Company Selection

1Step by step, the first time #

1. Pick a company . Only the companies allocated to your login are listed - unless you are a Global Administrator, who is listed every company on the server.
2. Pick a branch if the company has more than one. What you may see and post is bounded by it.
3. Choose the report scope - whether figures cover your branch alone or the whole company.
4. Confirm. From here the whole product is pointed at that company.
5. To change any of it, come back to this screen. Nothing else switches company mid-session, deliberately: a half-switched session is how entries land in the wrong database.

2Why is the company list empty, or short? #

A company appears here only when ALL of these are true:

• It has a financial-year row . The list joins company to finYear, and finYear carries the database name - a company without one cannot be opened, so it is not offered.
• Its database exists on the server. A finYear row naming a database that has been detached or moved will list the company and fail when it is opened.

A handful of fixed administrative logins - ADMIN, SA and the built-in installer accounts - bypass the allocation and see every company. That is by design and is why an administrator's list can be far longer than a normal user's.

3Creating a company from here #

Create Company appears only for an Administrator, and opens a wizard that has its own guide. In short: a new company is a new DATABASE, copied from the model and attached, and the number you may create is sold on the licence.

A company created there is allocated to you as part of creating it, so it is in this list immediately - no separate allocation step.

4What the choice actually sets #

• The company code , which decides which licence applies and therefore which modules are available.
• The branch , which bounds the branch lists and the entries you may post.
• The report scope , which decides whether reports read your branch or the whole company.

5The Terms of Use, at the first sign-in on a licence #

After Continue , a dialog may present the product's Terms of Use . It appears when the LICENCE this company runs under has not yet accepted the currently published version - once per licence, not per person: the first user through the door accepts on behalf of the firm, and colleagues on the same licence are never asked.

• I accept these terms records the acceptance against the licence serial (who clicked, when, from where) and continues into the application.
• Not now records nothing and returns you here - the terms gate the product, so the choices are accept, pick a company on another licence, or log out.
• If the terms were REPUBLISHED while the dialog sat open, the acceptance is refused and you are asked to read the new version - agreement is never filed against words you did not see.
• The same document can be read any time from the sign-in screen's Terms of use link, beside the Privacy statement (a notice - nobody is asked to accept it) and About C-Land .
• Nobody is locked out by a broken setup: when the licence server cannot be reached or nothing is published, sign-in proceeds untouched.

Separate from this, your firm's own User Terms (written in Administration > User Terms) are presented once per USER, at the sign-in screen itself, before this page.

6When the licence is close to expiry, or past it #

Picking a company also checks the LICENCE it runs under. Inside the warning window - the last days before the expiry date, sized by the licence type (a trial's window is short, a yearly subscription's is a month) - an amber banner appears here naming the expiry date and the days left. Work continues normally; the banner is the advance notice.

• Once the date has passed , the banner turns red and Continue is refused for that company. Sign-in itself is refused the same way, with the same message. The licence works through the whole of its last day and stops the next morning.
• For a trial , the expiry is the end of the trial period; for a subscription, the renewal date. Renewing restores access immediately - no data is deleted ; everything is exactly where it was left.
• The supplier also mails the licence holder's registered e-mail address as the date approaches, from the same reckoning as this banner. Not receiving a mail does not move the date.
• A company on a healthy licence is untouched - the check is per licence, so one firm's expired serial never blocks another company running on a different serial.
• When the licence server cannot say (unreachable, or the company is not mapped to a serial), nobody is locked out - only a positively expired licence refuses.

To renew, contact your supplier with the serial number shown in the message or banner.

7Rules and integrity #

• Nothing on this screen changes company data - it only reads the list and records your choice for the session.
• A company you are not allocated cannot be reached by any other route: the list is filtered on the server by your login, not hidden in the browser.
• Module availability follows the company, not the login. The same person can hold Payroll in one company and not in another.
• Company details themselves - name, address, registrations - are edited in Administration > Company Details , not here.

8Shortcut keys #

• Tab / Shift+Tab - move between the company, branch and scope choices.
• Enter - take the highlighted choice.
• Esc - show or hide this help.

9If something does not work #