To relocate your data to another location, open Payroll open the File menu and choose Relocate Data. This allows you to browse to the required location. Once complete, your Payroll data will be located and accessed from its new location.
To ensure other PCs on your network are connected to the same data, copy the files payroll.usr and pay.usr (pay12.usr for users on Sage 50 Payroll v12 and 2007 v13) from the program folder on the PC pointing to the correct location, to the Sage 50 Payroll program folder on the other PCs. The default location is C:\Program Files\Sage Payroll. All PCs using Sage 50 Payroll on the network will then point to the same data providing they all have access to the same network drive.
(Edited 02/02/14)An easier way to point payroll to a different location is to rename the pay.usr and payroll.usr files located in the programdata/sage/payroll folder and just open payroll again, it will ask for your serial number and activation key again and then ask you to browse to an existing set of data or create a new company so make sure you get your serial no. and activation key from help and about before hand.
To point a new installation of payroll to existing data on the network if you don’t have access to the above files e.g. if it is a single pc that runs payroll i found the easiest way to point it to existing data is as follows.
1. First take a backup of the existing data (very important as thing involves overwriting files).
2. Install the program and get it working on a blank database.
3. Locate the files on your network e.g. s:\sage data\payroll – move the existing files into a sub directory e.g. s:\sage data\payroll\temp.
4. Log in to payroll with the blank database go to File, Relocate Data browse to you network location e.g. s:\sage data\payroll and click ok this will move the blank data to the network location, quit Payroll.
5. Copy all files and folders from your temp folder e.g. s:\sage data\payroll\temp and over write the blank data files in s:\sage data\payroll.
6. Log into Payroll and it should take you back into your existing data.
A long winded way of doing things but as you are probably aware there is no company file to alter like there is in Accounts