ANTHISTLE SYSTEMS & PROGRAMMING LTD. 563 Patricia Drive, Oakville, Ontario, CANADA L6K 1M4 Telephone 905-845-7959 7th. January 1994 MAKING BACKUPS OF YOUR EMPLOYEE DATA ==================================== We STRONGLY recommend that you keep backup copies of your employee data as it was going into each pay cycle. We suggest you keep as many pay cycles as you have room for, up to say a years worth, but at least keep the last two. The backups should ideally be made on real diskettes in case of a head crash or other catastrophic damage to the hard disk. PAYROLL CANADA WILL MANAGE THE BACKUP FOR YOU. ---------------------------------------------- After running a pay cycle access Choice "F1 ADD OR UPDATE EMPLOYEE INFO. / ENTER HOURS" from the MAIN PAY MENU. You will see our message about making the pay permanent and you will then be offered a chance to make a backup of the input to the last pay cycle before the output is copied forward. If all your employees are salaried and you have no hours to enter or other changes to make that would cause you to use the F1 Choice then the same prompt will appear next time you access Choice "F2 RUN A PAY CYCLE / PRINT REPORTS / EXPORT FILES" followed by Choice "F1 Run a Pay Cycle on PAYROLL.DTA File" The automatic backup creates a directory on the backup drive which is named for the pay date the files were input to. This also allows you to backup several pay cycles on the same disk, space permitting, (because each is in its own directory). Example: Volume in drive A is ANTHISTLE Directory of A:\ 910315IN 3-15-91 2:33p 910329IN 3-29-91 2:37p 2 File(s) 221856 bytes free The files in the above directory were INput to the pay cycle dated 910329 (1991, March, 29th.) . This directory will contain a copy of everything that was on the PAYROLL CANADA input directory (normally \PAYIN ) plus the PAYROLL.CNF file from the program directory (normally \PAYPGMS). Example A:\910329IN might contain: Volume in drive A is ANTHISTLE Directory of A:\910329IN . 3-29-91 2:37p .. 3-29-91 2:37p PAYROLL DTA 44800 3-30-91 4:59p PAYROLL INX 1280 3-31-91 5:11p PAYROLL CNF 3072 3-31-91 5:12p 6 File(s) 221856 bytes free The purpose of backing up the input directory rather than the output directory is that the output directory can easily be re-created by restoring the input directory and re-running the backed up pay cycle. (You might of course want to use the F1 choice to make changes to the Employees before the pay cycle if it were not just a straight re-run). This also assumes you are using the same version of the program (i.e. Federal & Provincial Taxes have not changed since the backup). RESTORING THE PAYROLL CANADA BACKUP (IF NECESSARY) -------------------------------------------------- Backups are like an insurance policy. You hope you will never need them. But, once in a while you might and then you will be glad you took the trouble to create them. If it is necessary to restore a backup follow these steps: 1. From the MAIN PAY MENU select Choice "F5 CONFIGURATION & OTHER UTILITIES" 2. Another menu will appear, from that menu select Choice "F5 = RESTORE EMPLOYEE BACKUPS MADE BY PAYROLL CANADA". Further information will then appear on your screen before the restore - press the Print Screen Key the first time you do it so you have some notes to follow after the restore. LARGE EMPLOYEE FILES -------------------- The PAYROLL CANADA backup is a FULL SIZE backup to ONLY ONE DISKETTE. It has no provision for splitting files between several diskettes. If the employee files will not fit on a single diskette you have two choices: 1. Use the DOS BACKUP.EXE program (and DOS RESTORE.EXE if you need to put them back). If you are doing this you have to do it from the DOS prompt. You will not need to use our backup procedure (reply N when prompted for it) but do your own backup of \PAYIN immediately after each pay cycle. Full instructions for the use of these programs will be found in your DOS Manual. They do a full size backup, but will spread it over several diskettes if the files are too big to go on one diskette. Assuming BACKUP.EXE (and RESTORE.EXE) is on drive C: directory \DOS and your backup disk is in drive A: the command is C:\DOS\BACKUP C:\PAYIN\*.* A: Anything already on the diskette in Drive A: will be erased. To restore a DOS backup put your backup disk in Drive A . C:\DOS\RESTORE A: C:\PAYIN\*.* Note that if more than one diskette is involved they are a matched set. They must be restored in the same sequence as they were backed up - label them with pay date and sequence numbers as they are created by BACKUP.EXE Keep the disk sets for several pay periods and rotate them so the oldest set is re-used each pay. The filenames themselves will not contain the pay date, but the file creation dates will give you a clue which is which if the external labels are lost. - OR - 2. Compress the Files using PKZIP. PKZIP / PKUNZIP --------------- Assuming the PKZIP program is on drive C: directory \UTILITY, you want to make a compressed backup to a formatted diskette in drive A: and your PAYROLL CANADA data is on drive C: directory \PAYIN then C:\UTILITY\PKZIP -a A:\910329IN.ZIP C:\PAYIN\*.* will create the backup file. No matter how many files were on \PAYIN only one file will appear on A: but it will contain all of \PAYIN and it will be considerably smaller than the original files. Compressed files have to be restored to full size and the component files seperated, before they can be used. PKZIP has a companion program PKUNZIP.EXE for this purpose. To restore a squeezed backup put your backup disk in Drive A . DIR A:\ will give you a list of available file names ( pay dates ) to pick from. Assuming 910329IN.ZIP is required then C: CD \PAYIN \UTILITY\PKUNZIP A:\910329IN.ZIP then you can start up PAYROLL CANADA with CD \PAYPGMS PAYMENU PKZIP also has options to back up files which even when compressed still will not fit on one diskette - it can span them over several diskettes - see the PKZIP manual. It also has options to recurse subdirectories and even back up your entire hard drive in a compressed format to diskettes. A very useful program ! Where to obtain further information on PKZIP -------------------------------------------- PKZIP is available as a ShareWare program (so you can try before you buy) and may be downloaded with your modem from CompuServe or your local BBS. It is also available from ShareWare disk distributors, or if you prefer you can order it direct from the author PKWARE, Inc. (see below). The most recent version (as at 1993) is Version 2.04g 02-01-93 If you use PKZIP on a regular basis you are strongly encouraged to register it. With a full registration of US $47.00 you will receive a comprehensive printed manual, the latest version of PKZIP, PKUNZIP & PKSFX software, and when available, the next version of the software. See the PKZIP documentation for commercial and distribution licensing info. Send check or money order to: PKWARE, Inc. 9025 North Deerwood Drive Brown Deer WI 53223 U.S.A. Support BBS: 414-354-8670 (Modem) Fax: 414-354-8559 Price U.S.$47.00 plus $3.50 for shipping & handling (or $5.00 overseas). Wisconsin residents add 5% sales tax. When ordering state disk size required (3.5 or 5.25 inch) and whether for MS-DOS or OS/2. Note that PKWARE, Inc. have no connection to either PAYROLL CANADA or to Anthistle Systems & Programming Ltd. Do NOT send PAYROLL CANADA registrations to Brown Deer. PKWARE, Inc. are mentioned here only because they have an excellent low cost data compression program that you might find useful. Likewise, do NOT send PKZIP registrations to Anthistle Systems. Christopher Anthistle, President, 7th. January 1994