Database Maintenance

[pitstax]

I am a hundred years user of Lacerte and over those years EVERY employer and banks/brokers are passed along from year to year.  I have 700 clients and my database, even after period cleanup has over 2,000 entries.  Every couple of years I try to clean them up because many are duplicates or typos etc. that are retained.

I would LOVE to be able to run some sort of database report that would give me the active employers and banks/brokers so I can go in and get rid of the rest.  (I'm pretty sure that Enron won't be paying any more dividends any time soon...)  I've asked on several occasions but no one at Lacerte seems to care.

BTW, this is all refers to the Table Editor function.

I've got some programming background and I've tried to parse Lacerte data but it's just too buried for me to be able to read their files without a lot of effort which I don't have during tax season.  Anyone have any suggestions about how to see the active datapoints?

[George4Tacks]

I have only used Lacerte for 98 years, but my routine is to go into the table editor occasionally to (a) delete incomplete entries, i.e. no ein, address etc or (b) Delete or correct those with misspelling. It is a tedious process and I only use my 130 years of life experience to do logically culling of the table. 

[pitstax]

Unfortunately that manual process is what I go through as well.  Hoping for a better solution or, at a minimum, a way to identify the active employers/banks/brokers proforma'd into the current year.

The data obviously is there to be parsed but no one at Lacerte is interested in doing anything about this issue nor are they willing to disclose how to read their data even though (it would seem) that every competing program that provides a conversion from Lacerte knows the data layout.

[IRonMaN]

You both look good for your age.

[George4Tacks]

There is a special group that is much younger than us and they can find such things. They are at https://proconnect.intuit.com/community/lacerte-sdk-group/gp-p/501

[pitstax]

Actually strong regular doses of MSDOS work for me.

Thanks to George4Tacks for the tip regarding the programming group.  I'll check it out.

[George4Tacks]

Have you ever tried just a small dose of CP/M? It does wonders for the digestive tract. 

I remember back in the really Dark Ages, when Lacerte had an accounting program that ran on CP/M. Input was really slick - Heads down, account number - amount - enter - Repeat. The problem was processing or sorting that data into statements - Get ready for lunch early and start the program - Stay for dessert - come back and have a cuppa joe - get rid of all the processed lunch - stare at the screen for a while then VOILA!

My machine d'jour was a Kaypro 10.