When printing a payroll cheque, I am experiencing a 95 second delay from the time I click on print until it is actually sent to the printer (spooling and printing times are in addition to this). Printing payment cheques is not a problem.

During this delay cpu usage is at 100% and mysqld-nt.exe  accounts for 86 to 90% depending on what else is running.

Would changing the Connection Manager settings such as the memory buffer size help? If so, what should I change it to? I have 2GB RAM.

Glenn

Hello GlennW,

What is the buffer size currently set to?  If it is 56 MB, try increasing to 128 and test.  Here is the recommendation from the Help Menu:

Memory buffer size (in MB). The amount of system memory allocated to cache company data used to populate reports, search/lookup results, and record lists in Simply.

Tips:

• If a large number of records and transactions are stored in your company database, and you have sufficient RAM installed on your computer, you may be able to fine-tune Simply Accounting's performance by increasing the memory reserved for Connection Manager operations. Be careful! If you set this number too high, you may prevent other applications from running, including Simply Accounting.
• We recommend that you increase the buffer size in increments of 10MB, and never exceed 60% of total physical RAM installed in your PC. If you are unable to run other applications after increasing the buffer size, click the Default button to reset the buffer to it's default size.
• You can manually edit the Buffer Pool Size setting in the ConnectionManager.ini file.This setting will overwrite any existing value for innodb_log_buffer_size set in the MySQL dbengine.ini file.

I would increase to 128 as a starting place and keep it there for a while and observe.  If you experience resources issues (either with Simply Accounting or another product) begin lowering the buffer.

PS -

You may also want to give a Printer Emulation a try.  It also seems to help in some cases to improve report speed (even when only generating the report on screen.) 

 Kim,

I've tried increasing it to 128 and then to 192, but no improvement. The thing that gets me is that there is no delay printing payment cheques, just payroll cheques and it happens printing cheques individually ar as a batch print.

Could you elaborate on the printer emulation?

Glenn

A printer emulation involves downloading or changing print drivers.  Here is the link for Printer Emulation KB.

Do you process more payroll transactions than Payment transactions?  It could be data related due to the number of details in the database.  As a TEST you could make a copy of the database (go to the File Menu, click SAVE AS, and Save As TEST), then clear some payroll data (so only save the current and prior year and clear everything older) and test the speed again.

If you get stuck or have more questions post back or contact support for remote assistance.

 Kim

SUCCESS !!!

I tried the TEST and clearing all but this and last year's payroll data as you suggested and there was a big improvement. I did a trial print of just 10 payroll cheques and they went to the printer in under 3 minutes. Ten cheques would have taken about 15 minutes before. I thought I only had this year's and last year's payroll data but obviously not, it took quite a while to clear. The strange thing is that ibdata is a little larger for the TEST.SAJ than it is for my real .SAJ.

Our year end is this Friday, so I will wait until I change over to next year before clearing the old payroll in our  live data.

Thank you, Kim, this has been bugging me for quite a while.

Glenn

Hi Glenn,

I'm glad you're excited about these results but now you have a decision to make.  As I stressed above clearing data for an end user is a pretty big deal.

I was "chatting" with Brent Corner off site and he recommends installing a local printer to speed things up and that would prevent you from needing to move forward with clearing data.  This may be an option you wish to pursue.

Also, in your Live data (not the test data) run the Advanced Database check in the maintenance menu and see if it finds errors to any payroll tables and allow them to be fixed if prompted.

If you feel the need, call in to Support and a phone agent can test some further options with you.

Kim,

I don't see where you warned clearing data would be a problem. Other than convenience, what would the problem be?

I tried the Advanced Database Check. It reported "Fixed database table layout inconsistencies" but it didn't make any difference in printing.

A local printer won't help. As I keep saying, the delay is from when I click on Print until Simply Accounting sends it to the printer (95 seconds for a single cheque).

Glenn

 Kim,

One other point.

Errorlog.txt reports the following:

Version: '5.0.38-enterprise-nt'  socket: ''  port: 13540  MySQL Enterprise Server (Commercial)
081028 12:51:10

C:\Program Files\Winsim\ConnectionManager\MySqlBinary\5.0.38\mysql\mysqld-nt.exe: Normal shutdown

081028 12:51:11  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
081028 12:51:15  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 109270597
081028 12:51:15

C:\Program Files\Winsim\ConnectionManager\MySqlBinary\5.0.38\mysql\mysqld-nt.exe: Shutdown complete

Error in my_thread_global_end(): 2 threads didn't exit

I don't know if this is relevant or not.

Glenn

 

Hi Glenn,

The inconvenience that I am referring to is the fact that the information will not be recallable if it has been cleared.  So if you clear info older than two years you will not have the ability to recall, although you could do so with your backup if needed.  (I'm not an end user but I certainly have had many a conversation about the inconvenience of clearing data.)

There are sooo many variables with the print speed.  You could test installing a local printer, test if another PC experiences the same lag if they send to the printer, does changing the path do anything?  Basically these tests will help determine if it's the computer, the database or the printer / driver issue.

There are several things to test and consider in terms of making the best choice for you.