PS Financials in 2016...

[localzuk]

What are the current views on PS Financials? There's loads of comments about stuff dating back to 2014 or whenever, but I would like to know what people think now.

 

The product looks like it does what we'd want, from a MAT finance point of view, but there's all these comments about "dire support" and update issues. So, I'd like to know - what would we be getting ourselves in to?

 

If you moved away from PS Financials in a MAT, what did you move to?

[Willott]

We use PSF and are happy with it - important thing to do if you go with them is fully test the setup before it's deployed (they provide a list of things to test) - most of the complaints have been related to things which are user testing points (like do the POs etc appears as you want them to). It's built on SQL Server and so some of the basic support can be done in house (the odd reset of IIS for example, which is getting rare now). Support is usually fairly responsive on other bits as well, although I do have 1 open ticket at present which I haven't had a response on (thanks for reminding me to chase). When we purchased it was the only option that suited - what else are you looking at?

[localzuk]

Bumping as I posted late in the day yesterday.

[mb2k01]

I've probably posted some of those 2014 comments, and to be honest my opinion hasn't changed much.

We have the locally hosted version of PSF, which itself has a web front end for non-finance staff. However, PSF also have a pure web version which they host, which I know some schools have a better opinion of.

 

We were / are stuck between a rock and a hard place - the finance team and a number of other schools combined on the order and it was a significant investment to say the least, so they are keen on seeing it through to the end and getting maximum ROI. Add that to the fact that there wasn't, and to a certain degree still isn't, many genuinely viable alternatives out there either, we are stuck.

 

Support is frustrating as it has to go through one of 3 named contacts - none of which are IT staff! So for a technical support enquiry from our school or another hosted school, our team then have to go through someone in Finance to talk to PSF as they refuse to talk to us. That is all down to cost, as apparently you have to pay for additional named people!

 

Again, due to cost, we regularly run out of licenses as people use remote sessions and leave their PSF clients open. Those have to be claimed back by killing the rdp sessions after ringing around to make sure it is OK.

 

There are frustrating things the system does and doesn't do. It feels like a product written in the early 2000's. Design of the web front end for users is poor, slow and clunky. You have to use wildcards % marks to search for things. You have a character limit in the description field of a purchase order REQ for instance - no nice copying and pasting of an item description of a block of text.

Those in finance who use the actual applications have a slightly improved UI, but if you're wanting wider staff usage and paperless ordering / invoicing etc, they are stuck with the web interface.

 

I believe FMS has moved on a bit in relation to MATs, but haven't actively looked due to the extreme unlikely possibility of us moving yet.

I was in touch with Sage at BETT last year who were in the stages of making a dedicated product for MATs, and had a followup meeting which looked like they would have a very promising product. I'm curious whether they may reveal that at BETT this year perhaps.

 

All in all, PSF does the majority of what is required, but came in at a very premium price. It might just be me, but for that price I want a developed product, intuitive UI, with less restrictive support.

[localzuk]

3 named people? For how many schools?

 

If we're buying in for 6 schools and 2 nurseries, we'd expect to be able to have a person from each school, plus IT support, plus the central office people be able to request support. Else, what are these "location" licenses at £2k per location (plus all the extras) providing us with?

 

We determined that due to how we intend to operate, we would be buying a license for each person that uses the system - so concurrency wouldn't be an issue. Increases the cost, sure, but we would need all the staff with access to be able to get in at the same time.

 

FMS has moved on a bit, but we still have to spend *days* generating the accounts and various reports each year for the EFA and the like. We also have to manually deal with bank reconciliation, there's no digital workflow for POs (everything is still done by signing paper bits), the various reports like SOFA and whatever have to be generated by our accountants, when other systems can do it automatically.

 

Put simply, FMS is not up to the task in my view.

[Meldrew]

We've had it a year and we are still having support remoting in to fix things. They usually break something else when they do - I start to think they're keeping themselves in a job. The (web portal) UI is dire. We wanted to roll out the portal to budget holders so they can raise their own requisitions, but its simply too unintuitive to do that without having a massive amount of support available to hand hold them through. For us in IT support, we do raise them using the portal, but PSF keeps losing our orders all the time. Just last week, I raised an order. It got lost in PSF somewhere. I raised it again. It also got lost. In the end we resorted to a paper order.

 

Regarding stability, we have been asked by PSF support to setup an overnight scheduled task to restart a service on the server because otherwise PSF comes to a grinding halt. Apparently this is Microsoft's fault.

 

Want to search for an order - good luck, its in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

 

It is a very unpolished product at a premium price. I'd rather use the old DOS version of SIMS than this - at least that worked most of the time.

 

Worst software ever.

[2ilent8cho]

When we were in this position a year ago our Bursar looked at PS Financials as some other local schools had gone down that route, but decided to go HCSS HCSS Accounting | Financial Accounting Software for Education since its 100% web browser based it got my vote too.

[sippo]

We are a MAT with the hosted PSF solution. We moved from in-house PSF to their hosted solution.

 

Our finance team are based in one office, headteachers have access to the web portal.

 

Had no issues that I am aware of. We've been a customer for around 5 years +.

[FragglePete]

We've been using PSF for a number of years here; primarily when we converted to an academy and moved away from FMS.

 

To be honest, it's a been a bit of a nightmare in the early days, with support, not being installed correctly, a migration project that was a bit of a joke, etc. However, support has got better recently, but still takes a couple of days to respond. But, they do have a reputation for wanting to charge for anything they feel falls slightly out of the scope of support.

 

The BM here has also got HCSS running along side too, which they seem to love and am hoping that we'll move over to this in the future.

 

We're still running a version that needs .ini files to be setup correctly which is in the users roaming directories which has caused us some issues, but they do have a new version that doesn't use this method any more, but, that would be chargeable to change.

 

Pete

[aguacate]

PS Financials (from a 2011 and a 2016 implementation), in a nutshell, 1. polished sales talk, 2. poor implementation (product is far too complicated hence the endless support calls), and 3. Cue PS Financials management claiming that no one is experiencing these problems, however once you have gone through the considerable pain it works ok, online portal is dire though, corero which seems like a work experience students cooked it in a weekend has a more intuitive portal.

[MrEprise]

We have it installed here and to echo what some have said, it's not particularly that great and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Support is about average although in the whole time we've had it (5-ish years) we've still got 2 outstanding issues they've yet to provide any solution to.

 

For instance, the web portal often crashes and IIS needs restarting on a regular basis. Much like @Meldrew above, PSF thinks this is Microsoft's fault. When we last spoke to someone at Microsoft about the issue, they came to the conclusion that it's a fault with the way PSF have coded their interface between the software and IIS. Nethertheless, there's been no resolution to this, at least until someone stops playing ping pong.

 

Next one is with Document Emailer. PS Financials uses this as a way of emailing various documents/notices to suppliers when orders are processed. However, unlike a number of programs I've used prior that require a SMTP server and a random email address to send from, this requires a physical email account to send from which is fine in a way except the software is very picky about the account you use. Basically, we've tried a number of accounts which have worked then failed to work bar the one we're using now and all of these have been our own user accounts from various members (past and present) of our IT Support team and Support have yet to resolve the issue nor tell us what is required of an email account for it to work. We worked on the assumption at one point that an email profile required pairing with a user account with Domain Admin privileges but this turns out not to be the case at all.

[mb2k01]

Next one is with Document Emailer. PS Financials uses this as a way of emailing various documents/notices to suppliers when orders are processed. However, unlike a number of programs I've used prior that require a SMTP server and a random email address to send from, this requires a physical email account to send from which is fine in a way except the software is very picky about the account you use. Basically, we've tried a number of accounts which have worked then failed to work bar the one we're using now and all of these have been our own user accounts from various members (past and present) of our IT Support team and Support have yet to resolve the issue nor tell us what is required of an email account for it to work. We worked on the assumption at one point that an email profile required pairing with a user account with Domain Admin privileges but this turns out not to be the case at all.

 

We had to implement an internal SMTP server and relay to get this to work! Completely crazy!

We only did it as the whole issue ended up about 80% us and 20% them in terms of proactive investigation and attempted resolution etc.

[Willott]

Not sure how we're getting so lucky with it... the issue we've had were due to an external finance consultant doing part of a transaction...

 

With regards MyPortal, in terms of the description field being short, if you enter an * (I think), it will then pop up a box to allow fuller entry when you tab on. You can also copy fields down by putting a "." in the box (useful for multiline orders with same nominal/cost centre). @Meldrew's missing order issue suggests something misconfigured either in sentinel or possibly document advancement either in distribution or MyPortal, but difficult to know for definite - are you raising a REQ, and this going to someone to REQAUTH before it goes PORD, or are you raising PORD? And searching wise, I think newer builds don't require the % - we're on build 22 - I think there may be some performance improvements in there as well.

 

Doc emailer - do you have separate doc emailer, statement emailer and remittance emailer or are you still on the single program? We have the 3 program version and able to connect to O365 to send emails (logging in with 1 user credential but sending from shared account).

 

And for those on less than V4 - if you speak nicely to them, you can do the upgrade yourself, but it's fairly SQL heavy (so if you're happy in SQL, that's fine). If you're on V4 looking to go to V6 - they're doing a reduced cost upgrade, but I'm negotiating a self install presently.

 

I'll see if I can get one of the Dev guys to put his head in to give pointers.

[MrEprise]

Doc emailer - do you have separate doc emailer, statement emailer and remittance emailer or are you still on the single program? We have the 3 program version and able to connect to O365 to send emails (logging in with 1 user credential but sending from shared account).

 

The single one. Had no idea there was a 3 program version so next time we contact them, we'll ask about that (though I'm surprised they haven't got us to try it before.)

[Willott]

The single one. Had no idea there was a 3 program version so next time we contact them, we'll ask about that (though I'm surprised they haven't got us to try it before.)

 

The 3 program I think is part of the V4 update, so that may be why you don't have it. Are you using psfwebportal513 rather than myportal as well?

[sonofsanta]

I raised a ticket on the 8th because out of nowhere (which is a typical pattern for PSF problems--they appear suddenly for no reason) adding new lines to a draft now deletes all the lines you'd previously added before you hit save. Which essentially makes drafts useless, and means you have to fill an order out in one go and hope you don't get interrupted so that the session times out.

 

Guess when I'm likely to hear back from that logged case? No, really, please guess, because I have no idea. Still got nothing from them.

 

All the comments from 2014 are still valid. There's no development and the company still behaves the same. Every now and then I'll get a new build in the post, usually in response to someone raising a ticket and PSF going "oh yeah, we fixed that a couple of builds ago, we'll send you the new one", and said new build usually takes away as much as it adds. And then arbitrarily shuffles a couple of other things about, so muscle memory for menus gets disrupted. And resets everyone's preferences so we have to go round one by one adding the budget reports back in for people, cos there's no way of controlling it centrally (at least, not so far as we've ever been told). Much as it'd be nice to be told when there's an update and get a download link, I don't know if I'd want to update regularly. It's more grief than it's worth most of the time.

 

It's horribly unfriendly on the interface, horribly insecure (both in design and in their working practice--I bet I know everyone's admin password, and I certainly know where it'll keep your network user password in plain text; I hope your install doesn't use domain admin credentials to run its services!), it's disorganised and convoluted to do anything in... it is, by far and away, my most hated piece of software. No staff here like it, apart from Finance and I think that's a case of "anything's better than the old version of SAP through an ancient Citrix connection to county" and the devolved workload implemented alongside PSF i.e. we fill our own orders out now, rather than filling out a spreadsheet and Finance entering it onto the system.

 

FWIW, we use the HCSS five year planning software, and that works like a dream, and HCSS themselves are a pleasure to work with. If they have an equivalent system then you should probably look at that. For various reasons beyond my ken, PSF was the only option for us at the time we had to move (County booting us off the SAP farm), and now we're stuck with it. I wish we weren't. I loathe that we have to give them money for this crock.

 

ETA: and +1 to all the reports of support wanting to make every last damn little tweak a chargeable project. If you're lucky, you'll eventually find a support person who knows what they're on about and will be able to do these five minute jobs for you, but if you get the head of support picking up your ticket? Anything you could ever dream of asking for turns out to be a development request requiring a charge.

Edited December 13, 2016 by sonofsanta

[Willott]

And resets everyone's preferences so we have to go round one by one adding the budget reports back in for people, cos there's no way of controlling it centrally (at least, not so far as we've ever been told). Much as it'd be nice to be told when there's an update and get a download link, I don't know if I'd want to update regularly. It's more grief than it's worth most of the time.

 

Does it loose the report or does it loose the widget for reports (and if you readd the widget does the report reappear)? If it's the first, check out the M_WEB_REPORTS and M_WEB_REPORTS_CATEGORIES tables - should allow you to make them in bulk. If it's the second, are you recreating the ASP.net application pool each time or doing something with that?

[Meldrew]

With regards MyPortal, in terms of the description field being short, if you enter an * (I think), it will then pop up a box to allow fuller entry when you tab on. You can also copy fields down by putting a "." in the box (useful for multiline orders with same nominal/cost centre). @Meldrew's missing order issue suggests something misconfigured either in sentinel or possibly document advancement either in distribution or MyPortal, but difficult to know for definite - are you raising a REQ, and this going to someone to REQAUTH before it goes PORD, or are you raising PORD? And searching wise, I think newer builds don't require the % - we're on build 22 - I think there may be some performance improvements in there as well.

 

We are raising REQ which I get a sentinel email to say needs authorisation. I authorise and let our finance team know that I've done this (PSF won't alert them to the fact that a REQ has been raised - it sits there until someone goes in to check) but somehow its not there as its been lost.

 

We have had v4 installed for almost a year (it was installed the first few days of January), so were we sold an old version (at huge cost) a year ago, or have they now produced 2 more versions that they want to charge for already? In the massive yearly licensing cost is software upgrades not included?

[sonofsanta]

Does it loose the report or does it loose the widget for reports (and if you readd the widget does the report reappear)? If it's the first, check out the M_WEB_REPORTS and M_WEB_REPORTS_CATEGORIES tables - should allow you to make them in bulk. If it's the second, are you recreating the ASP.net application pool each time or doing something with that?

It's the latter--the Shared Reports window disappears (replaced by some other reports window that tells users they don't have permission and causes much panic) and needs to be re-added from the web catalog thingummy.

 

I imagine something is happening with the Application Pool because the update process (as told to me by PSF in a document full of lies, and refined by me into something more accurate) involves uninstalling MyPortal and then installing the new one and copying a few config files back in.

[Meldrew]

I raised a ticket on the 8th because out of nowhere (which is a typical pattern for PSF problems--they appear suddenly for no reason) adding new lines to a draft now deletes all the lines you'd previously added before you hit save. Which essentially makes drafts useless, and means you have to fill an order out in one go and hope you don't get interrupted so that the session times out.

 

Guess when I'm likely to hear back from that logged case? No, really, please guess, because I have no idea. Still got nothing from them.

 

All the comments from 2014 are still valid. There's no development and the company still behaves the same. Every now and then I'll get a new build in the post, usually in response to someone raising a ticket and PSF going "oh yeah, we fixed that a couple of builds ago, we'll send you the new one", and said new build usually takes away as much as it adds. And then arbitrarily shuffles a couple of other things about, so muscle memory for menus gets disrupted. And resets everyone's preferences so we have to go round one by one adding the budget reports back in for people, cos there's no way of controlling it centrally (at least, not so far as we've ever been told). Much as it'd be nice to be told when there's an update and get a download link, I don't know if I'd want to update regularly. It's more grief than it's worth most of the time.

 

It's horribly unfriendly on the interface, horribly insecure (both in design and in their working practice--I bet I know everyone's admin password, and I certainly know where it'll keep your network user password in plain text; I hope your install doesn't use domain admin credentials to run its services!), it's disorganised and convoluted to do anything in... it is, by far and away, my most hated piece of software. No staff here like it, apart from Finance and I think that's a case of "anything's better than the old version of SAP through an ancient Citrix connection to county" and the devolved workload implemented alongside PSF i.e. we fill our own orders out now, rather than filling out a spreadsheet and Finance entering it onto the system.

 

FWIW, we use the HCSS five year planning software, and that works like a dream, and HCSS themselves are a pleasure to work with. If they have an equivalent system then you should probably look at that. For various reasons beyond my ken, PSF was the only option for us at the time we had to move (County booting us off the SAP farm), and now we're stuck with it. I wish we weren't. I loathe that we have to give them money for this crock.

 

ETA: and +1 to all the reports of support wanting to make every last damn little tweak a chargeable project. If you're lucky, you'll eventually find a support person who knows what they're on about and will be able to do these five minute jobs for you, but if you get the head of support picking up your ticket? Anything you could ever dream of asking for turns out to be a development request requiring a charge.

 

Completely agree. Its like this company are running a scam - called PSF.

 

Meldrew

[Willott]

We are raising REQ which I get a sentinel email to say needs authorisation. I authorise and let our finance team know that I've done this (PSF won't alert them to the fact that a REQ has been raised - it sits there until someone goes in to check) but somehow its not there as its been lost.

 

We have had v4 installed for almost a year (it was installed the first few days of January), so were we sold an old version (at huge cost) a year ago, or have they now produced 2 more versions that they want to charge for already? In the massive yearly licensing cost is software upgrades not included?

 

OK, if you search in myportal for purchasing documents of type req do you see it? If you take a note of the REQ number before you authorise it, then we can look in DB directly for it as well. When finance can't find it, do they have search criteria in, or blank them all and look for suppliers with items?

 

V4 was 2014, they then skipped a number and V6 has been released this summer. The chargeable is for installation (ie consultancy to install it). The V4 to V6 upgrade is apparently relatively easy as there aren't nominal remaps etc, so should be installable by someone with SQL knowledge (I'm due to do a test on this in the next week). Docs for self install have just been completed.

 

I know I may not restore your faith in PSF, but if I can assist in you using it as that's what you've got, then that's fine

[Willott]

It's the latter--the Shared Reports window disappears (replaced by some other reports window that tells users they don't have permission and causes much panic) and needs to be re-added from the web catalog thingummy.

 

I imagine something is happening with the Application Pool because the update process (as told to me by PSF in a document full of lies, and refined by me into something more accurate) involves uninstalling MyPortal and then installing the new one and copying a few config files back in.

 

That's interesting - we keep the same application pool, so user IDs stored in DB should remain the same. The installation program shouldn't remove or create the application pool, I think the creation of the pool is somewhere in the instructions, but if you don't remove the old one, you should be able to just use it in place. The info is stored in the PSFSYSTEM db, under aspnet_personalization*. If it's something that is the same across all users, you could potentially make a change in the personalizationallusers table and this will apply across all (unless they have a per user). I think if you make the change you want as 1 user, then use SQL to take the data across from peruser to allusers this works (been a little while since I've done it).

 

 

And the every little thing being chargeable has been raised with them. They are starting to realise what the education market requires in comparison to corporate sector, and hopefully their pricing will shift to understand that too.

Edited December 13, 2016 by Willott

[MrEprise]

The 3 program I think is part of the V4 update, so that may be why you don't have it. Are you using psfwebportal513 rather than myportal as well?

 

Yup. We have a support contract but no idea whether that includes software upgrades or not.

[Willott]

The pre-v4 to v4 upgrade does a lot of nominal remapping and things, which is what makes it more complex and why they suggest a consultant does it. The V4 to V6 doesn't really have this remapping, so should be easier. It is possible to do the pre-v4 to V4 yourself, but may need some support - I was fortunate to be in contact with the guy who wrote the upgrade who assisted with my queries - this does also mean that I have a fair idea of where lots of things sit in PSF. I think we had to pay £45 for the upgrade disc, but you could probably argue this away.

[sonofsanta]

Update to my support query upthread: it has taken PSF 26 days (8th Dec to today) to reply to my ticket with "we fixed that in build 22, do you want it?"