Sage is in the process of moving all their customer support onto one unified portal for all of their products. If you are having problems logging onto the new portal, you can contact Sage Portal Support Directly at:
1-877-828-6372 or customer.portal@sage.com
The Customer Portal is located at: https://customers.sagenorthamerica.com/.
Categories: Information Technology · Sage Timberline Office · Software News · Tips & Tricks
Microsoft has several upcoming End of Support dates that all users of Microsoft Windows should know about. End of Support means that Microsoft will no longer create updates or hot fixes to address issues with the products. The most important point to this is that Microsoft no longer patch security issues for these products that are out of support.
All versions of Windows 2000 will go out of support on July 13, 2010. The only way to address this is to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. Please consult your IT provider on options to replace any Windows 2000 systems as soon as possible to limit your exposure.
Windows XP Service Pack 2 will go out of support on July 13, 2010. This can be addressed by upgrading to the latest service pack from Microsoft. It is recommended that all users of Windows XP apply Service Pack 3.
Windows Vista with no service pack (RTM) will go out of support on April 13, 2010. This can be addressed by upgrading to the latest service pack from Microsoft. It is recommended that all users of Windows Vista apply Service Pack 2.
For more information on Microsoft’s Product Lifecycle Policy, you can checkout their FAQ.
Categories: Information Technology · Software News
Tagged: Microsoft
Sage Support will email all current Sage Timberline Office clients on support an email alert around the second week of December which will have a link to download the Year End software changes to the following versions of STO:
Read the release notes that accompany the alert for the specific changes in the Year End update to see if you are impacted by any of them. If you use STO to generate government forms (i.e. W2′s & 1099′s) and any of the listed forms on the update are changed, you will want to apply the update.
You should download the 2010 tax update after you are done processing 2009 Payroll and have closed the 2009 year in Payroll, but before you process your first payroll of 2010. This task is done inside the Payroll application under Tools -> Download Taxes or under Sage Desktop under Payroll -> Tools -> Download Taxes. This typically only needs to be done one time from a workstation.
Sage support will send the Year End Software update to all clients who are currently on support. This will be in the form of an email alert which will probably be sent anytime in the time frame of December 1st to December 15th. The update inself will be a link in the email to download from the Internet.
Before you print tax forms that are due before January 31st. Typically, these are the Payroll W2 forms and the Accounts Payable 1099 forms. You can do your year end processing on your current software, but make sure you load the update before printing this forms in January.
Specific instructions will be included in the email alert from Sage.
In general, the steps would be:
No. You should be able to close the year in the current version of the software you are using.
No. You can move transactions to history at any time.
Categories: Sage Timberline Office
Tagged: updates, Sage Timberline Office, Tips, Software
A common ruse that hackers will use to compromise your system is to send an email to an unsuspecting user claiming to be a software update to patch their system to correct some critical security flaw. In reality, the attached file is a virus or Trojan program that will compromise your system. An example email could look like this:
Update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express (KB910721)Brief DescriptionMicrosoft has released an update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express. This update is critical and provides you with the latest version of the Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express and offers the highest levels of stability and security. Instructions
Quick Details
System Requirements
|
In the case of Microsoft, the will NEVER email you an attachment to run on your PC to fix a problem. Microsoft will always direct you to go to their software update web sites at windowsupdate.microsoft.com or update.microsoft.com. Microsoft may legitimately send you a security alert email, but they will reference one of the previous sites to get the security fix they want to communicate about.
Don’t be a victim and don’t fall for this common ruse.
Categories: Information Technology
Tagged: IT support, Microsoft, updates
Microsoft will publish security and critical updates and make them available for you to install on your computer to protect your system from recently discovered security problems or other issues. Typically, Microsoft will publish these on the 2nd Tuesday of the month as part of their normal updating process. Because of the large number of products Microsoft develops, there is hardly a month that goes by that there is not a couple of updates for at least one of them (Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Exchange Server, SQL Server, etc.) Sometime after that 2nd Tuesday of the month, your computer should have an icon appear down by the system tray (bottom right by the clock) that informs you that updates are ready to be installed.
For Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 or Windows 7 systems, this icon will look like this: 
For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 the icon will look like this: 
If you are not being prompted to install updates, check with your IT staff to have them check your computer, the automatic updates mechanism may be broken or disabled. It is important that these updates be loaded within a reasonable amount of time (within a week or so of it being released.)
It is a good idea to load these updates WHEN YOU ARE PREPARED TO REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER. Too many times we will see customers install updates and then NOT reboot the computer when prompted at the end. We periodically get support calls with quirky things going on with a computer or server and when we log on, we notice the system has not been rebooted after installing updates. We reboot the system (as it is prompting us to do that) and “Ta Da!”, the problem is fixed. The problem was caused by NOT rebooting the system after updates were installed!
Once a month, you should be seeing the icons above and installing the updates. Don’t forget to install updates on your servers too. There is a good chance if your workstation is prompting you to install updates, the server is waiting to have updates installed to. Do not even start installing updates unless you are prepared to reboot the computer.
Categories: Information Technology
Tagged: Microsoft, Software, updates
Lara Libbey
Towner Blackstock
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