Self-troubleshooting techniques

Overview

Report writing is as much art as it is science.  As a result, it is both exact and subtle.

There are many factors that can impact the results of a report and sometimes you may look at report and...

• See a different value than what you expect or than what someone else sees

• Wonder what data lies behind a particular value

• See no data and expect something else

Let's look at an overview of techniques that you can apply to help you resolve general issues.  For specific error messages, please type the error text in the search bar of this Help Center to find a more specific symptom/cause/resolution article.

Perform a full refresh

A Full Refresh reloads all data associated with the Velixo functions in your report.  This includes all new transactions in the database, any transactional data that was already loaded, and any new underlying information in your database (such as changes to the chart of accounts, subaccounts, branches, etc.).

Look for any error message during refresh

We all tend to dismiss on-screen messages, out of habit.  However, it can be vitally important to gather all information we can whenever we are trying to troubleshoot an issue.  As a result, pay special attention to any messages that appear.  Write them down and try looking for the message within the Velixo online Help Center.

Try to login with another, known, good user account from the machine involved

Having another person (especially an administrator) run the report (from the same computer) can provide valuable information.  If the results are different, this indicates that the difference is due to some access rights within the ERP and not due to some other influence related to the specific machine.

• Acumatica/MYOB/Cegid: It may be necessary to adjust the access rights to one or more of the underlying Velixo generic inquiries.  After changing the access rights of the affected user, make sure to do a Full refresh (see above) on any device where this user has previously run reports to ensure the caches are properly reloaded.
• Sage Intacct: visit: Sage Intacct configuration prerequisites.

Try to download and run a sample report from our online Help Center

We can provide credentials on request for accessing our internal demo Acumatica.  In this way, you can ensure that your report works against known data and compare it with the same data we can retrieve with the report.

If you are using Velixo Classic, ensure you are using the latest version

As features are released or updated, they first appear in the Insider Channel.

You will want to follow the instructions to download and install the Insider Channel release.

Use Drilldown

Using the Velixo drilldown feature to compare differences between two users seeing different data can help highlight accounts/ledgers/branches/sub accounts/etc. which may be restricted by access rights or restriction groups within the ERP.

• Acumatica/MYOB/Cegid: Using Drilldown
• Sage Intacct: Drilldown for Sage Intacct

View the data within the ERP

Is the user able to view the data from within the ERP?  Remember that the user is subject to the same access rights (which apply to their use of the ERP) when they are using Velixo Reports.  If running a financial report from within the ERP shows the same values as running the financial report using Velixo Reports, that would be the expected results.  If those values are not what is expected, it may be necessary to adjust access rights or restriction groups in order for the user to see the desired data.

Search our Knowledge Base portals and our Community forums

It is likely another user already experienced your challenge, and you may find the answer you are looking for directly in the Velixo-documented Knowledge Base Articles portal, or directly from the Velixo community through our many forums.

Restart your computer

Sometimes, it is a good idea to close all your Excel workbooks to both let Excel and Velixo NX auto updates (this occurs every month and a half for Velixo NX). 

There are other times when Excel may have multiple instances running - and one or more of them can interfere with others.  It is possible to use Windows Task Manager to check for and close all instances of Excel, but the easiest way to help ensure that no extra instances are running is to restart the computer and then re-test the file that has been causing the issue.

Separate Functions into Separate Cells

If you have a formula returning an error (or nothing) and that formula contains multiple Velixo functions (either added or appended together), try separating each function into its own cell.  This will give you more information about which specific function is causing an issue.

Look for Error Capturing

Performance-wise, error handling in Excel is extremely expensive.  So, try to avoid having too many functions on the worksheet that return an error. 

• Best: use array-aware functions where the formula spills only as far as the source spilling range (e.g. list of accounts)

• Second best: use the technique of IF(Account<>"", VXFORMULA, 0)

• Worst: IFERROR(VXFORMULA, 0) - the problem is two-fold.  Excel has to take a lot of time computing the cells that contain the errors, and then has to perform all the calculations involved with the IFERROR functions.