Invalid argument to date encode - error The following error message may be received when trying to add a new fixed assets accounting year anywhere in Sage Evolution.

Solution Set the Control Panel | User Accounts setting to Never Notify and restart the PC.

Excel cannot find OLAP Cube The following error messages may appear when running a Cube type BIC report.

Solution 1. Open the Report Manager. 2. Open the relevant report and drill down to the actual Cube report component as can be

seen below. 3. Right click on the cube component and select go to Container in the Administrator Tool.

4. The BIC Administrator should then open. 5. Select the relevant connection (not Container).

6. On the right hand, select the Use Auto Connection System option.

7. Then select the Apply button in the top right and close the Administrator. 8. Rerun the report that should work fine now.

The connection for the Cube report has no Cube file specified The following message may be received when running a Cube type report. To replicate the error follow the steps below.

If Yes is selected, the OLAP Manager opens and then you can run the following:

You may then get the following message, select Yes.

Select OK on the screen below.

Back in Report Manager, run the report again. You may still get the following message:

Solution The solution to this problem is to manually point the connection for this report to the Cube. In order to do this you will need to go to the connection for this report in the BIC Administrator.

Select the Data Connection for the relevant report.

You should see that the “Local Cube File” option is blank. Click on the ellipsis on the right hand side to browse for the relevant report cube in the C:\EvoBICMetaData\Cubes folder, for example C:\EvoBICMetaData\Cubes\\Sal Anlys 3-4 (Evo).cub.

You should now be able to run the report.

The error unable to get the Count property of the PivotItems The following error message may be received when running a BIC Template Pivot Field clean- up procedure in the Report Manager (by right clicking on a specific report and selecting Clean Template Pivot Fields.)

Normally you would run this procedure to get rid of incorrect report data by refreshing the template file before running the report.

Solution This issue is currently being investigated by Alchemex but the following can be done to prevent the error above. 1. In Report Manager, right click on the relevant BIC report where the above action must be

performed e.g. the Sales Master Report, and select Clean Template Pivot Fields.

2. The following prompt appears – select Yes.

3. Notice the relevant report, e.g. Sales Master template file opens automatically. Select the option below and OK.

4. Also select all options on the following screen and OK. 5. On the next screen select all options except for the GP% and OK.

6. It cleans the template without generating the error and the following prompt message should

display.

No transaction is active The following error message may be received when processing an inventory/order entry related document or any other transaction.

If you select OK the transaction processes but upon further investigation duplicate transactions may actually have been processed.

Solution It might be a foreign trigger causing the above and this should either be dropped from the company database, or amended by the relevant 3rd party developer to not be in conflict with Sage Evolution’s own processing procedures. Also note that the foreign trigger might perhaps have worked on a specific version but since upgrading the company to a higher version the above problem has started.

Missing supplier invoices Why would the ‘Now Paying’ column show a lesser amount than the Outstanding column on the Automatic Payment and Remittances screen as can be seen below?

For the above transaction only the one transaction, worth R15 5523.38 is displayed tor payment as can be seen below.

Solution

There could be multiple things that can explain or correct the above. First of all, ensure that the Ageing Periods linked to the relevant supplier is not restricting the one transaction from being included in the payment run, especially if the Apply Terms option has been selected. Then based on the actual invoice transaction date it seems logic that certain invoices may not be included.

Alternatively, if all logical tests have been conducted, then do the following: 1. Select the Remittances | Clear option on the main Automatic Payments and Remittances

screen.

2. Select Yes on the following message.

3. No on the next message.

4. Close the screen, re-open and start again to specify new Automatic Payments parameters. It has a powerful refresh effect and proved itself on a recent incident.

Stock adjustment expense account being unexpectedly credited and not debited on an IBT receipt. When making use of an IBT Issue / IBT Receipt to transfer items between warehouses at a higher cost than the cost used on the sending warehouse, you may find that the nominated Stock Adjustment account, which is normally an expense type account, is Credited instead of Debited.

Solution

We’ll use the following scenario to explain the problem. 1. Allow for Cost per Warehouse. 2. Create Item Rock and adjust quantity x 1, and Average cost of R100 in the DBN warehouse. 3. Process a new IBT Issue from DBN to JHB warehouse, quantity 1. 4. On the IBT Receipt, notice the New Cost value of R100, but change this to R800 and then

process the IBT Receipt.

5. On the Item Enquires | Transactions | select the IBT Receipt transaction and then drilldown

the nominated Stock Adjustment account will then be credited with R700 because of the following reason:

By increasing the cost of the item, you have actually revalued your stock and the

expense account is therefore credited, indicating an income being generated due to the transaction.

The other legs of the transaction is a Credit of R100 out of warehouse DBN and a credit of the new cost value R800 into warehouse JHB.

6. But, if the new Cost price is less than the old price, the Stock Adjustment account will be

debited, clearly indicating the expense that’s been realised by this transaction. 7. Finally, when the item is now invoiced out of the JHB warehouse, its current cost (e.g. R800

in our example above) for that warehouse (and not the original warehouse cost where it was coming from) will be used to calculate the Cost of Sales Account to be debited (and the Inventory Control account to be credited).

Publisher error initialising plug-in! Error: I/O error 32. Funcation Initialise The following error message may be received when importing into DDS, in this case new Fixed Asset records.

Solution There could be a different date format between what your Sage Evolution Company expects vs. your import file specifically with regards to your date related import file columns. E.g. Book Start Date = 23/07/2012 on the Import file, but Sage Evolution date format is yyyy/mm/dd. Therefore, to simplify things, change the import file date fields’ format to the same as used in Sage Evolution and then on the DDS import screen: Publisher (1/2) select the option below: Windows format.

Average unit cost is higher than any previous GRV cost Why would a stock item’s Average Unit Cost be higher than any of the GRV cost values on the item’s transaction history? For instance, the highest price ever paid for a stock item on all previous GRV’s was R5 490 but the current Average Unit Cost is R7 266.87

Reason and Solution: It may be that Return To Supplier transactions were processed that, at the time of processing, used unit cost values which were less than the current Average Unit Cost. The following explains further on the calculation principle that Evolution is using: The main principle followed by Evolution (see column Evolution – Ave cost directly after transaction below) and that is mathematically proven in column Calculated Average Cost is that the transaction valuation is added (for GRV) or subtracted (for RTS) from the previous item valuation, and the sum there of divided by the total running balance after the new transaction.

Transaction valuation: Qnty – GRV x Cost on transaction Calculated average cost (column above): GRV (increasing quantity): (PREVIOUS VALUATION + TRANSACTION VALUATION) /

RUNNING BALANCE RTS (decreasing quantity): (PREVIOUS VALUATION - TRANSACTION VALUATION) /

RUNNING BALANCE RTS (decreasing quantity) WHERE THE NEW RUNNING BALANCE = 0, THEN NO

FORMULA: Invoice: Use the previous line’s Calculated Average Cost, NO FORMULA as the

Average Unit Cost never change for any customer invoice. The same rulle alos applies if Credit Notes are used

Also notice the following: Transacion 12 above: an RTS at R3067/unit while the current Average Cost at the time was R3713.13, thus, the RTS was at a lower cost than the current Average Cost

This resulted in the new Average Unit Cost to jump to R5166.93 which is even higher than the highest Cost paid on any GRV. The same goes for Transaction 13 above. The above describes Evolution’s way of constantly averaging the current Average Unit Cost and this could imply that if your RTS amount was less than the current Average Cost, the new Average Cost could go up to even more than the highest Unit Cost paid, as per above example.

Could not locate an ETL unit within the working set – Pastel Auditor error message. The following error message may be displayed in Pastel Auditor:

Message when selecting Load Accounts

Or this error when running any reports in Auditor

Solution: In Windows Explorer | Tools | Folder Options | View – select the option Show hidden

files, folders and drives.

Then on the installed Auditor folder, ensure that for all the files the Hidden option is unselected

SPE07 SPE01 Incorrect Syntax Near The following error message may be received when processing any inventory or order entry related document:

Solution: Close Sage Evolution on the local PC Change the Region and Language Options to English United States and customise the

short date format to either dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd, as well as changing the Currency symbol to R

Difference value on the bank reconcilliation report Why would the Bank Reconciliation report show a Difference value as opposed to the main Bank Reconciliation transaction screen where no Difference value exist (at the bottom) and all seems fine? This is what is expected:

But this is what is actually displayed:

Solution: On the report setup screen, unselect the option: Print Foreign Amounts and rerun the report

Not displaying the same number of decimals on the document line prices as confirmed on inventory You have set the number of decimal prices on the Inventory Defaults | Selling Price = 4

And the line price on the relevant inventory document, e.g. INVOICE has been entered with 4 decimals, but when printing the invoice, it still only shows 2 line price decimals. What else do you need to do to show a 4 (in this case) line price decimal value?

Solution: Open the relevant document’s layout design screen Right click the relevant line price field | Calculations

On the Calculations page, notice the 2 decimals as indicated below.

Change all occurrences to be using 4 zeroes in stead of the current 2 as indicated below:

Anywhere on the white area on the same sceen, right click and select Compile

Notice the results below as expected

Select OK on the bottom right and save the changes on the Design layout screen. The correct number of decimal values should now print on the document. Error handling record error attempting to get an INT64 field as an integer function – DDS import error on inventory prices The following error message may be received when importig inventory price lists using DDS:

Solution: Install Sage Evolution version 6.00.49 in its own separte folder. Only install the core components, thereby excluding moduels such as BIC and others (as applicable on the main installation) Open the Start | All Programmes | new Sage Evolution 6.00.49 version | DDS and re-import the inventory prices with this specific DDS application. Error while executing script when upgrading mobile sales The following error message may be received when upgrading Evolution Mobile Sales

REASON AND SOLUTION This is usually caused by SQL incompatibilities.

To resolve, do the following: In the installation path (Default: C:\Program Files (x86)\Softline Pastel\Sage Evolution

Mobile Sales), there is a Script that forces an upgrade. It is called Script.sql. Run this script on the database and try to log in. This in most cases will resolve the

upgrade. It might return an error as follows:

In this case the Database’s compatibility level is incorrectly set, and needs to be set to SQL 2008 as per the image below. This can be found on the DB Properties, on the Options Tab.

Please note that Mobile Sales IS NOT compatible with SQL 2005.

After changing this, please re-run the script and it should then complete without any errors.