Invoice 360 Enterprise - Frequently Asked Questions

1. What can I do if I am unable to start my server?
2. I cannot find my Invoice 360 Client app in the Windows Start Menu.
3. After setting up the Windows Firewall rule to allow inbound TCP connections on port “8571”, I still can’t connect my client to the server.
4. I am using a WiFi/MiFi device to connect to the internet for my PCs/devices at home. Despite setting up the Windows Firewall rule to allow inbound connections on port “8571” (or turning off the Firewall), I am still unable connect my client to the server.
5. I see multiple IP address when I use the “Detect” option in Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. Which one should I use?
6. How do I check that all components have been installed successfully by the installer?
7. How do I backup or initialize my Enterprise Cloud Sync Server data?
8. How do I restore from my Enterprise Cloud Sync Server backup?
9. How do I update my current version of Invoice 360 Enterprise (including all the client apps) to the latest version?
10. How do I import customers, inventory and company data from my Invoice 360 (the standalone app in the Windows Store) backup?
11. How do I import customers, inventory and company data from an Excel spreadsheet?
12. How can I start the Enterprise Cloud Sync server such that both the client on the “localhost” and remote clients can access it?
13. How do I know whether I have successfully synced with the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server?
14. How can I import my data into Excel for analysis and reporting purposes?
15. How can I keep the Server running while using my device for other tasks?
16. What does BYOC means and why is it important?
17. Where can I download previous versions of Invoice 360 Enterprise?


Recommendations

1. What can I do if I am unable to start my server?
You should be able to start the server on localhost without Administrator rights. However, to start it on a specific IP address, you will need to make sure you are running the Server as an Administrator. Before starting the server, remember to Right Click on the Invoice 360 Enterprise Server and select "Run as Administrator".

2. I cannot find my Invoice 360 Client app in the Windows Start Menu.
Invoice 360 Client app is developed based on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). The client app is not listed on Windows Store publicly but package as part of the Invoice 360 Enterprise installer. For the client app to be installed successfully, you need to be running on Windows 10 with “Sideloading” enabled.

Enable “Sideloading”

In the search bar (or Cortana Ask Me Anything) in Windows, enter “For developers” to launch the “Use developer features” settings screen. Next, select the “Sideload apps” option. “Sideloading” is a process that allows you to install Universal Windows Platform apps to your PC/device without going through the Windows Store.



Reinstall Invoice 360 Client app

After enabling “Sideloading”, you can launch the Invoice 360 Enterprise installer to reinstall the Invoice 360 Client app. During installation, you will be prompted whether to setup the Invoice 360 Client on Windows automatically. Remember to select “Yes” and the client app should appear in your Start Menu.

3. After setting up the Windows Firewall rule to allow inbound TCP connections on port “8571”, I can’t connect my client to the server. When I use Microsoft Edge to test the connection to the server, I am getting the following:


Turn off the Windows Firewall for your Private network temporarily

To see if the problem is caused by the Windows Firewall, you can turn off firewall temporarily on your private network.

On the PC/device running your Enterprise Cloud Sync Server, launch “Windows Firewall” from the search bar (or Cortana Ask Me Anything) and click on “Turn Windows Firewall on or off”. In the “Private network settings”, select “Turn off Windows Firewall”. Please make sure that you are turning off the Firewall for your private network only.



Now go to the device running the Invoice 360 Client app, launch Microsoft Edge and enter the IP address and port number (e.g. http://192.168.0.11:8571) again. If you see the following screen, it means that the Firewall is indeed the cause of the issue and that you have setup the Firewall inbound rule incorrectly.



Please remember to turn on the Firewall after correcting the setup of the inbound rules as described in the previous tutorial.

4. I am using a WiFi/MiFi device to connect to the internet for my PCs/devices at home. Despite setting up the Windows Firewall rule to allow inbound connections on port “8571” (or turning off the Firewall), I am still unable connect my client to the server.
For some users, creating a Windows Homegroup (if you do not have one) resolved the issue. A Homegroup is a Windows concept that enables you to share things such as pictures, music and photos.

Creating a Homegroup on one PC/device

a. First, make sure you are connected to your home WiFi/MiFi and not the wireless internet provided in the public. Launch “Control Panel” and select ”Network and Internet” followed by ”Homegroup”. In the Homegroup window, click on the “Change Network Location” link.



b. You may be prompted with “Do you want to allow your PC to be discoverable by other PCs and devices on this network?”. Simply click “Yes” to proceed. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

c. Next, click on “Create a Homegroup” button. If you see the "Join Now" button, someone on your network has already created a Homegroup and you simply need to join it (see the next section). d. Next, select the libraries or folders that you would like to share. You can use the default values provided.

e. Finally, you would be shown the password for the Homegroup. Take note of the password as you will need it for your other devices joining this Homegroup.

Joining a Homegroup on another PC/device

First, make sure you are connected to your home WiFi/MiFi and not the wireless internet provided for the public.

a. Launch “Control Panel” and select ”Network and Internet” followed by ”Homegroup”. In the Homegroup window, click on the “Change Network Location” link.

b. You may be prompted whether to allow your PC to be discoverable by other PCs. Simply click on the “Yes” button. Otherwise, proceed to the next step.

c. Next, click on the "Join Now" button and select the libraries or folders that you would like to share. You can use the default values provided.

d. Finally, enter the Homegroup password that you have noted down when you create a Homegroup.

In Windows File Explorer, you should be able to see a node for Homegroup on the left-hand pane. You should also be able to see the different PCs/devices in the Homegroup. You can now try to connect to the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server from Microsoft Edge again. Please remember to setup the Firewall rule to enable inbound TCP connections on the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server PC/device correctly.

5. I see multiple IP address when I use the “Detect” option in Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. Which one should I use?
It is possible to have multiple private IP Addresses for various reasons. In this case, we recommend checking with your IT Administrator on which IP address to use. Alternatively, you can test out each of the IP addresses to see which one you are able to connect to from Microsoft Edge.

6. How do I check that all components have been installed successfully by the installer?
You can go to the Start menu and check your installed components. “Invoice 360 Enterprise” is the client app. “Invoice 360 Enterprise Server” is the self-hosted server.



Go to Control Panel->Program->Program Features and check that “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express LocalDB” is available. This is the database component of Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server.

7. How do I backup or initialize my Enterprise Cloud Sync Server data?


The “Backup” menu item as shown above enables you to back up the Invoice 360 Enterprise database to a specified folder.

If you have created a lot of demo data for testing, you can use the “Reset” function to clear the entire server database. This will enable you to start the database from fresh without removing the records individually.

Note
Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server periodically back up the data files into the “AutoBackup” subfolder for you automatically.

8. How do I restore from my Enterprise Cloud Sync Server backup?
Please note that once you restore a backup in the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync server, all the client devices will need to bootstrap their data from the Server again to ensure data consistency.

a. Uninstall Invoice 360 Client app from all your devices.

b. Launch Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. Click on “Maintenance->Restore” and select the folder containing your back up.



c. Install the Invoice 360 Enterprise Client app and set it up to connect to your Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. After the app bootstraps, you are ready to use Invoice 360 Enterprise.

9. How do I update my current version of Invoice 360 Enterprise (including all the client apps) to the latest version?
In short, you will need to perform a backup, uninstall all the server/clients, and reinstall the latest server/clients. This is described in details below:

a. Ensure that you have performed a Sync on all your Invoice 360 Client apps to ensure the latest data is saved to the cloud server.

b. Perform a server data backup as explained in details in “How do I backup or initialize my Enterprise Cloud Sync Server data?”

c. Uninstall the Invoice 360 Client app from all your devices.

d. Uninstall Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server.

e. Reinstall the latest version of Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server.

f. Reinstall the latest Invoice 360 Enterprise Client apps.

g. Start the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. When the server is started, it will automatically migrate your database to the latest version.

h. Start the Invoice 360 Client app and bootstrap from the server.

10. How do I import data from my Invoice 360 (the standalone app in the Windows Store) backup?
This section is for users who are currently using the standalone Invoice 360 app from the Windows store and would like to migrate to Invoice 360 Enterprise. This function only imports customers, inventory and company data. Documents such as Invoices, Quotes and Estimates are not imported.

a. Create a folder on your Desktop with Windows File Explorer and name the folder “Import”.

b. Go to the Settings screen of Invoice 360 (standalone app in Windows Store) and click on the “…” button followed by the ”Backup” button. Select the “Import” folder on your Desktop and the backup function will export your Invoice 360 data into the “Import” folder.

c. Copy and paste the following into a text file and name it “import.cloudsettings” and place this file in “Import” folder. This is a setup file that instructs Invoice 360 Enterprise to import from the data you have exported in the previous step. 


<invoice365Data xmlns:xsd="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<invoice365 appUrl="http://localhost:8571" appID="" clientID="" 
authority="" resourceURI="" action="restore" userName="-"/>

</invoice365Data>

If you just want to import the company, inventory and customers data and not the invoices, quotes and estimates, you can set the action to “restorepartial” as shown below: 


<invoice365Data xmlns:xsd="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" 
xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

<invoice365 appUrl="http://localhost:8571" appID="" clientID="" 
authority="" resourceURI="" action="restorepartial" userName="-"/>

</invoice365Data>

d. You are now ready to perform the import. Start the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync server.

Note: All existing data in Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server will be deleted during an import.

e. Launch the Invoice 360 Enterprise Client app on the same device as the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. When prompted to connect to the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server, select “Setup”. If you have previously started the client app and has connected to the server, you may not see the following prompt. Simply uninstall and reinstall the client app to start fresh and the prompt will appear.



f. Next, click on the “Advance” button as shown in the screenshot below and select the “Import” folder. The client app will automatically detect the presence of the “.cloudsettings” file and carry out the import function. During the import, please do not shut down the server or client app.



The customers, inventory and company data from Invoice 360 will be imported into Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server.

11. How do I import customers, inventory and company data from an Excel spreadsheet?
a. Using Windows File Explorer, go to the “C:\Program File (x86)\Invoice365\Help” folder and copy the “Import” folder to your Desktop.

b. Launch the “ImportData.xls” spreadsheet. Please note that the spreadsheet will not run if you did not copy the folder to a user writable folder as specified in the previous step.

c. Enter the Company Name in the "Invoice360" worksheet. Only the company name is required at this point. All other settings relating to the company can be changed in Invoice 360 Enterprise Client app later.

d. Enter the customers’ data in the “Customers” worksheet and inventory product data in the “Inventory” worksheet.

Please note that the “<” and “&” characters are not supported in any of the fields. The table below summarizes the requirements for each of the fields in the Excel spreadsheet.

FieldsRequirements
Customer NameMaximum of 180 characters
Customer Address 1/2/3 Maximum of 150 characters
Customer Email Maximum of 150 characters
Customer Phone 1/2 Maximum of 100 characters
Customer Fax Maximum of 100 characters
Customer Contact Name Maximum of 150 characters
Inventory Product Code Maximum of 20 characters
Inventory Product Name Maximum of 100 characters
Inventory Product Description Maximum of 400characters
Product Type "inventory", "charge", "comment" or "service"
Quantity Purchased (Opening Balance) 0 to 100000
Cost Price 0 to 100000
List Price 0 to 100000
Discount 0 to 1
Taxable "True" or "False"


e. Click on the “Generate Database” button and the data in your spreadsheet will be consolidated in a format that can be imported into Invoice 360 Enterprise. The output will be placed in a subfolder of the “Import” folder.

f. You are now ready to perform the import. Start the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync server.

Note: All existing data in Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server will be deleted during an import.

g. Launch the Invoice 360 Enterprise Client app on the same device as the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server. When prompted to connect to the Enterprise Cloud Sync Server, select “Setup”. If you have previously started the client app and has connected to the server, you may not see the following prompt. Simply uninstall and reinstall the client app to start from fresh and the prompt will appear.



h. Next, click on the “Advance” button as shown in the screenshot below and select the “Import” folder. The client app will automatically detect the presence of the “.cloudsettings” file and carry out the import function. During the import, please do not shut down the server or client app.



The customers, inventory and company data from the Excel spreadsheet will be imported into Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server.

12. How can I start the Enterprise Cloud Sync server such that both the client on the “localhost” and remote clients can access it?
Go to the Windows Start menu, right click on the Invoice 360 Enterprise Server and select "Run as Administrator". Select “All” as the “Type” and then start the server. This will start the server that accepts connections from both local and remote client apps.

13. How do I know whether I have successfully synced with the Invoice 360 Enterprise Cloud Sync Server?
Every time you made a change to the invoice or to any other records, it would be saved to your app local database. The changes would also be automatically pushed to the server. If a network connection is not available, the “push” operations will be cached locally until a connection is available.

The app does not specifically prompt you when a “push” to the server has failed. This is to ensure seamless use of the app. It does, however, keep track of the number of outstanding operations to be synced with the server. You can check the number of outstanding operations in the app bar “Sync” button. Simply right click with your mouse or click on the Ellipsis button to check the number in brackets. For example, if you see “Sync (10)”, it means you have 10 outstanding operations to be synced with the server.

A two-way sync is triggered when you click on the “Sync” button. This means besides pushing data to the server, the data that is updated by other devices to the server is also downloaded to your device.

14. How can I export my data into Excel for analysis and reporting purposes?
You can launch Invoice 360 Client app, go to “Settings” screen and tap on the “Export” button in the app bar. This will export the data into “.csv” files which you can easily open in Microsoft Excel. We recommend that you perform a Sync to ensure that you have all the latest data from the server before you perform the export.

15. How can I keep the Server running while using my device for other tasks?
You can click on the Minimize button in Invoice 360 Enterprise Server. This will minimize the server to the Windows System Tray. Please ensure that the server is started before minimizing it so that the syncing process can be carried out.



When you want to shut down the server, you can click on “Show hidden icons” (the up-arrow icon as shown below) in Windows Task bar, double click on the Invoice 360 Enterprise icon, and click on the “Stop Server” button.

16. What does BYOC means and why is it important?
Invoice 360 Enterprise is developed based on the “Bring Your Own Cloud” (BYOC) vision. Basically this allows you or your company to have the flexibility to run the Cloud Sync Server on a public cloud hosted by us, on your own cloud (with Microsoft Azure), or on a self-hosted cloud in a Windows Desktop Executable.

17. Where can I download previous versions of Invoice 360 Enterprise?