July 16, 2004 — Bellevue, WA — A customer of McPond eCommerce Software had a problem. Their small business accounting software, ASB Bank Gateway, had melted down, and the New Zealand Inland Revenue Service (tax department) was knocking on their door.
The customer had backups, but they were incomplete. Unfortunately, the banking software was covered in security mechanisms, and the customer had lost his password. The helpdesk for the banking software was understandably reluctant to give out any information. This put the customer in a very difficult situation!
After consulting with ITTIA engineering experts, ITTIA software offered McPond a way to very quickly move the data into Excel and convert it to OFX (Open Financial Exchange) format, which is suitable for almost all popular accounting software. McPond was so pleased with the support, performance and its cost saving in working with ITTIA that they added a section on their website about the experience.
ITTIA software saved McPond and their customer a long, complex coding project and enabled them fast and complete access to their data. Because of the speed and ease of use, the customer was able to get on with their tax obligations without further penalty.
David McNeill from McPond eCommerce Software explains its experience with ITTIA:
“We had a request from a customer to extract their data from a restored old banking software package. The customer’s business accounting software had melted down, and some of their backups weren’t the best. The Inland Revenue service (tax department) was pressuring them with penalties to complete accounts. They needed to re-key two years of bank transaction data. They did at least have backups of their banking software (ASB Bank “Gateway”). This software was supplied by the bank, and linked to their system and downloaded account statements. The package had been discontinued, as the bank had moved to an online access method. Being banking software, it was covered in passwords and security mechanisms. It had always been very reliable software, and had been in service for many years. As a further complicating factor, the customer had over 30 passwords, and could not remember which one applied to the banking package, which expired passwords regularly. The bank software helpdesk was understandably reluctant to give out any information on hacking into their package!”
“We were delighted to find that it connected to the data first time, and it showed all tables and fields perfectly. We were quickly able to pull the data into Excel. The driver was very fast, and data was clean and complete with field names. From there we did some column and text file manipulation to create OFX (Open Financial Exchange) format, suitable for Microsoft Money and Intuit Quicken packages, but in this case MYOB (Mind Your Own Business), a popular package in New Zealand. The customer has been able to load each month’s statement and get on with their overdue accounts.”
“Without the ITTIA ODBC driver, it would not have been economic to proceed with a data file based reinstatement of this data.”
