By Ruaan de Swardt
With technology being what it is – challenges do present themselves to the average QuickBooks user. In this edition I aim to debunk a couple of ‘myths’- allowing users to transition their QuickBooks out of the dark ages and into the new.
Myth#1 – QuickBooks and Terminal services.
“I’ve tried for multiple users to access QuickBooks on Windows Server using terminal services/ windows remote desktop connection (RDC) and it’s not possible – I can only get 1 user to login at a time” –QuickBooks Client.
This is false. Multiple users can access QB installed on Windows Server 2003/2008/2010/2012 using remote desktop connection, providing the following is in place:
- Client has sufficient Client Access licenses configured and setup on Server
- Client has sufficient Terminal Services licenses configured and setup on Server
- The QuickBooks license used on Server must be bridged.
QuickBooks is therefore ‘compatible’ with Terminal Services.
Myth#2 – QuickBooks: Flat file or not?
“Posting QuickBooks transactions over a network is from the dark ages – as it carries the whole file over network giving rise to latency issues” –QuickBooks Client.
This is false. The way QB post transactions over a network have been revolutionised ever since the QuickBooks Database Server Manager was introduced in 2008. The transaction log file logs changes to the company file before they are written to the file by the database manager. It is stored in the same folder as the QuickBooks company file. The transaction log file is named [company file name].qbw.tlg.
If QuickBooks loses connection to the company file abruptly for any reason, the .tlg file will automatically “correct” the data file as much as possible. If part of a transaction was recorded to the company file but the whole transaction is present in the .tlg file, the transaction will be completed the next time the file is opened in QuickBooks.
QuickBooks does therefore not adopt a flat file approach when updating database over a network.