Running two copies of Sage Job Costing simultaneously

A long-term client of mine was facing a productivity issue.  They work in a Sage Line 50 + Sage Job Costing (v8) environment, with two registered companies on each application.  When authorising a purchase, they require a purchase order number from Job Costing.  Because their database is so big, it takes a minute or so for the POP window to display (this is the window that provides the purchase order numbers). 

This isn’t so bad – the real kicker is that there are two different companies.  So let’s say their receptionist is working in Company A, and someone calls for an order number for Company B.  She needs to save what she’s doing in Company A, close the company and open Company B (wait while it loads), then open the POP window (wait AGES while it loads), then click the button to allocate a new number!  Five or six times a day.  After struggling with this for a while, they asked me to set up another computer beside their reception computer, so that one could have Company A open, and the other could have Company B open.  I thought to myself, “there’s got to be a better way”.  And there was!

A bit of Googling pointed me to this page:  http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-run-multiple-versions-of-the-same-program-on-your-pc/.  After looking at the method they were using, I realised I could easily adapt this to Sage Job Costing with these two simple steps:

1) I created a .BAT file, called SecondCopy.bat, located in the Job Costing folder.  Simply click Start -> Run, and type the following (you’ll need the quotes!):

notepad "c:Program FilesSage Job CostingSecondCopy.bat"

2) I then entered the following text into the batch file, and saved it:

echo . | runas /noprofile /user:DOMAINuser_name "c:Program FilesSage Job Costingsgj80app.exe"

You’re going to need to replace the above “DOMAIN” with the name of your own domain, or with the hostname of the computer. You’ll also need to replace the user_name with the name of a different user who is authorised to use the computer. These two aspects are important: it has to be a different user, and it has to be a real user that’s allowed to run Job Costing.

After that was done, I simply created a shortcut that points to “c:Program FilesSage Job CostingSecondCopy.bat”.

All done! There haven’t been any untoward effects arising from this hack, and they’re saving heaps of time every day.

DISCLAIMER: Your mileage may vary. We don’t take any responsibility if you follow this and it all goes horribly wrong. Proceed with caution!