Compiling reports in Reckon Accounts Hosted

peter.neale

I may have asked this before, but I don't recall seeing any answers, so I am refreshing the subject again.  Why do some reports take hours (literally) to compile in Reckon Accounts Hosted, but when I download the same data to our local copy of Reckon Accounts and run exactly the same report with exactly the same data and parameters it takes only seconds?  For example, I need to run a Super Report by Fund each month.  We have about 50 employees with 15-20 super funds.  In Hosted it takes 2 hours+ to compile the report (during which time I can't do anything else in Reckon), but in the local copy it compiles in less than 30 seconds.  Some of our monthly financial reports have the same issues, e.g. P&L Budget v Actual by Class.

John Graetz

Peter.  I find that the super report for me takes more than 6 minutes with only 8 employees and 5 funds. si I certainly share your frustration  One trick that I have learned over the years to improve the speed is to work in single user mode, otherwise it takes far longer.  Even using the desktop version, over a network, meant that the super fund report still took ages in single user mode.  I have no idea what it is with this report that makes the compilation so farcically long.  There were times when I did as you mentioned and copied the file to my local computer - cannot remember anymore what the difference in time that made.  John L G

John Graetz

Yes.  Go to ?File> ?(upper left hand corner) and scroll down to ?Switch to Single-user mode?.  By the way, that is the only way that you are able to do a back-up of your company file.  Are you doing a regular back-up.  Ideally you should be doing it at the end of each day.  Earlier this week another user accidentally lost (deleted) their file and had to resort to a 3 week old backup - lesson well learnt.  I also copy my backup from the Reckon Backup drive to my local computer as extra security in case something happens at Reckon.  John L G

Leonie_7843277

Looking forward to the feedback on this initial enquiry regarding the length of time it takes to have a superannuation report generated... I too have had to spend hours sitting in front of a computer waiting for the report to generate... extremely frustrating!

Rav

Hi folks,
I've run this thread past our Accounts Hosted Development team. They have have advised the two main culprits that can contribute to slower speeds when generating reports are firstly when your .QBW file size is quite large and secondly when in Multi-User mode.

I appreciate this may not be a perfect solution, but if you think the performance is slower than usual please log off (By navigating to File > Exit) then log back in. Doing so will land you on a different server which hopefully yields better performance.

John Graetz

Thanks Rav.  That will be very interesting to trail, which I will do later in the day when the auditors leave and I can once more work in single user mode  John L G

peter.neale

I agree that changing to single user mode can speed everything up a little, not just reports.  I have sometimes used that, but it is not practical when there are other users currently working in the system.  However, I doubt the veracity of the theory that the slowness problem is created by a large .QBW file.  The .QBW file which I am using in the local copy contains the exact same data as the .QBW file in Hosted (as it should because it is a copy) and therefore it should be the same size .QBW file.  As I stated in my original post, the time difference for the same report is huge. 

John Graetz

Rav.  I have run my tests and here are my findings.
1. Because I have a memorised report set for "this month", it was necessary to let that run for this month and then I set it to last month and ran it again.
2..I commenced at 7:15 pm which theoretically could be a quieter time.  This first report for this month comprised 8 employees, 6 super funds and 9 payroll items (incl saly sac) and covered one pay for the month.  The report finished after 244 seconds
3.  I then switched the period to last month, which comprised two pays, still 8 employees, 6 super funds and 9 payroll items.  The report finished after 245 seconds, being one second longer, even though it comprised two pays instead of one.
4.  As suggested, I totally exited RAH, wrote over the Reckon browser page (to really clear it) and opened up another site.  Then using the same browser window again, I keyed to a virgin Reckon site and eventually logged in as normal.  The time now was 7:38 pm.
5.  Same scenario - first run was for this month with item details the same.  Time taken was 201 seconds, a saving of 43 seconds.  The statistics for info are the same as earlier
6.  Changed the date range to last month and ran the report again. This time it took 201 seconds to run, one second longer than the one for this month, despite including 2 pays, and resulted in a saving of 43 seconds again.  The same amount of data was generated.
7.  Presumably, as you suggested, I got on to a different server.
8.  Another observation, which relates to me and my tests today.  When compiling the report, a green ribbon creeps across the page until it reaches the end of the box. In every one of the four tests, the time taken to get to that point is approximately 100 seconds.  That tends to suggest that the programmers think that it should be completed in about 100 seconds (this might be poor logic on my behalf).  Once it gets to that point, one would expect that the report would be about to show up on the screen, but no, the seconds keep on ticking over until it finished. The annoying thing about this is that it impossible to know how long the report might take to finish, because the box is full of the green ribbon at the 100 seconds mark.
9.  Another observation is that it doesn't seem to matter how many pays are included in the report, as the compilation time seems to be the same.
10  Exiting the program totally and then going back again, tends to perhaps support your theory that I got on to a server that wasn't as busy.
11.  It was only at the end of the day, when doing these tests, that I totally exited.  I was logged in for the whole day and during that time, went in and out of multi user mode on a couple of different occasions.
Hope that this might help you in your further investigations.  John L G
 

John Graetz

Rav.  Here are some other statistics regarding the Reckon company file which could be of interest:
1.  File size 84512k
2.  Total transactions 9267
3.  DB file fragments 509
4.  Total Names 1,113

John L G

MBC

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Hosted Super Reports Slow. My Payroll manager is having problems with very slow Super reporting.  It says its building the report and sits on 0% for 20mins, the screen fades and when you click it says not responding, left it a bit longer then it pops up.  He has trouble every time with the Super reports freezing - is this normal?  And what can he try? Thanks

Rav

Thank you for the detailed testing John.
Good to see there were some time savings observed at certain points along the way.

I'll also run your findings and observations past the Hosted QA folks and see if there is anything further they may be able to suggest.

Cheers
Rav

peter.neale

So, having just had a long weekend in Victoria I decided to conduct an experiment over the weekend.  I took home my laptop, logged into Hosted from home, put it in single user mode, and after 10:00 PM on Friday night started the report which usually takes over two hours to compile in the office (Super Report by Fund).  I expected it to still take some time but, bingo, it ran fully in under nine minutes.  What does that tell us?  I was using the same computer with the same data base over a much slower internet connection but in single user mode and late at night.  This tells me that the fault is in Reckon's servers not coping properly with the load during normal office hours.  It is not practical to go into single user mode during office hours, nor is it practical to expect users to take home their computer and run reports late at night.

John Graetz

Peter, your observations are also very interesting and, like me, it shows that the time of day can make a difference.  However, despite that, the burning question is why does this particular report take so long to run?  I just don't seem to have the same problem with any other report.  In addition, other super reports I find to process very quickly.  John L G

peter.neale

Hi John, it's not just this report.  We have similar problems with some of the monthly financial reports, e.g. Profit & Loss by Class, which can lock up the system for that user for several hours.  But I do take your point about inconsistency.  A Super Report by Employee, which draws from exactly the same data as the Super Report by Fund, takes only a few minutes.

Tony_8943394

We have no end of trouble generating reports of all sorts. Hours waiting for basic reports. I have upgraded computers and got fibre broadband. The Reckon Hosted is 10 times slower than Quickbooks 2012/13. Is offline any better?  

John Graetz

Tony - does it make any difference doing this at different times of the day or at night?  Also, do you tend to run these reports in single user or multi user mode?  I cannot say that I have experienced a report taking hours to run, but I do know, as I reported many months ago, that there is at least one super report which can take a long time to run, particularly if working in multi user mode.  John L G

Tony_8943394

Reports run late at night are much faster. Single user is not practical as then more than one person is waiting for the report not doing their work. Basic reports such as time by job detail for one small job take ages.