ANTHISTLE SYSTEMS & PROGRAMMING LTD. 563 Patricia Drive, Oakville, Ontario, CANADA L6K 1M4 Telephone 416-845-7959 (Area Code will change to 905 Oct.4th. 1993) 3rd. April 1991 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 USA 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 the run control flag and if you give the normal reply of "N" and confirm it is O.K. to copy the output files 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 (CREATES REPORT FILES, ETC.)" 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 USA input directory (normally \PAYIN ) plus the PAYUSA.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 PAYUS941 DTA 3456 3-15-91 2:52p PAYUSA DTA 44800 3-30-91 4:59p PAYUSA INX 1280 3-31-91 5:11p PAYUSA CNF 8192 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 Taxes have not changed since the backup). RESTORING THE PAYROLL USA 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 USA". 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 USA 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.COM program (and DOS RESTORE.COM 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.COM (and RESTORE.COM) 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.COM 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 PKARC or PKZIP. (i) PKARC / PKXARC ------------------ This is a ShareWare data compression programs which will squeeze your files to about 15 or 20% of their original size. Ideal for making your own backups of LARGE employee files (which might not otherwise fit on a diskette). 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 (before you get to our prompt). Assuming this program is on drive C: directory \UTILITY and your backup disk is in drive A: and the pay cycle for 29th. March 1991 has just been done then A: CD \ C:\UTILITY\PKARC A 910329IN.ARC 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. Squeezed files have to be restored to full size and the component files seperated, before they can be used. PKARC has a companion program PKXARC.EXE for this purpose. To restore a squeezed backup put your backup disk in Drive A . A: CD \ DIR will give you a list of available file names ( pay dates ) to pick from. Assuming 910329IN.ARC is required then C: CD \PAYIN \UTILITY\PKXARC A:\910329IN.ARC then you can start up PAYROLL USA with CD \PAYPGMS PAYUSA (ii) PKZIP / PKUNZIP -------------------- PKARC and PKXARC were authored by PKWARE, Inc. and may still be available on the ShareWare market but due to a mid 1988 lawsuit from System Enhancement Associates the authors of ARC claiming these programs infringe on their proprietory use of the ARC name and compression methods they were replaced Feb. 1989 by PKWARE, Inc. with a new set of programs PKZIP and PKUNZIP using a different compression routine and different file extension name (.ZIP instead of .ARC). Note that because of the terms of the settlement of the lawsuit .ZIP files could not be made compatible with .ARC files, therefore PKUNZIP cannot be used to decompress a .ARC file. Whatever program you use to compress the files with, you must later use the appropriate (matching) decompression program to decompress them again. In our experience PKZIP takes a little longer to do the compression but produces a smaller output file than PKARC. Equivalent instructions for using PKZIP and PKUNZIP are: A: CD \ C:\UTILITY\PKZIP -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. Squeezed 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 . A: CD \ DIR 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 USA with CD \PAYPGMS PAYUSA Where to obtain further information on PKZIP -------------------------------------------- PKZIP, PKUNZIP, and PKSFX are available on a diskette with documentation files directly from the author PKWARE, Inc. 7545 N. Port Washington Rd. Glendale, WI 53217 U.S.A. Phone: Voice (414) 352-3670 BBS (414) 352-7176 FAX (414) 352-3815 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 USA or to Anthistle Systems & Programming Ltd. Do NOT send PAYROLL USA registrations to Glendale. 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, 3rd. April 1991