I to need to know a piece of troubleshooting information for a version
of software that is no longer supported by the company.  The software
the Emerald Management Suite version 4.0, a customer and billing
management software for Internet Service Providers.  The company that
makes it is IEA Software Inc.  

For the past couple of days, whenever a payment is added, the message
"Add Payment Failed: -3" appears.  Every time.

I have tried looking at the online documentation, but found no
troubleshooting information.  I have also searched with Google for
information from other users of this software, but have found none.  I
have also contacted the IEA directly, but they will not give support
for this product anymore.  These avenues may turn up different results
to more qualified researchers.

The web address for IEA is: http://www.iea-software.com/

While they may not support it, they do have mailing lists set up
off their web page:

http://www.iea-software.com/support/maillists/liststart/

Perhaps another user on one of them can help
you.  I frequently find that mailing lists and/or support groups
for various software provide better troubleshooting than the
customer support people for the software :-)

Good Luck.

Hi!

Just an observation, but I find it strange that the vendor is claiming
this version is unsupported, as it appears to be the most recent
version, which was only released at the end of last year.

Has the vendor given any reason as to when and why the support was
withdrawn?

Or is it subscription-only support, which you elected not to purchase?

If you have PAID for support which has been withdrawn in such a short
space of time, I think it would be worth your while to INSIST on your
contractual entitlement, or else to demand some reimbursement of the
price.

On a more practical note, if the software is not accepting ANY new
payments, and nothing else has changed in the past few days, my
immediate suspicion (without actually knowing the software) is either
that you have run out of storage space for the database, or else some
arbitrary limit on the number of recordable transactions has been
reached.  Is it possible to determine how many payments have been
processed?  If the problem occurred after exactly 9999 payments, for
example, it may be possible to infer that an upper limit has been
reached.  It might be possible to solve it by deleting or
archiving-off records of older transactions.

If I manage to locate any more specific info, I'll post it.

Regards,

Louise