sharing a Quickbooks database on network

[YeOldeStonecat]

If so then I'll put the effort into making RealVNC work because $49 a month for TV is also pretty crazy for a few hours a week of access.

Oh man..VNC...haven't seen that mentioned of used in like....15 years! We used to use Ultra VNC quite a bit back in the Win2K days.
But just about all the new web based remote desktop apps run circles around it performance wise. I wouldn't do any old school remote app that needed port forwarding.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Systems are something like nine years old so that didn't help.

Ouch...so guessing they're bare Core2Duos..probably not up to 8 gigs? I'd probably propose a calculator or abacus instead....running Quickbooks on those rigs ain't gonna be "quick"....be callin' it Slowbooks. Double click to launch when they open the shop and get to the log in by lunch.

 

[HCHTech]

Go to File > multiuser mode, verify that QB is running in multiuser mode

Yep, that's pretty much the process. One needless complication is the limitations of multiuser mode. For some reason, you can ADD a memorized transaction when in multiuser mode, but you can't edit or delete an existing one. I believe this same limitation exists for creating/editing accounts. So if you want to do any of the things that are prohibited, you have to switch to single user mode, which means you have to contact the other user(s) and get them to log out so you can do the thing.

*No backup needed

Man, this scares me. I can't imagine that there has never been a file corruption, or some other problem that messed up someone's online database. If it were me, I'd find a way to back that sucker up regardless.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Man, this scares me. I can't imagine that there has never been a file corruption, or some other problem that messed up someone's online database. If it were me, I'd find a way to back that sucker up regardless.

They have a high security backup procedure, daily their QBO infrastructure gets backed up in 3x different directions/sources.

 

[HCHTech]

They have a high security backup procedure, daily their QBO infrastructure gets backed up in 3x different directions/sources.

Good to hear. I'm not trying to come down 100% against the online version (I have a 3-location pet store that uses and LOVES it - way, way cheaper then trying to do that with WAN sharing), I just think it's like anything else - explain the pros and cons and let the customer decide.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Quickbooks doesn't like network mapped drives, either. You have to use the UNC path to access the file in shared folder.

Realizing this is an old revived thread, just to clear mis-information. Quickbooks does indeed work perfectly well with mapped drives. Also it makes it easier for IT support to walk people though opening company files, and new user profiles..can just tell them to browse the Q drive instead of trying to help them drill through network places. Quickbooks itself doesn't care if it's UNC path or a mapped drive letter, the ODBC works perfectly fine either way.

An Intuit article which was updated just 9 days ago from me posting this link
https://community.intuit.com/articl...any-file-that-is-located-on-a-remote-computer

As for ransomware spreading, having no mapped drives does not slow them down, most of them immediately scour the subnet of the breached computer on their own (like angry IP scanner) and will find ANY and ALL network shared resources that it has read/writes to and infect them. You can have a server with 10x folder shares. Say a workstation only maps 1x drive letter to 1x of those network shares...but the user account on that workstation has full rights to all 10x folder shares on the server. If that workstation gets whacked with ransomware, you're implying that it will only infect that 1x shared folder on the server that that the workstation has a mapped drive to. //shakes head. Nope...not longer true, while some of the earliest versions of ransomware (pre 2012-2013 genre) only looked at hard drive letters, most if not all the ransomware these days (post 2013) will, on its own, find all 10x shares on the server and whack 'em.

 

[lcoughey]

To explain my comment, it was told to me by QuickBooks support when I was having issues shortly after they migrated to their new server App. They have likely fixed that and I just never bothered trying it again.

Thanks for the follow up. It would certainly make life easier for me too.

 

[Markverhyden]

To explain my comment, it was told to me by QuickBooks support when I was having issues shortly after they migrated to their new server App. They have likely fixed that and I just never bothered trying it again.

Thanks for the follow up. It would certainly make life easier for me too.

There's a huge difference between LAN mapped stores and other methods like VPN.

 

[fencepost]

We are going to experiment with TeamViewer for a few days and see if it's viable over their poor Internet connections. If so then I'll put the effort into making RealVNC work because $49 a month for TV is also pretty crazy for a few hours a week of access. SplashTop is a lot cheaper but the one time I used it I thought it was needlessly complicated.

Do you have an RMM? Does it allow you to set up subaccounts to let clients connect to their own systems (N-Central allows this, not sure which others do).

 

[HCHTech]

(N-Central allows this, not sure which others do).

Solariwinds RMM allows it too - I've found there is no way to restrict WHICH computers the client has access to unless you break up the client. So, if you have all of the computers for that company under one client in your RMM dashboard, the only thing you can do is give a client-level login....so whoever uses that could connect with any of that client's computers.