Each year I get more than 100 calls or emails from people asking me help regarding the 'poor performance' of QuickBooks Desktop on their network. Most of the time it boils down to just a few different issues:
- Improper Set-up
- Not meeting System Requirements
- Server Problems
- Poor Network Design (or maintenance)
- QuickBooks File (size or corruption)
The course I teach at Scaling New Heights, and will be teaching this June, titled, Enhancing QuickBooks Desktop Stability and Performance is intended to instruct how to deal with these issues. Over the next few months we will take a look at examples of each of the issues above which we will be covering in that 100-minute course.
A Case of Improper Set-up
Despite the number of years that QuickBooks has been around, since migrating to Sybase, and the current networking configuration requirements for multi-user, we continue to see installations that are totally contrary to the 'three' approved configurations.
Not long ago I was called by a small company that was running 4 copies of QuickBooks Premier. They had been using the same 4 computers for at least 3 years and everything had been running just fine. A little over two weeks prior to calling me, their 'IT guy' had told them that the workstation where QuickBooks was being hosted within their 'peer-to-peer' network had simply run out of room on the hard drive and that they should 'attach' an external storage drive. Rather than moving everything but the operating system, QuickBooks and the QuickBooks File Directory with their two Company Files to the external drive, the 'IT guy' moved the Company Files to the network attached storage drive.
The very next day everyone started noticing diminished performance, it was taking much longer for QuickBooks to open, it sometimes would not open from one computer in multi-user mode, and it would "take forever to record an invoice" after about the 3rd or 4th invoice in a row. They called their 'IT guy' who diagnosed the problem as a bad network switch and sold them a new $250 switch plus an hour of his time to put it in. That seemed to resolve the problem for about one day, then right back to the same thing.
Upon calling the 'IT guy' again, he decided he needed to 're-map' the external drive as a virtual drive on everyone's machine and set all new paths for each of them to use to access QuickBooks. It seemed to help for a few hours.
Now the 'IT guy' was adamant that the problems they were having had nothing to do with the new external drive, but that the four computers were simply 'under-powered' and that at a minimum each should have 4 more GIGs of RAM installed. The owner reluctantly agreed. That did seem to help at least for a couple of days, but the same symptoms of poor performance returned.
The next response from the 'IT guy' was to suggest that the 'Company file' (186MB) was just too big for QuickBooks Premier and they should consider 'condensing' the file. When the owner was hesitant to do so, the 'IT guy' got Tier 1 QuickBooks Technical Support on the phone to help him convince the owner that they would have to 'condense the bigger of the two files'. Over that weekend the file was condensed by the 'IT guy'.
By Monday afternoon the three people using QuickBooks all were reporting that everything was still "slow as molasses in winter." While the file was now only 132MB, they had none of their history except for the past 18 months, and some reports didn't appear to be correct.
The 'IT guy' had one more alternative, he suggested that they purchase a new Windows Server, configure a domain, and move the QuickBooks Hosting and File to the new Server. He gave the owner a quote for around $6,000 including new Server, Windows Server software, configuration and set-up, and migrating workstations to a domain, etc.
As it happens the owner of the company was visiting with another small business owner and they began to discuss the various problems the first owner was having with QuickBooks. The second business owner shared the name of a local QuickBooks ProAdvisor who had attended one of my classes at Scaling New Heights a couple of weeks earlier.
Upon return to the office the business owner contacted the local ProAdvisor and set-up an appointment with her the next day. During that initial consult the ProAdvisor contacted me asking if I could help her diagnose the problem. After some brief introductions, I asked the owner, "when did this all seem to start", the next words out of his mouth were 'telling', "this all began 2 weeks ago when our 'IT guy' installed a new external drive."
I asked the ProAdvisor to check where the Company file directory was actually located, and sure enough the Company files were on the network attached storage drive. In instructed them to move the directory back to the Hosting Workstation, and to remove sufficient 'other information' from the hard drive of that workstation to insure that the hard drive was no more than 25% full. They were able to migrate documents, pictures, and other non-software including backup data to the attached storage.
Upon logging into QuickBooks, all four users reported that not only had the diminished performance disappeared but that QuickBooks was loading and running much faster than ever before. While the extra RAM and smaller 'condensed' file size attributed to that, the major improvement resulted from the fact that the Company files were now back in the actual computer acting as the QuickBooks Host.
I later found out that the local ProAdvisor actually restored the archived copy of the Company file made prior to the condense, and they company re-keyed 2 days of data into the original file without issue.
About a week after that the local ProAdvisor contacted me to report that everything was running well, and that the business owner was so happy that he was sending me a gift card. Sure enough I received a $100 gift card to 'Olive Garden' three or four days later. "Pasta makes me happy."
Proper Peer-to-Peer Network Configuration of QuickBooks:
- QuickBooks is installed with hosting turned-on on Only one 'hosting' workstation.
- The workstation hosting QuickBooks ALSO hosts (stores) the Company files on the workstation hard drive.
- All other workstations have QuickBooks installed, but hosting is turned OFF.
SNH2018_QBDT_Peer-to-Peer_Hosting
Understanding why network attached storage for Company files just doesn't work.
The average data transfer speed of modern 'hard drives' within your computer is likely to be 6 GBPS (gigabytes per second). Solid-state drives will even perform at greater speeds. Even an external hard drive, using a USB 3.0 connection is lower than that with only a 480 MBPS (megabyte per second) data transfer speed.
An external hard drive running as network attached storage is dependent upon a number of factors including your the network rating and actual network speed, so even if you are running a 1000 MBPS network the actual data packet transfer rate is more likely to be in the 600 MBPS range, and it could be substantially less depending on what else is criss-crossing your network.
At best, using network attached storage to store your Company file means that you would be loading data across the network to the QuickBooks hosting computer at 1/6th the speed that the same data would be loading if the Company file were on the hard drive of the hosting computer. What takes 1-second to load from your internal hard drive, takes 6-seconds from the network attached storage.
Remember, only the 'hosting computer' has the QuickBooks Database Server (QBDBS) running, and only the QuickBooks Database Server actually communicates with the QuickBooks Company file. All data from any workstation using QuickBooks is transmitting data back and forth to the QBDBS which has specific QuickBooks data loaded into the 'cache memory' (RAM) of the hosting computer. From time to time the data 'in cache' is written back to the Company file. If new information is needed the QBDBS must find that data within the Company file and load it into 'cache memory' so it can be accessed by the QuickBooks workstations.
If it takes 6, 8, 10 or more times as long to pull that data across the network from attached storage as in pulling it directly off the local hard drive of the hosting computer, how long do you think it's going to be before QuickBooks users start complaining about 'poor performance?'
Tame the Machines
This year's theme at Scaling New Heights is 'Tame the Machines'. Certainly it's about the big changes that are underway with artificial intelligence and the next level of automation, not to mention how those will impact our profession. But the reality is that we have always had to 'tame the machines'.
Tame the Machines (small)
In the case illustrated above in this article it was the 'machine', in terms of the computer network set-up and configuration, that was causing the problem. Not to mention an 'IT Guy' who seemed more interested in selling hardware and services than understanding QuickBooks and how to resolve the problem.
It took a QuickBooks ProAdvisor who knew enough to recognize that you must properly 'diagnose' what's wrong before you can 'tame' it.
I don't care if you are a QBO-only ProAdvisor, or if you are firmly committed to 'Desktop forever', you need to understand how the 'machines' are and will be changing the way 'we do QuickBooks'. The principles taught in Enhancing QuickBooks File Stability and Performance will help you whether you are dealing with Peer-to-peer, Client-server, Remote-desktop, Virtual-Private, Cloud-hosted QuickBooks and even QuickBooks Online across the internet.
So, come 'peer-to-peer' with me, along with more than a thousand of your fellow ProAdvisors, and learn to "tame the machines". I look forward to seeing you at Scaling New Heights 2018.