Inprotech: AR Item Import

This little program is quite useful for loading up open items in the debtors ledger, most typically used when transferring information from an old system to Inprotech. It accepts an CSV file of items and loads them up as debit and credit journals.

First issue is that the layout of the import file isn't provided but if you ask the help desk they will give you the functional specification for the program which includes the file layout.

Next issue is that the program requires the NameNo of the client record in Inprotech, which is the internal unique identifier of the record in the Names database. The only place that this is visible is by going into the details of each name record and using the Systems Details menu item to visually read the number, clearly a time consuming task when you are looking to load items for hundreds, if not thousands, of customers.

The way to get around this is to use Excel:

1. Load the old system's account code for the customer against the name record using the account code field (or Search Key 2 as per a previous article).
2. Use SQL to extract a table that has the account code and the name number as the two columns.
3. In Excel, use the VLOOKUP function against the two columns (they will have to be sorted in account code sequence) to get the name number for the account code so that it can be used to import the item.

One word of warning on this program. For debit items, it converts the transaction date as the date of the transaction provided. For credit items, it seems to change that date to the date of the current period for some reason. This means that while the total balance of the load is correct the actual totals by aging period my not be and, if not, will have to be corrected manually to ensure that customer statements are consistent with the previous system. The problem has been reported to CPA but I wouldn't expect it to be corrected at any stage in the foreseeable future.