Export data from datafile to excel format

Question

Background:

Our company uses Sage Line 50 as our accounting software. We generate all of our Sales Orders from this program. We also use MS Access 2010 to store order information and generate our internal shop paperwork and packing slips.

The Problem:

Data entry redundancy. We enter information from Customer Purchase Orders into our Sage software, and then enter the same information into the Access database.

What I am looking for:

A solution that will let me export raw Sales Order data after creating in Sage into MS-Access

What I have tried:

The export process from Sage only allows CSV exports, and is a manual process that cannot be automated at all. I am able to produce this export and then run an append query that will import that data into the Access data, but I am looking to automate this process, perhaps on a daily basis. I have looked into using Crystal Reports (packaged with Sage, which I am told can run automated reports and save in an MS Excel format), but I do not know how to navigate the data files to find the specific sales data I am looking for.

Answer 1

The guys are correct - easiest way to do this would be to use the ODBC driver, however, you must run the correct SQL query and ensure you join the Purchase Order table to the Order item table using the correct fields or it will not return the right data.

One issue you will have is that you only want to pull through the most recent transactions so use a query like this to do that your query would look something like this:-

SELECT *, PURCHASE_LEDGER.ACCOUNT_REF, PURCHASE_LEDGER.E_MAIL FROM PURCHASE_ORDER, PURCHASE_LEDGER INNER JOIN POP_ITEM ON PURCHASE_ORDER.ORDER_NUMBER = POP_ITEM.ORDER_NUMBER WHERE PURCHASE_LEDGER.ACCOUNT_REF = PURCHASE_ORDER.ACCOUNT_REF AND RECORD_MODIFY_DATE >= '2013-04-03 00:00:00'

Alternatively there are many one-click commercial solutions to this problem - do a search on Google for "Sage Integration" and you'll find various suppliers who produce products that will do this for you

Answer 2

What you are trying to do can be automated as I've done it for the last company that I worked for (exporting sales orders and invoices to CSV and to Excel). However, the downer is that it requires the Sage SDK which costs £1500.