This is normally a simple to do and the vendors always throw a curve every once in while to keep me from fully automating the process. The vendors only provide the prices via Excel spreadsheet format.
My process involves fixing up the data in the spreadsheet such as changing description to upper case, changing dollar amounts to two decimal places, calculating the actual cost based on discounts and changing numeric item numbers to text. I could do all of this on the iSeries but since I have data in Excel and the record counts are always under 50k, I just use Excel functions.
Once the spreadsheet is prepared for upload I use Logmein to access the clients iSeries. Logmein has a nice file transfer java applet that usually works very well. I transferred the file as usual and then I use iSeries Access to create the database file and transfer the data. When I got the scan step an error occurred "Incorrect function". I know of this error and it means that the format of the incoming file is not an Excel Workbook (BIFF8).
Ok, maybe I made a mistake (who me?) when I saved the spreadsheet, I re-saved and transferred. Same problem. I then started looking at the transfer process and found that Logmein was transferring the file with zero records. I have no idea what changed with Logmein and this is annoying.
As a work around I sent the spreadsheet to the client this morning via Email and uploaded with no issue. Hopefully Logmein will fix the problem before the next price update comes along.
It's always challenging, that's what keeps it exciting!
~Richard
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