Welcome to FRxBuzz, the tips, tricks and news blog about financial reporting with FRx Software.
I am a CPA and I specialize in FRx, and I write about how to use FRx more effectively. Most of my posts come directly from things that I run across in consulting engagements that I think other users would benefit from.
Oh by the way, these posts are primarily for current FRx users and presume a passing familiarity with the FRx user interface.
These posts involve things like Viewing FRx report in Outlook without email (for your CFO for instance), using FRx with Excel on Graphing with FRx and creating Color Coded Budget Variances, how-to’s such as Creating PDFs, report design for tough reports like Creating Quarter To Date Reports, and the Top 12 FRx Tricks I’ve gleaned over the years. See the folders on the right hand side of this page for more. Or use the search box.
New to FRx? Or At Capacity?
New to FRx though? And need some help? Some companies just get help from their VAR (reseller), but others have industry-specific or unusual requirements, and want to carve out the financial reporting piece for an FRx specialist’s attention.
Consulting
If you want information about consulting engagements, see FRx Consulting. I don’t do Crystal or SQL Server or ERP implementations (although I used to!). FRx is all I do. And I’m always happy to hear about an upcoming FRx project.
These Tips will work with FRx for any General Ledger
Did you know that FRx integrates with about 50 different GLs? The ones I see most often are Dynamics GP, Dynamics SL, Sage (MAS 500, MAS 200 and MAS 90) and Epicor. But I also see FRx used with Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV, Viewpoint, Platinum, SyteLine, Clarus (aka SQL Financials), Epicor iScala, and even JD Edwards a few years back. There is also an FDM (financial data mart) version which links FRx to a completely custom GL. In every instance, however, FRx user interface remains the same (although Axapta and Navision use a Dimension Wizard before you ever get to the FRx interface). So all these tips, tricks and ideas will apply to every GL. For more information, see the post at FRx Works With Lots of GLs.
Location
I’m in Austin, Texas, about a 3 hour flight to the east coast and 3.5 hours to the west coast.
Experience
Have been consulting with FRx since 1995. Time flies!
Cheers! Jan
First time on this site. Very useful information.
Microsoft frx site info is weak.
Hi Jan,
I really do love you new training manual and the links. I just recently ran into a situation and was hoping you might be able to guide me in the right direction. We have a 126 user license for FRx Designer and a 126 user license for FRx Viewer. I know that is an tremendous amount and the most I have ever seen in a company. Just recently we started to run into some serious wackiness with reports. While I have done research on the web with regard to compacting and repairing, do you think it is wise to compant and repair the database on a regular basis or would we be better off backing up the data, deleting the G32 file and rebuilding that? It always scares me to shrink files incase of corruption and having to possibly be stuck rebuilding templates. What do you think or what would you do or advise? Thank you for reading and I hope to hear a response from someone or you soon?
Thank you,
John Lindgren
VeraSun Energy Corporation
FRx is based on Access files… I’ll just leave it at that. With as many users as you have accessing FRx, report corruption is almost unavoidable. I would recommend that you make backups of your .F32 files at least once a week if regular changes are made, and every time a user creates a new report. I would keep these .F32 files in at least 2 locations, one offsite. Keep them for years rolling, they don’t take up much space and you never know when you will need to get back to a point previous to corruption.
Sometimes, if you are already experiencing wackiness, you can correct some kinds of damage by exporting your reports as .TDB files (Company | Specification Sets | Export) and re-import them into a new .F32 file. You can do this by clicking New and naming the specification set, the new .F32 you can make on the fly. Simple change the name of the .F32 file that defaulted into the Specification set location path.
Example:
//server name/FRx/SysData/FRxRpts.F32
Change to
//server name/FRx/SysData/NewFRxRpts.F32
Save the new specification set and your ready to populate it with your old reports.
To export the reports (catalogs) as well as all of the component building blocks (rows, columns and trees) follow the steps below:
Note: Do this when everybody is out of FRx and make sure you don’t have anything open by going to File | Close all. It’s also best to turn off FRx Security for this as well.
1. Highlight the specification set in the field on the left and click export.
2. Select all catalogs, rows, columns and tress and click export.
3. Accept the default location to save the .TDB to (the IO_Data folder of the company currently set as ‘Default’) or browse to a new location.
To import your reports into your new specification set (and new .F32 file)
1. Highlight the new specification set in the field on the left and click import.
2. Select the .TDB you exported above and click import.
3. Go to Company | Information and select your new .TDB in the specification set window and click save.
If this process didn’t fix your report damage you need to try to restore your .F32 from an earlier backup. Sometimes the seed of corruption are sewn before you realize it. An .F32 you think is good may actually be well on its way to being unusable. We see this sometimes when users say “We restore from a backup and that works for a few weeks but then we have the same issues.” This is why you need to have a history of your .F32 files.
If you do not have an .F32 backup that will work or if you do but it does not have a lot of reporting work recently done in it, you need to send the .F32 file into support. We can SOMETIMES fix them but it’s no sure thing.
If support cannot fix the reports and you do not have a backup… well it’s not looking good.
You may be able to fix issues with a specific report by simply assigning the same building blocks (rows column and tree) to a new catalog. This will fix the issue if the catalog was damaged. If it still doesn’t work then the row may be damaged. Open the row and go to File | Save As and give it a new name. Attach the new row to the new catalog. If it still doesn’t work maybe it’s the catalog, or the tree, do the same thing for them.
If your report is still not working you only have one option left (aside from starting over); copy the contents of the building block(s) to Excel and bring them into a new building block. You can make a new building block by going to File | New | Row (for new row of course). Then paste in the contents from Excel. Sometimes making it change from FRx data to Excel data and back to FRx data ‘purifies’ the formatting.
If all this does not work, call the wife and kids and let them know you’re going to be late for supper and get to recreating your reports. Oh, if it comes to this, do the work in a new specification set and .F32 file. Your old one is garbage.
Hi Jan,
I liked your website and the detailed and precise answers to all queries.. well, I am searching for an answer for on of the rounding up numbers on the financial reports I have while working on the financial package @ month end.While I export to excel from FRx the financial reports ( P/L,B/S,cash flow), the columns and rows never seem to foot.We have to manually alter the no’s by adding 1 or 2 to get to the correct no. Is there like an @Round function or something we could use in FRx to get rid of that problem. Pls advice on it…since for now we manually enter into our excel schedules to see everything foots !!!
Thanks much,
Nehal
Nehal, you should experiment with this checkbox located underneath the Rounding dropdown box: “Use rounded values for calculations and totals”.
Is there any way I can put a specific report i two different report chains?
You should think about using Launcher instead of chaining. I’m going to post on this sometime in the next month or so, but in the meantime, try using Launcher to select multiple reports.
Thanks for the advice. I had not thought of that tact. After trying it, though, I seem to only get three of the five programs I queued. No error report. It just stopped. Any thoughts?