If you are like 90% of American small business, myself included, you most likely find yourself dealing with QuickBooks everyday. I find that it lives up to its advertising in every way, except performance. Through the years, I have developed a best practice for QuickBooks MultiUser deployment on a network.
Most businesses that use QuickBooks have 10mb or 100mb networks with uncertified data drops. Generally, they own consumer grade computers purchased from Office Depot, Dell or Walmart. I find that most application problems including QuickBooks are directly related to business trying hard to save money on their computing infrastructure.
Unfortunately, QuickBooks 2006/7/8 have raised the bar beyond the network and computing environment that most small businesses have in place. Minimum standards must be adhered to for a QuickBooks configuration to work correctly and the QuickBooks environment to be productive.
The computers running QuickBooks 2007/8 must meet these minimum system requirements:
1 – XP Professional SP2, Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate Operating Systems
2 – 2.0GHz or faster processor
3 – 2GB or more of RAM for XP, 4GB or more of RAM for Vista
4 – 5GB or more free hard drive space
5 – Conflicting software applications must be shutdown and removed from client computers
6 – In a multiuser QuickBooks 2007/8 configuration, each computer must have a gigabit network interface, connected to a gigabit switch, using gigabit certified cables and/or data drops.
Also, interaction between QuickBooks and each networked computer’s operating system must be configured properly for QuickBooks to perform properly.
You are probably thinking that these requirements are way beyond what you read on the QuickBooks box. Well, you are correct. However, many years of experience and exposure to robust QuickBooks multi-user environments tells me that meeting these minimum system requirements proves to be the cheapest business insurance you can buy.
When each of these requirements are addressed correctly, QuickBooks works great.
Are You Ready For QuickBooks Multi User?
Visit painlessquickbooks.com to find out.
