What is the verse on the splash image?
From the King James version Bible, Proverbs 6:
It seemed appropriate to both a financial program and to free, open source software.
When will the program be ready for live use?
When enough development and testing has been done for us to be confident to declare a stable version. Therefore please contribute by testing the program and giving feedback.
There is further information on the development process - including a developers FAQ at the web site http://launchpad.net/vatstuff
The 'Create purchase order' button is disabled?
You can only create purchase orders (and sales invoices) once you have completed the tasks:
The first three of these are normally completed during the new database startup wizard (unless you cancelled it). So you should only need to add a supplier or customer.
The 'Create invoice' button is disabled?
See the previous FAQ - The 'Create purchase order' button is disabled?, the reasons are the same.
All application buttons are disabled!
Whenever you open a window that will cause a change to the database - all other functions are disabled while that window is open. This is to avoid two simultaneous conflicting database changes. If you have all buttons disabled it is likely you have started a function and its window may not be visible, perhaps minimised or hidden by other windows. Check the taskbar for active windows.
Having implemented a transaction - how do I completely delete it?
The Undo button under the Admin tab will delete the last transaction - so if you have just done a 'move money' it is possible to delete it, however if you have done a move, and several other subsequent transactions - then the undo would have to delete each of those transactions first.
A transaction in this case means anything involving money movements - for example if you have just created an invoice, the Undo will delete it (not just cancel - it will be completely deleted). The Undo will not delete non-money changes, for instance adding a new contact name is not a transaction.
Note - if you want to 'cancel' an invoice, and not delete it, you should use the 'View invoices' button under the sales tab - view the invoice and choose the 'Cancel invoice' button. This generates a credit note, and flags the invoice as cancelled.
What is the 'Sales' account?
Whenever you create an invoice the customers account is debited (showing how much he owes you), and the Sales account and VAT Balance accounts are credited.
When the customer subsequently pays you, the payment is moved from the customers account to your bank account.
Therefore the Sales account records the net cost of your sales and is continually credited as you make sales. It will be debited if you have to give a refund by creating a credit note.
See the 'The Transactions' under the Sales page for further information.
What is the 'Purchases' account?
As you create a purchase order, the purchase account is debited, and supplier account credited - indicating the amount you potentially owe on the order.
Once you receive an invoice, the cost is moved from the Purchases account to a stock (or expense) account, and the VAT moved to the VAT balance account.
When you actually pay the invoice, the money goes from your bank account to the suppliers account.
At any point in time the Purchases account balance shows the value of goods or expenses you have on order - and are awaiting an invoice. The suppliers accounts show how much you currently owe that supplier.
Why is the Company logo distorted?
To fit at the top of purchase orders and invoices, the company logo is restricted to a maximum of 200 pixels width and fifty pixels height. When the logo is imported, if the file is larger than these sizes, it is scaled to fit these constraints, and this scaling action may lose detail. To avoid this, import an image file with dimensions 200 x 50 pixels or less.
How do I record payroll transactions?
VATStuff does not calculate payroll - you could create payroll accounts, and use the move money facilty to record payroll expenses - but those expenses would have to be calculated elsewhere.
Why do I get 'Another process has locked the database'?
If two copies of VATStuff run on the same computer - both trying to access the same database, then the first to start will have full access, and the second will only have read-only access.
The second user will see this locked message whenever he tries any function which would write to the database.
To get full access the second user must ask the first user to shutdown his instance of VATStuff - and the second user will also need to shutdown - and then re-start VATStuff, which should now run with full access.
Under Purchases - View orders - What is the 'Projects' button for?
This allows you to create, edit or delete a 'project' - which is nothing more than a reference number and text, with an associated contact name as the project owner.
You can then assign the current purchase order you are viewing to a project.
This is a method of grouping purchases together under a common reference number, which may be useful if you want to track the owner of a number of purchases - or, as the name implies, all purchases associated with a particular project.
As well as creating a project, you can double mouse click to select a project, and view the orders assigned to it. Pressing 'Report' will list all the purchase orders assigned to the selected project.
Under the Reports tab - the Search button can open a project if you know the project reference number.
Reports can be exported to pdf but why is there no print button?
Save the planet! Printing uses electricity, chemicals and trees.
Having said that, the pdf files are opened with your default pdf viewer which usually does have print capabilities.
Why do some reports show a '?' character in certain columns?
In certain cases a report could refer to past deleted data - for example the 'Payments made' report has a column giving the purchase order number associated with each payment, however the purchase order could have been created well before the payment, and the user could have deleted the purchase order information. (Using the 'Delete old data' function under the Admin tab.) In such a case the order number will be unknown and a '?' will be printed in the column instead of the number.
How do I manage multiple companies?
We suggest you create a folder for each company, and create a new database for each company in its folder.
If you are being sent backup files from clients: When you first create the new client company database, do not bother running the startup wizard (choose Cancel when the wizard starts). Just create the database, place the clients backup file into the same folder, and then choose the 'Admin' tab and 'Restore backup' to load the data from the backup file into the database.
Whenever you get a new backup file from your client, again place it in the folder, start VATStuff and choose 'Open' to open the database in the client folder and choose 'Restore backup' again to load in the latest client data.
I have a corrupted database!!
Unless you have been taking regular backups - you have lost your data. Sorry.
If you have a backup file, then using 'Restore backup' under the Admin tab, will restore the database to the point the backup file was created - any later changes will be lost.
It is a wise precaution to keep a rolling history of backups on safe media (not on the same hard disc as your working file).
However - when you first open a database, a check routine may find it faulty, refuse to load it, and revert back to the initial 'choose a database' window. This doesn't give you the opportunity to use the 'Restore backup' button to load your backup file.
To get past this, choose to create a new database, with a new database filename - cancel when the wizard starts, as there is no need to input any information (your restore will overwrite it) - and then under Admin - use 'Restore backup' to restore your backup into this new file.
Can I run this program with the database file on a remote shared drive?
No. The program communicates very heavily and constantly with the database file and is designed to work with the file on a local drive. Though technically a remote drive 'acts' similarly to a local drive, the program would run extremely slowly, and network errors risk corrupting the database. This is not a client-server solution, do not do it.
A better way may be to access the remote server as a terminal, using a solution such as VNC - with the program running on the server and therefore still working locally with the database.
What are the 'Logs' displayed by the Logs button?
As the program is running, on certain events it creates terse messages which are sent to a 'log' file. These are not needed by the normal user but are helpful to the programmer should anything go wrong.
The Logs button displays the contents of the log file. This file does not increase indefinitely, once it reaches a certain size, a new one is created, and the five previous log files are stored - anything older gets automatically deleted so you do not have to worry about deleting them yourself.
Each line consists of the date, time - a process number which is different every time you start up VATStuff - a status string (INFO for normal events - DEBUG for more detailed events if VATStuff is started in debug mode), and finally the information message itself.
If the status is ERROR and followed by several lines starting "Traceback (most recent call last):" - this is a program error condition with a diagnostic trace, which you should record as it may be helpful to track down the bug.
What format is the '.vat' database file?
The .vat file is an sqlite database file, and can be inspected by any sqlite browser program.
It is produced by VATStuff and contains tables of all accounts, transactions, purchase orders etc., If you do use an sqlite browser, do not change the file in any way, otherwise you could introduce errors into VATStuff's operation.
What format is the '.bak' backup file?
The .bak file consists of the database file, and the logo image (if one has been set), set in a tar archive and compressed using bz2.
If the .bak file extension is changed from '.bak' to '.tar.bz2' then the contents will be extractable by any suitable tar extraction program.
What programming language is VATStuff written in?
VATStuff is written in the excellent cross-platform language Python, with the help of some third party libraries.
For further information see Credits and also use the 'Statistics' button above which gives the software versions in use.
What are the command line options to VATStuff?
The VATStuff program may be started from the command line, or from a launcher script by calling:
python vatstuff.py [options] [database-filepath]
Where [options] and [database-filepath] are optional arguments described below.
vatstuff may also have a '.pyw' rather than a '.py' extension on a Windows platform
The initial 'python' may not be required if vatstuff.py has been set to be executable on a Linux platform, or if the extensions '.py' and '.pyw' have been associated with python on a Windows platform - in which case the python interpreter will be called automatically.
The options are:
--version shows the VATStuff version number
-d or --debug sets the most verbose logging
-n or --nologs turn off logging completely
-h or --help shows these options and exits
The optional database-filepath is the filepath of a VATStuff database which will be immediately opened without asking the user to choose a database.
Normally no options, nor the database filepath, are specified, and VATStuff operates with the default level of logging, and on starting presents a window asking the user for the file to open.
In which case the program is simply started with the command:
python vatstuff.py
Describe the vatstuff.cfg configuration file.
The configuration file vatstuff.cfg should not normally be edited by users, but is available for developers wishing to tailor VATStuff for a particular system.
It consists of four sections:
folders - specifies the folder locations of required files.
rates - specifies the default standard and reduced VAT rates.
symbols - specifies the default currency symbols.
logging - specifies if logging is enabled, and debug mode on by default
These logging defaults are overidden if the command line arguments are used.
The default VAT rates and currency symbols are used whenever a new database is created. If a previous database is opened, the values set within the database are used.
Where can I find the software source code?
Currently the source code, with the version history, is available at: http://launchpad.net/vatstuff
However if this should change, check the VATStuff website www.vatstuff.co.uk, which will give the current version information and will link to the source code location.
NEXT TOPIC : Credits