Sage 100

(Not urgent... but not routine either). **Background**: customer was sold an upgrade to ""c"" Premium (by Sage...), and it was not recognized that they use PR in one of their company codes until we were basically ready to process their upgrade. This was a couple years ago, and we pushed through splitting their system (leaving Standard running with their perpetual keys just for processing payroll). **Currently**: running almost everything in 2016c Premium, with 2017 Standard installed just for PR, using a different company code in Standard (just to make things slightly less confusing when looking at journals / registers). Now, with PR 2.0 out we are being asked about upgrading to v2018 and bringing everything back together again (merging the 2017 Standard PR data with 2016 Premium data, all in one 2018 Premium server). **Question**: has anyone tackled this kind of messy upgrade / merge in 2018 yet? (They do have some DSD enhancements... multicurrency, and one more).

I've never done that before, but my first thoughts on an approach would be to perform the 2017 to 2018 migration first (to a new SQL instance), get new payroll working, and then migrate the 2016 over. You'll probably need to re-create the payroll-using company code again.

We've recently upgraded one of our clients that uses Multicurrency to v2018 Premium & the MC part went really well & is running without issue. They're also a payroll user. The upgrade was not a seamless, painless upgrade... AT ALL... However, they're now running along smoothly, have processed their last 2 payrolls without any issues and are pretty happy/excited about how it works now that the painful parts have been handled. I'm useless to you as far as the messy upgrade/bringing 2 systems together question.

How many employees in payroll? My thinking is aim for a January 1 payroll switch into 2018 Premium so you don't have to mess with payroll history. You'll probably re-key these employees into your 2018 premium. Get 2017 STD to 2018 PREMIUM first then manually set up the employees in the month(s) leading up to 1/1 so you're ready to go in the new year. I don't think there's a tool to merge payroll other than VI perhaps to help with parts.

(Thanks for the replies Wayne and Samantha). Update: We're still in the planning stages (customer sourcing a new server... with confusion about SQL licenses), but the suggestion from Sage is to upgrade 2016 to 2018, then just copy the separate Standard 2017 PR company data into the 2018 MAS90 folder, create the company code, then run company conversion. (There should be no userkeys in the PR system which did not already exist when the PR data was separated from the Live system, and Paperless links are not a concern). Our current plan: Do the v2016 upgrade and Sage recommended PR ""conversion"" to make sure it works. Run PR through year end on the v2017 Standard system. Manually set up the Live company code for processing PR in v2018 (and test it thoroughly). Start the new year's PR in the v2018 Live company code. In January, when year end is done on v2017, reconvert the historical PR company code data (everything in v2018).

Just my two cents, and it clearly has downfalls, and wouldn't be close to best practice. my suggestion would be to upgrade the standard version to 2018 & convert, create a backup of the mas_XXX. Then upgrade the 2017 premium to 2018, conversion and what not. Then create a new company with the exact same company code as the payroll company that you have backed up, with all the same modules. finally restore the backup of that companies mas_company database. by doing this you'll out of the bat lose any system wide settings for the payroll company, any form codes (but you'll have the crystal reports). and you would likely want to append the paperless office data from the payroll versions SY_pdf log file tables. EDIT: i forgot to mention you would want to retain any and all tax tables and such that were used to convert the payroll company as this will still be needed once you re combine the companies (sorry I'm not sure which tables those are) this would be the same methodology i plan to employee for one of my advanced clients though in their case its standard & advanced which makes it a lot simpler.

Thanks for the feedback Jeremy. We considered such a two stage upgrade (as my initial preference), but settled on copying instead of migrating the PR company code. The copy / convert method is still to be tested, but if it works that will allow for the smoothest conversion (while allowing v2018 testing, and finishing the year using v2017).