “pairs”, both entries must have the same date. If they do not, then the journal and the books will be out of balance for the period between the entry dates.

Exporting Journals & Journal Entries

NVEXPORT exports journals, and the entries they contain, differently from other accounts and entries. If your books contain journals, you must fill in the name of your journal report on the NVEXPORT prompt.

When the journal report name is specified, NVEXPORT does the following:

  • Posting accounts on the report specified are identified as journals in the export file, so that the same journals are created in the NV2 books.
  • Transactions in the journal accounts are exported as NV2 journal entries.

To accomplish this, certain “rules” are considered, and errors are generated for exceptions to the rules.

The journal rules are:

  • All posting accounts on the report specified in the NVEXPORT prompt as the “Journal report” are considered to be journals
  • A journal cannot total to an account that is not on the journal report.
  • Journal account total-tos are not exported.

The journal entry rules are:

  • A “journal entry” is:
    • One complex transaction, with distribution items that that balance to 0.00, or
    • Two simple transactions, with the same date and reference, that together balance to 0.00, or
    • One complex transaction and one simple transaction, with the same date and reference, that together balance to 0.00. (Either entry may appear first.)
  • Journal entries cannot cross-talk to another journal.
  • In non-journal accounts, distribution items with a non-zero amount cannot cross-talk to a journal.
Journal Errors – What To Do

Data exported from NV1 books that contain journal errors can be imported into NewViews 2. However, the errors should be corrected and the export performed again. Here is why.

Most journal errors will result in a posting to the NV2 account JOURNAL_ERRORS. For the NV2 books to balance correctly, the JOURNAL_ERRORS account will have to be “cleaned out” by correcting the journal entries they post from. This will complicate your conversion to the new version.

The better approach is to identify and correct the errors in your NV1 books before the new version is released. This way you can make the corrections whenever you have the time instead of trying to do them during the conversion.

Journal Errors List

Journal X has non-zero purged history of ###.##

The opening balance of the journal (in the header) is not 0.00. This means that the journal has had ledger items purged from it, but the sum of the purged items is not zero. This can result from purging a block of items that did not include all of the items on a given date, or if the block contained one or more out-of-balance entries.

The journal history, and the remaining transactions must be examined carefully to determine the remedy for this error.

Journal X has non-zero ending balance of ###.##

The ending balance of the journal is not 0.00. This may be the result of:

* One or more unbalanced journal entries
* A non-zero opening balance
* Both of the above
or
* The account is not actually a journal

Journal X totals to account Y on non-journal report Z.

The journal specified has been totaled to an account that is not on the journal report. In NV1, a journal should always have a zero balance, therefore totaling a journal to an account elsewhere in the books does not make much sense. If the journal balance is 0.00 (for all history periods), then removing the total-to will have no effect on the rest of the books. If the journal balance is not 0.00, then it is quite likely that the account is not in fact a journal, and therefore should be moved off of the journal report.

Account W date X ref Y dist item # crosses to journal Z

In account W, the distribution item described cross-talks to a journal. Distributions cannot cross-talk to a journal, therefore this transaction must be examined and corrected.

This error can also be caused by having non-journal accounts on your journal report.

Journal W date X ref Y dist item # crosses to journal Z

In journal W, the distribution item described cross-talks to another journal. Journal transactions cannot cross-talk to another journal, therefore this transaction must be examined and corrected. This error can also be caused by having non-journal accounts on your journal report.

Journal W date X ref Y crosses to journal Z

In journal W, the ledger item described cross-talks to another journal. Journal transactions cannot cross-talk to another journal, therefore this transaction must be examined and corrected. This error can be caused by having non-journal accounts on your journal report.

Account X on journal report Y is a Z account.

The account specified has been identified as a customer, supplier, expense, or sales account, but the account was found on the journals report. Therefore, two conditions are true:

1. The NOTES procedure has been run on the report, and the type of account was set to “Supplier”, “Customer”, “Expense”, or “Sales”, and
2. The account is on the journal report as specified on the NVEXPORT prompt.

Both cannot be true. Either the account on the journals report has been misidentified using the NOTES procedure, or the report does not contain (only) journals. If the account is in fact the type noted in the error message, then it should be moved off the journal report and onto another appropriate report. If the account is a journal, then its NOTES type should be reset by marking the journals report in a block on the Home document and running the RESETN procedure.

Journal X date Y ref Z out of balance ###.##

The journal entry specified does not balance.

This is the most common error when exporting journal entries, and can occur even in journals that appear to be balanced correctly. In journals that balance, errors are usually caused by one of the following:

A journal entry pair with the same reference number, that balance to 0.00, have different dates.
A journal entry pair with the same date, that balance to 0.00, have different reference numbers.

When an unbalanced journal entry is encountered, the following occurs:

If it has not been exported already, an account is exported with the name JOURNAL_ERRORS.
The journal entry is exported with an additional posting to the JOURNAL_ERRORS account. The amount of the posting is whatever amount is required to “balance” the journal entry.

After the books are imported into NV2, the JOURNAL_ERRORS account will contain whatever entries were necessary to correct unbalanced journal entries.