"Chartered Accountant" Export and Import format

In the Entries file, the "Chartered Accountant" import and export formats enable the exchange of data between an accounting firm and its customers to be organized. The principle is as follows: the accounting firm manages a different data file for each of its customers; each customer, in turn, works on his or her own copy of the data file, using the Light, Standard or PRO version of Office Maker Finance.

Note: Micro Consulting can send you on request a list of accounting firms equipped with Office Maker Finance.

Data exchange

With the Chartered Accountant export format, entries entered by the customer are exported at regular intervals (daily, weekly or monthly) in text format. The entries exported are those whose date falls within the period defined by the customer at the time of export. This file is then transmitted to the accounting firm via the Internet, or on any other data medium.

The accounting firm can then import this file into its own copy of the data file. From the Entries file, simply select the Import command from the File menu, select the Chartered Accountant format and then select the file to be imported in the standard file opening dialog.

The next window allows you to check the name of the sender, the name of the fiscal year, the period concerned, the number of entries and the export date.

A message from the customer to the accounting firm may be included in the exchange file; if so, it appears in the Message field.

Once this information has been verified, simply click on the Import button to import the data.

Please note: any existing provisional entries for the period covered are deleted beforehand. Locked entries, on the other hand, are retained. Exchanged entries do not retain the same numbering in both files.

The accounting firm can then make any corrections to the entries entered by the customer and, if Office Maker Finance PRO version is installed, add Profit/Cost Centers, define and modify Budgets, use this data in spreadsheets or the Report Generator, and print all the documents required.

Of course, the accounting firm can re-export the entries to return them corrected to the customer. In this case, choose the Export command from the File menu and select the Chartered Accountant format. After entering the start and end dates of the period concerned in the dialog box that appears, all that remains is to assign a name to the file so that it can be saved to disk.

Once this file has been transmitted to the customer, it can be imported into the customer's own data file, again using the "Chartered Accountant" format. Entries modified by the accounting firm will thus replace those originally entered by the customer.

Integrity checks

In the "Chartered Accountant" import/export file, Accounts and Journals are automatically exported along with Entries, enabling the program to perform numerous integrity checks automatically. If, for example, the customer has defined new accounts, they will be automatically created in the accounting firm data file, which will be informed by an on-screen message.

Similarly, if the customer modifies an account label, adds new journals or if an anomaly is detected during data import by the accounting firm, a detailed report is displayed. This report can be printed or saved to disk as a text file.