CCH Telekurs 2.60

Moving from an FTP site to an SFTP site for data delivery

CCH Trust Accounts and CCH SecTAX 2020.1 introduce support for full SQL Server connection strings. If you decide to make use of this feature, then you must also install CCH Telekurs 2.50 so that the CCH Telekurs software "knows" how to update a CCH Trust Accounts or CCH SecTAX database which uses a full connection string.

SIX Financial deliver their data files from a pair of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites:

• ftp1.telekurs.co.uk. The main FTP site.
• ftp2.telekurs.co.uk. Available as a backup in case needed.

At the start of April, SIX Financial are moving to a new pair of FTP sites:

• sftp-uk-1.six-group.com
• sftp-uk-2.six-group.com

The new FTP sites are “SFTP sites” which means that traffic to them is encrypted. There are two ways to use these two new FTP sites:

• Downloading manually. You run a third-party utility such as Filezilla Client to download the files. This is described below.
• Downloading automatically. You run the TKGet.exe utility that ships with the Telekurs software described below.

Timeline

In either case, you should run the last data feed for data files in 21/22 using the old FTP site, then change the FTP site before running the first data feed for 22/23. The new SFTP sites can then be used for the new tax year in the usual way.

Notes

• The SFTP site will initially contain all the files since 06/04/2021 with the year end files for 05/04/2021 and 05/04/2020 in case users need to rerun the earlier years.
• The old FTP site will not contain files after 05/04/2022. This means that there is an overlap period in which it does not matter which FTP site is used. So you could switch to the new SFTP site a bit early, provided you are not a year behind with your data feeds. But it is simpler to follow the timeline given above.

Changing Over to the new SFTP sites - Downloading Manually

1. If you download the SIX Financial data files from the FTP site directly then you will need to use the new SFTP sites. For instance, if you use an FTP Client like Filezilla, you will need to change the connection settings as shown below.

2. On first connecting you will see a message like this below:

SFTP sites have a 'host key'. This is a unique identifier for the site. A hacker could perhaps fake the SFTP site, so that when you connect to sftp-uk-1.six-group.com you are in fact connecting to the hacker’s SFTP site. But they would not be able to fake the host key. The first time you connect to SIX Financial’s SFTP site you get the above message and you should tick the option to always trust this host and to add this key to the cache.

But, if the same user on the same machine gets this message again then they should contact their IT staff. The reason is probably innocent but IT staff will want to check. For instance, Filezilla holds the host keys in the Registry at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys. So if a user does not have rights to save the key to this location then the message might recur.

After these steps, downloading files is performed as before.

Changing Over to the new SFTP sites - Downloading Manually

The Telekurs software includes a utility called TKGet.exe which is used to download data files. This utility remembers the last files it downloaded and each time it is run it starts with files after the ones already downloaded.

TKGet.exe has been modified for this release to download from either an FTP site or an SFTP site. To use the new SFTP site you will need to:

1. Install this release of the Telekurs software. See the Installation instructions.
2. Before running the first Data Feed after 06/04/2022, change the details of the FTP site. This is done in SecTAX or Trust Accounts in Activities > System Management > Database Parameters > Data Feeds > Telekurs Feed button > FTP button. Only the Site address needs to be changed as shown below.
   
3. Run TKGet.exe manually the first time from C:\Telekurs, or whichever folder it has been installed to. You will see a message as below. This is similar to the message given by Filezilla described above. Accepting it will store the host key in the same location in the Registry, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys.
   
4.  TKGet should then download the files and unzip them. You can then go into SecTAX or Trust Accounts using QSECMP32.EXE or QTRUMP32.exe respectively, and run the Data Feed to read these unzipped files in.
   
   For future downloads, just proceed as before, which could be by running TKGet.exe manually or could be a task processed automatically by Task Scheduler.