Ein/Payer Database not working

[clr600]

For the last 5 or 6 years my Ein/Payer Database has not worked. I have renamed the ein files and have deleted the files all together and the files come back as they were before when I restart ProSeries. What to do next.

I am running professional

[IRonMaN]

@Ashley at Intuit (aka Henry Jr)  @IntuitRichard @Jeff H  @Matt105

Can someone help out our friendly donkey?

[Just-Lisa-Now- · Accepted solution]

you've got the box checked to autofill, right?

[clr600]

yes

[AshleyatIntuit]

The program is designed to 'remember' the EIN and associated information which is what is stored in those EIN Files.  Deleting or renaming the files will essentially break the link for the EIN numbers already stored in your database.  However, the program is designed to regenerate those files each time they are renamed or deleted to begin creating a new database. Why are you deleting it?  What are you trying to change/fix?

[IRonMaN]

"For the last 5 or 6 years my Ein/Payer Database has not worked"

I'm guessing with those donkey hands he can't hold duct tape or a sledge hammer too well, so he is trying the next best thing to unbreak the broken feature.

[Marc-TaxMan]

Ashley:  Does that feature need to be turned on?

[AshleyatIntuit]

No, once a return with the corresponding info is saved, that information should be stored for future inputs.

[IRonMaN]

I should be, but I don't know that is always is and I'm guessing that is the problem the donkey is having.

[clr600]

When I input a w2 and the ein is in the system it does not pick it up and what I was trying to do is delete everything and start 2019 with a new slate but that is not working either and yes the box is checked to autofil. Like I said before It has not worked for a good long time.

[charles]

OMG...I got this working.  No thanks to tech support which simply has no clue about this.  All they could recommend was re-installing the software which does nothing.

I did two things.  I am not sure you need to do both of these.  The second "fix" may be enough to make this work for you.

In the COMMON folder for each year there are several files beginning with EIN that form the EIN database.  Most importantly, there is an EINDB.DBF and an EINDB.CDX.  Think of these two files as a working pair.  The DBF is the database and the CDX is the Index to the Database.

If these files are “broken” or corrupted somehow, reinstalling won’t accomplish anything because this file is not overwritten in the installation process—it better not be, it’s a data file.

Go to Tools . Options > Employer /Payer database and look at the database. 

You should see all of your employers there.  In my case, the database was there but it was not operational. 

In my case, the EINdatabase, was copied—BUT IT WAS NOT WORKING.  But not working, I mean the “autofill” did not work.

I went back through the years, and found that in 2015 the database was working and still works.  Copy the most recent version of EINDB.DBF that you can find that works to all of the other years that doesn’t work. 

I got some functionality at that point but it still wasn’t working well.

The second step is to reindex the DBF file and create a new CDX.  Rename the EINDB.CDX to EINDB.CDX-OLD.  This will disable it.  Then launch the software.  Go to Tools > Options > Employer/Payer Database.  The software should re-build the CDX file. 

In my case, this made it work.  Noticeably, the EIN’s were once again in numerical order.

[charles]

I have figured this out, but it is too complicated to explain here.  Is there a wasy to link up directly.