User Support Forum

I am afraid I need to learn much more than I want to about PowerChurch's data files. Our church has gone from one person doing all accounting and Contributions to two persons using separate computers.

We just learned, to our horror, that we need to <import., not <restore> the information from the two computers to get "cont" info into the fund balances on the "acct" computer..... We have several months of Contributions info that has been posted without producing journal files.

Is there any way to correct this situation without going into the actual data files? Can the Journal files be used as the source? Which file is which?

If I am going the right way, what is a good source of what is in which file and an explanation of file names? I will probably have to use DBF Viewer 2000 because we can't adford FoxPro.

Jhebbard wrote:I am afraid I need to learn much more than I want to about PowerChurch's data files. Our church has gone from one person doing all accounting and Contributions to two persons using separate computers.

We just learned, to our horror, that we need to <import., not <restore> the information from the two computers to get "cont" info into the fund balances on the "acct" computer..... We have several months of Contributions info that has been posted without producing journal files.

Is there any way to correct this situation without going into the actual data files? Can the Journal files be used as the source? Which file is which?

If I am going the right way, what is a good source of what is in which file and an explanation of file names? I will probably have to use DBF Viewer 2000 because we can't adford FoxPro.

FWIW ... there is NO way to import data into the data files. While the data tables themselves are easy to understand, the program does alot of additional cross-checks, processing, etc to populate the data tables.

If these computers are on the same network, you can setup the system so that one computer is the 'client' and the other the server, thus using the same database. If they cannot be networked, then the only way to get the contributions data to the accounting computer is using the Contributions "Posting to a file" option which will then allow you to import the Contributions data to Funds Accounting.

HOWEVER ... since the contributions data has already been posted, there is no other way to get that data to the funds accounting computer other than writing down the weekly totals for each Contribution Fund, and the accountant/treasurer manually creating the entries in the Funds Accounting Powerchurch.

FWIW ... I'd definitely look at networking these computers if at all possible. Having a single database to work from eliminates all these data transfer issues.