AccountLinx is a key application that allows you to export your time data from ExakTime Connect into compatible payroll/job-costing applications to ensure your employees are paid accurately and quickly. When importing the AccountLinx export into your third-party application, you may encounter a situation where an employee is not receiving the time records as expected or the import is rejected.
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Basic Questions
As this type of issue can be caused by a variety of things, it helps to narrow down what is working and what isn't by asking yourself:
- Is the entire import being rejected or is it being accepted?
- If the import is being rejected entirely, it generally means that the entire file is incorrectly formatted, such as the wrong file type or incorrect columns.
- If the import is being accepted, but time data is not populating the expected areas, then the import file may be formatted correctly, but the data within the file is incorrect.
- Is it affecting multiple employees (5+) or specific employees (a few)?
- If it is affecting multiple employees, the data causing trouble may be shared such as the incorrect data mapping for a location or cost code.
- If it is affecting a single employee, the data may be unique to the employee such as the incorrect employee ID.
- Do the affected employees have anything in common such as working at the same location, using the same cost code, etc.?
- Try to see if there are any commonalities between data that was not imported, such as the same location, or cost code.
- When was your last successful import and were there any changes between import attempts such as app updates, new employees, etc?
- Knowing the last time you had a successful import can help point to issues that may have occurred between your imports. For example, did you update your payroll/job-costing application which requires a new import format?
Common Troubleshooting Methods
In addition to the basic questions above, here are some common steps we suggest checking that can cause data import issues:
Double-Check AccountLinx Mappings
The main cause of issues with importing data into your payroll app is due to your employees, locations, cost codes, etc. being mapped incorrectly. If the data is not mapped properly, it can result in your time data being associated with the wrong entity/entities in your payroll app or result in the data import being rejected entirely.
Go through the "Map Employees/Locations/Cost Code" screens and make sure that the mappings are accurate. AccountLinx is reliant on the mapped data being accurate for your time data to be accepted, if there are any issues such as multiple employees having the same employee ID, or locations/cost codes with the incorrect mapping IDs, it can result in issues with your data imports.
Double-check your Payroll App Data
After you are sure that the mappings for your entities are correct in AccountLinx, double-check that the information is also valid in your payroll app. Depending on the payroll app, it is possible that some entities need to be active for data to be imported, the information may have changed since you last used it by another admin, an entity was incorrectly set up, etc.
If a specific entity is causing trouble, compare the troublesome entity with a working entity and see if they have any differences. Your payroll app may require certain settings to be enabled for you to use the entities with time data imports.
Compare Old Files and the Latest File
If you had successfully imported time data previously and your latest import attempts have failed, it can help to review and compare your previous and latest attempts to confirm what may have changed.
Ideally, the data should look consistent between the two import attempts. If the time data is in radically different columns between the two, then there may be some data that is pushing the data from one column into another.
For example, if a comma is placed within the mapping information, it can skew the columns and push data into the wrong columns. By comparing the previous export and the current export, we can see that the cause of the import error was incorrect mapping data being added.
Data Reformatted by Excel
Some AccountLinx export files can be opened with spreadsheet applications such as Excel so you can review the data directly. When opening the export file, it is common for Excel to automatically reformat data such as by removing leading 0s, reformatting dates, etc. Where this can become an issue is when Excel saves the file, with the newly reformatted data.
When reviewing an export file in Excel, please avoid saving the file to preserve its original state. If Excel has already saved the file, you will need to reexport the data so you can have the original data.
For more information and examples of Excel reformatting data, you can refer to the following dedicated article.
Incorrect File Template
Make sure that the AccountLinx export file matches the import template of your payroll app.
- If your payroll app offers different import templates, make sure that you are selecting the correct import template.
- If you are able to customize your import template, make sure that you have not changed any columns since your last successful data import.