Reading FMS from Access

[LitVer]

Hi

Is it possible to access FMS tables from Access?

Thank you

[klawd]

Possible? Most likely

From the experience of FMS being a total temperamental POS that seems to be stuck in Windows 95 land, I would be extremely reluctant to go anywhere near its innards, personally.

[PhilNeal]

I don't understand klawd's comment but connecting directly to a finance database would go against every auditor's ruling in the country!

[LitVer]

well I am not much of an FMS fan myself. I think its the worst accounting system ever. Any real company with 2-5m budget (as most schools have) would have trouble surving if they used that kind of software.

But its reporting is limited to say the least, and the user defined reports are not the most easy to do. Exporting reports to Excel is at a sad state as the header lines go all over the place.

Why I could definetely do with an access links is the supplier database. In the new year, we started a brand new FMS database due to funding and bank reasons. But we are missing the hundernds of suppliers. And there is no way of exporting or printing the old suppliers list details.

If I can access FMS tables from Access then I can print the supplier details list.

[LitVer]

I don't understand klawd's comment but connecting directly to a finance database would go against every auditor's ruling in the country!

I am not looking for a read/write connection. Read is all I need. In regards to audit perspective I am not too sure you are correct. Accounting systems like oracle, or Sage allow data to be accessed through ODBC links in a read only way.

As I am not an auditor though I can't say that for sure.

[Ric_]

I would have thought that you would need some kind of auditing to show that the data has been viewed (and by who).

It would be useful to be able to produce pretty charts and the like though.

[Polski]

Many moons ago I was asked to "FOX fix" an old FMS (DOS) error where the user had edited the old D-Base files in Excel.

Personally I wouldn't touch it with a tree trunk unless it was dummy data.

[bishopsgarthstockton]

Whats FMS?

[PhilNeal]

It's the SIMS Financial Management System.

[kylewilliamson]

We used to be an FMS school.. back in the day. However, we've now got the local authority's SAP setup and to be honest, both products seem to miss what's wanted.

Does anybody here use Facility Accounts?

Kyle

[limbo]

Before our move to CMIS we used to have SIMS and FMS - not sure how FMS has moved on since those days (guessing not a lot) but I used to take a copy of the database files and then access these copies with a read only connection for reports.

Making the copy meant it was safe because I was not accessing it live (also helped prevent locked files etc.)

Did this mainly with SIMS student data rather then FMS, but the principle I would have thought is the same.

Alternatively an ODBC connection would probably be read only anyway so no danger or audit problems there.

Just the question about who owns the database - the school or Capita - and therefore whether you are allowed to access it.

[limbo]

@Kyle - nearly forgot, we us a version of Facility accounts and it works, but our Bursar sometimes has problems with it.

This year I think the February upgrade created problems setting up the new financial year and many school had to hang fire for another upgrade which was a bit close to the wire. Fortunately our Bursar had done it pre-upgrade so it was not a problem.

It seems to get more stable with each release.