I am having a real soul searching as to whether I continue with Simply Accounting or not since 2008 has come out and wondering if anyone else is having similar quirks.

From time to time, when I go to open the program and open the data records on the company I am working on, I get an error message saying data not found (or similar) or it opens the company with a very early prior date, (or sometimes even a future date appears).  So I close or don't open, open the company again and it comes up with the correct last date I had entered.

 Today, I was running our 17 person payroll, and after printing the cheques and hitting the post button, I get the message saying "Not All Cheques Have Printed" when in fact they had.

 I really feel that one day I am going to turn the thing on and all of my data is going to be corrupt.  And I don't know how reliable the back-ups are so really fearful that on the 364th day of my fiscal year it all explodes in my face.

Anyone else experiencing quirky operation of the program?

Is anyone else finding Simply 2008 just seems slow and dumb error messages appear.

I too question the reliability of version 2008.  I recently installed and actived the program and was succussful on getting my data to convert.  I soon discover that I cannot backup in the normal fashion, and it takes me the full day of searching through posts on this site to find out how to do it and what works and what doesn't work.  Simply..........you aren't so simple anymore and I have decided not to  go any further with taking a chance of losing my data on this version.  I will remain on version 2007 and do payroll manually, if they don't come up with something reliable.  I will be checking with my accountant to see what he might suggest for other accounting software.  It appears that Sage and Simply 2008 aren't too concerned about the small business users who have been using their software for many years.  We don't want to have to be computer geeks....we just want to do our bookkeeping!!

Rogerson, have you contacted Customer Support about these issues?  It's hard to say what these problems might arise from without more information.  Don't read too much into the session date since you can always move that back and forth, but instead analyse your reports and see if the data has in fact changed.  If it has, are you certain you're opening the same copy of your file each time?  Has someone restored a backup?  As for the speed, the software is a year newer but is your PC?  I find it slow here in the office but on my newer home machine it runs every bit as fast as 2007 did.

I'm not sure how much time you want to spend on the cheques if they are in fact printing, but what model of printer are you using?  Is the driver up to date?  Is it on a network?  There are several possibilities here.

The backup function has a verify option you can use to make sure they complete successfully.  For extra peace of mind you can also go ahead and restore one from time to time and make sure it works.  It's great that you are making regular backups though; I can't recommend that enough.  Always keep several copies on hand too, perhaps a week's worth.

Lindaferguson: You've probably come across several threads on backups in your search, some discussing how floppies are obsolete and will be far too small and slow for Simply 2008.   Think of them as the 8-track tape of the computer world; there are far better options nowadays - I always advocate USB flash drives - so there is really no reason to use a floppy.  Most computers bought in the last 5 years don't even come with a floppy drive anymore.  But other than that, it sounds like 2008 has been working fine for you, so I hope you'll consider revisiting it when you're more comfortable with the backups.

Yes, I did have a discussion with customer support, just the other day, because of another dumb problem.  When I opened my program to start posting for the day, I got an error message saying Connection Manager Not Found.  (what the heck is a Connection Manager).

 While I remember seeing an icon with some name like that appearing on my task bar.  Sure enough I ran my mouse over it and it said Connection Manager, so I clicked on it and it said it was off.  Why was it off?  Who knows,   Why does it even exist?  Why on my stand alone computer do I need an icon that says Connection Manager.  Connects to what?

 So here is where it gets really good.  I have been a Simply Customer for lets say 15 years.  Faithfully paying my annual renewal (why do I do that.... I can buy the program at Staples for $149 but I send this company $329 every year.... I must be a jerk) and looking back through my renewal confirmation notice I see that it comes with 1 hour of support.  I haven't used my one hour of support so I call (after looking through the web site on line help for about an hour - maybe that counted as my 1 hour of support), because when a customer service agent finally picked up the que (did I say I was on hold for lets say 61 minutes..... maybe that was my hour of customer support) I was told I did not qualify for phone support.....  Evidently you have to use the free support within 30 days of subscribing.....Nice touch!

 After ripping this clerk, she finally softened and let me talk to a technician..... The tech told me (now hold on to your chair).... The Connection Manager Did Nothing..... ?????  And when asked, well why have it then because apparently it is not allowing my program to find the data I have to work on... he just said because they were using the sql database now there has to be a connection manager and it is just because......

 So, I turned off my computer, turned it back on and this time apparently the connection manager was running because this time the program accessed my data....

So how confident would you be with a program that works one day, and doesn't the next because a component that doesn't do anything won't allow it to operate.  Nice work... but I think it is time to change the name from "Simply" to "Extremely Complicated". 

 After this, I  am actively looking for new Accounting Software....

I posted my concern on May 5th I believe and you are only replying to me now (June 5th) .  Is this the expediated response - 30 days.....  Why respond at all?

Sorry for the late reply.  I noticed today's reply from another member and chimed in at this point.  Although we try to keep an eye on what's discussed here in the forum, we are not able to read every post by every member, and the forum is more for member discussion anyway.  I was just hoping to help a bit if I could.

In short, the Connection Manager is what connects your data to the software now that we use MySQL, and without it you'd need a dedicated database server.  I wrote a blog about this back in April that explains it in greater detail, and we have some knowledge base articles as well.

I'm guessing the difference in price is because you subscribe to SimplyCARE with Payroll for automatic tax calculations, whereas the Staples price is probably for the software only.  I think you may have confused the one-hour visit with a consultant with your one free support case, but yes there is indeed a 30 day limit and we publish that on both the box and the web site.