Connecting to your Company Data

The very first thing anyone must do when using XLGL is to connect to a Simply Accounting Company. From time to time, we receive calls (and emails) from people who are unable to connect. In this article, we’ll look at the reasons you may be unable to connect to your Company Data.

The single most probable reason is that your user does not have Third Party Access right. By default, Simply Accounting users do not have the right to access the data from outside of the program. This includes sysadmin.

To assign Third Party Access right:

1. Open your Company Data in Simply Accounting;
2. Go to Setup, Set Up Users & Roles;
3. Enter the password for sysadmin and click OK;
4. Select the user from the list and click Modify User;
5. Under Rights With Third-Party Products, click Read-only access or Read/write access.
6. Click OK.

XLGL only requires Read access, but if you need to use other third-party, you may need to assign Read/write.

The second most encountered problem has to do with the user name. When accessing Simply Accounting, if you have a user called John, it doesn’t make a difference if you use John or john. The user name is not case-sensitive. However, when connecting from outside of Simply Accounting, this is not true anymore. If the user was created as John, you must use John and not john. A good practice is to have all user name in lower case.

Then, of course, there is the wrong password issue. Make sure you got your password correct. Same thing goes with the file. Sometime people make copies of their database, or change the name when they start a new year. Make sure you’re accessing the correct file.

Here’s a quick check list to finish:

1. Make sure you can open the data with Simply Accounting on the same computer where you are using XLGL;
2. Make sure you are opening the correct file;
3. Make sure you have the correct user name and that it’s spelled correctly;
4. Make sure the user has Third Party Access rights;
5. Make sure you have the correct password. Changing you password to something simple (such as 1) can help you find if this is the problem or not.

Did you face a different situation? Please, let us know.

Pierre Alain

Getting Total of all Receipt per Customer

While reviewing the survey responses we got last month, I found an interesting question/comment on getting the total of customer receipts for the year. This is one example of the type of flexibility you have with XLGL. Let’s look at the solution.

Basically, what we want is a list of customers with an amount next to each name showing how much money we received for a given period. For this example, we’ll suppose we have the beginning and ending date for our period in B2 and B3.

Getting the list of customer is quite easy. We open the XLGL Console and go to Receivables and Clients List. We  drag and drop the word ALL to cell A5. This is what we have:

 

Now come the real challenge. We want to know how much money we receive from these customers. Money received goes to the bank, so let use our GL function and get the amount of money that entered the bank account from each customer.

Still using the XLGL console, we go to General and Worksheet Functions. We then drag and drop Amount of GL transaction for period to cell B5 and fill out the Function Argument window like this:

The parameters are filled like this:

• Accounts: 10600 >> This is our bank account. We could have put this in a cell and reference to it as well.
• Beginning and End: the date in B2 and B3 on our worksheet.
• Customers: A5 >> The first customer in our list.

Note that you have to scroll down to see the Customers parameter as shown in the second image above.

We click OK (or press Enter) and Fill down/copy our formula next to each customer to have the final result.

  

For the more technically inclined, the formula bar is showing this:

 

Change the dates in B2 and B3 to switch period and watch the amount update.

You can drill down on an amount by right-clicking on it and selecting Drilldown.

This is just one example of the flexibility of XLGL. Would you like to see another one? Tell us what you’d like.

Pierre Alain