Taming QuickBooks Desktop Part 2 - A Scaling New Heights Primer

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Each year I get more than 100 calls or emails from people asking me for help regarding the 'poor performance' of QuickBooks Desktop on their network. Most of the time it boils down to just a handful of 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. This article is the second in a mini-series in which we are taking a look at examples of each of the issues above, which we will be covering in that 100-minute course.

Understanding System Requirements

Too often people look at a list of 'system requirements' and compare those to their system overall, but that's not how the QuickBooks Systems Requirements really apply. For example, when an amount of RAM is specified, the requirement isn't referencing the total amount of RAM installed on your computer, it is referring to the amount of RAM that is actually available to QuickBooks.

In addition to the Operating System of your computer, there are numerous other programs that are running in the background including your anti-virus and firewall (or other security) programs, your email program, the program that monitors your printer status, the program that monitors your uninterruptible power supply, and not telling what all.  In addition you may have other programs open like a browser or Excel, or Word that you use in companion with QuickBooks.  What about 3rd-party Programs that work in conjunction with QuickBooks like Fishbowl Inventory, or some specialized software? They are all consuming valuable computer resources (RAM and processor cycles) even if they are dormant and not actively 'in use.'

Below you will find the 'System' display for a Windows Computer. In this case the computer has 8.00 GB of RAM memory installed. Now if you were to evaluate the system resources over time, looking at the amount of RAM in use, when QuickBooks wasn't running, and you observed that it tended to average 60% of your memory was in use, then how much memory is not in use? 

The answer is 40% (of course), but that equates to roughly 3.2 GB of RAM memory. So if you launch QuickBooks how much memory is available (at Max) for QuickBooks without shutting down other applications? The answer is 3.2 GB of RAM.

Well, the System Requirements for a single-user QuickBooks 2018 workstation (as shown in our first illustration above) specify that the minimum RAM requirement is 4 GB, but you only have 3.2 GB of RAM available.  Does this mean that QuickBooks will not run? No, QuickBooks will still run, but it does mean that it will not be running at 100%.  Should you run QuickBooks in such an environment? Only for the length of time it takes to increase your computer's RAM memory. Temporarily, shuting-down any non-essential programs you have running in the background will help you over come your RAM deficiencies until such time as you can increase the total amount of memory in your computer.

In this case you should be adding a minimum of 4 GB of RAM to bring your computer's total RAM to 12.0 GB; however, since RAM is so economical, you might as well just go ahead double the amount of RAM so that the computer, even with QuickBooks running (along with the rest of typical applications), is essentially running at only 50% of RAM capacity.

This seems simple enough, in part because we are talking about using QuickBooks on only one computer.  But the reality is that most QuickBooks users are working in a network configuration with multiple users and perhaps multiple QuickBooks Company files.  In such cases the 'system requirements' are much more demanding.

The illustration below shows us a common QuickBooks Client-Server Network installation in which a centralized server hosts the QuickBooks Database Server and the various Company files.

Each of the 'client' workstations connected to the network has QuickBooks installed, but all of them should have 'hosting' turned-off. Only the server hosts QuickBooks and the Company files.

From a practical standpoint, most networks look like more like the illustration below in terms of how each user is interacting with the QuickBooks Database Server and the various Company files.

Accordingly each of the client-workstations must meet the same system requirements (at a minimum) as if they were running QuickBooks on a stand-alone (single-user) basis. But the vast majority of the work is actually taking place on the computer acting as the QuickBooks Database Server and hosting the Company Files.

As a result, performance will be directly related to how well the Database Server performs. The QuickBooks 2018 System Requirements for a Client-Server Database Server are shown in the following illustration.

Several 'best practices' recommendations exceeding the minimum requirements are also illustrated.  Experience has shown that installations meeting these best practice recommendations will significantly outperform installations with only the minimums in place.

In terms of System Requirements, if you want to 'tame the machines' that run your QuickBooks you need only answer these 3 questions and go beyond the minimums:

Question # 1 - What can improve the performance of the QuickBooks Application on your computer?

Answer # 1 - If your computer already meets the minimum requirement in terms of processor, then the addition of RAM memory can enhance performance.

Question # 2 - What can improve the performance of the QuickBooks Database Server on the Host Computer?

Answer # 2 - Additional RAM memory and:

  • Faster (RPMs), Larger (Capacity) and Less Fragmented Hard Drives*, or
  • Solid-state Drives

Question # 3 - What can improve the communications performance between QuickBooks Clients and the QuickBooks Database Server computer?

Answer # 3 - Network optimization via:

  • 1000 MBPS Ethernet (Copper) network (Category 5 minimum, Category 6 preferred), or
  • Fiber network (3 to 10 GBPS depending on configuration and distance)

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'.

In this article we learned not only the meaning of 'system requirements' when it comes to QuickBooks, but also the importance of not only meeting, but exceeding the minimum requirements. A trained QuickBooks ProAdvisor who not only understands the QuickBooks Application but how QuickBooks actually works from a technological basis is often required to tame 'not only the machines' but the 'IT Masters' who consider themselves the gate-keepers of all things 'computer-network' related within a business.  You must be willing to meet the challenge of going toe-to-toe, head-to-head with those would would force QuickBooks to run 'as they want to configure it' rather than the way it was designed to be operated.

Many ProAdvisors today may only be interested in supporting QuickBooks Online, while other are still firmly committed to 'Desktop forever', but both 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 insure the adequacy of your system resources whether you are dealing with a single computer, a Client-server or Remote-desktop network, Cloud-hosted QuickBooks or even QuickBooks Online across the internet.

So let's learn how 'taming the machines' in favor of performance on the desktop or in the cloud will make you a more valued 'trusted advisor. Please join me, along with more than a thousand of your fellow ProAdvisors at Scaling New Heights 2018.

* - RAID arrays are NOT recommended for QuickBooks Server supported Hard-drives providing storage for QuickBooks Company files.