January Update

Dear Hosted Alio Customers--- (please share with appropriate staff)

This is just a friendly reminder that we have scheduled our upgrade to Alio 13.2 for this Friday, January 4, 2013 starting at noon.

As mentioned at our Calendar Year-End workshops last week, the next upgrade to our host servers will include Alio 13.1 and 13.2. And while the 13.2 W2 upgrade will be straightforward, the 13.1 upgrade changes the accounting year from 1-digit to 2-digits. This one change has impacted hundreds of programs and underlying tables.

Because of the extent of the changes, there is a greater potential that we will encounter data problems in your databases as we do the upgrade. These problems are likely the result of erroneous data entry at some point, and they will need to be corrected by the consultants as the upgrade proceeds. This may mean that instead of the upgrade being an overnight process, the down time for a particular client with database errors could last into the next day or days. For example if “School X” has a data problem on server 1 then only “School X” will be down, not all of the schools on server 1.

Please note that you can still prepare all of your W2 and 1099 preliminary data, and reconciliation of totals can go forward. It is mostly the printing process that must wait for the January 4^th upgrade.

Because of the amount of time that the upgrade will take, we are going to ask that all users exit the Alio software by noon on January 4^th. This gives our tech department additional time for the upgrade, and it also allows us to have day-time access to our Alio support people in Denver, in case of unexpected issues.

We know that having your data reside on host servers does involve some give and take. We do appreciate that you have always been patient and understanding of the circumstances that arise.