MoneyWorks Manual
Using MoneyWorks Datacentre
- Start up MoneyWorks Gold and click Connect on the navigator welcome page.
- Provided that the Datacentre server is on the same subnet as you, and you do not have firewalls blocking DNS-SD (Bonjour), it will appear in the Local Network Browser servers list. Select the Datacentre you want to connect to and click Log In.
If the Datacentre server is on a different subnet, you will need to connect manually.
Select Manual Using IP Address from the Connect Using popup menu, and type in the server's DNS name or IP address. Then click Log In. If the server is configured to use SSL, you must use the servers fully qualified domain name rather than its numeric IP address and you must set the SSL checkbox.
If the Datacentre server itself is configured to require log in, you will first need to type your Datacentre user name and password. If you found the server using the Local Network browser, the user name and password fields will have been enabled only if the server requires them.
A list of documents available on the server will be displayed.
From this point the login process is the same as for connecting to an ordinary MoneyWorks Gold server (see the section Connecting to a shared document in the MoneyWorks Gold User Guide).
- Select the document you wish to connect to
- Type your user name and password for that document
If the document is not password protected you can leave these fields blank. They will be ignored.
- Click Log In
If you are the first user to connect to the document, the server will need to open it first, in which case there will be a slight delay while this happens.
Saving and Rollback
With MoneyWorks Datacentre it is (usually) not necessary to manually invoke the Save command to permanently update the database. This is because the Datacentre will normally close any open documents once everyone has logged off (and, by default, will forcibly log them off once they have been idle for 2 hours).
With Datacentre, sufficiently privileged remote clients can manually invoke the Save and Rollback commands (you must be the only user logged in to the document to use Rollback). With MoneyWorks Gold, only the server operator can do these.
Backups and Archives
If the auto backup option is on, documents will get automatically backed up every time they close (or the Save command is used).
If a new period has been opened, the automatic backup goes into the Archives folder and is dated so that it will not get overwritten. Otherwise backups go into the Backups folder and are stamped with the day of week (1-7). Week-old backups will therefore get overwritten.
Clients can download a backup to their workstation using the Save a Backup command (provided that they have the Backup and Remote Save privileges). This means that they can also use the Accountants Export command to "export" in MoneyWorks format. A side effect of using either of these at a client is that a save and backup is forced on the server at that time. This backup will include/exclude custom plugins for that document as requested by the client.
Off-site backups
Your general server backup system should back up the Backups folder and Archives folder. The .mwgz backup files created by MoneyWorks are generally 20-25% the size of the original documents, thus saving space on the removable backup media, plus the DC will only have the backup files open for writing when it is actually creating them.
Tip: For super-easy off-site backups, set your Backup Path to be in a DropBox, Google Drive, or OneDrive folder.
If you want to, you can manually delete elderly items in the Archives folder if/when you feel you no longer need them and you need the disk space.
Important: The automatic backups and archives made by the DC should be further backed-up to external removable media. At the very least, back up to a different device to protect against failure of the main storage device (hard disk). Back up to removable media and remove the media to an offsite location to protect against fire/theft. Rotate the removable media—one backup copy is not enough. All your backups should not be on-site at the same time.
Do not configure backup systems to back up the live data folder. This may interfere with the operation of the server by locking files and could lead to data loss.
Backing up to network volumes on Windows
Windows Services (such as MoneyWorks Datacentre) do not, by default, have access to network shares. Therefore if you want backups and archives to be written to a volume that is not locally attached to the server that Datacentre is running on, you will need to set MoneyWorks Datacentre to run as a user who has privileges to access the network volume to which you wish backups to be written.
In Services, right-click on the MoneyWorks Datacentre service, and click the Log On tab. Here you can specify a user name and password of a user that the service will run as. Note that this user must also have read/write access to the files that the Datacentre will be serving, otherwise it will of course not be able to access them.
In addition, any network paths should be specified in UNC format (\\server\share\directory), not with a drive letter (actually drive letters set up for the user may work). Note that there is no trailing \ on the end of the path to the folder.
Warning: DO NOT keep the live data files (MoneyWorks Documents folder) on a remote network volume. This will severely impact performance and reliability.