Tuning Performance Of QuickBooks On A Network

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If you use QuickBooks 2006 or higher on a network, here are some tips for “tuning” your environment to provide the best performance. The issues discussed here apply to QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise, regardless of the edition you are running. This also applies to Windows XP and/or Windows 2003 server, and has not yet been tested in a Windows Vista environment.

Which Database Engine Should You Use (Premier or Enterprise)?

Thanks to Joanie Mann of CPAASP.com for her contribution to this part of the column. She and her team discovered the issues as they went about resolving performance issues for their customers. The recommendations apply to anyone who is hosting more than five simultaneous “sessions” between a server (or peer) computer and other clients on the network. It may even apply if these sessions are not multi-user access to the same data file.

According to Joanie, the Pro and Premier versions of the Sybase database engine for QuickBooks is the same engine. This database engine was “tuned” to a maximum of five concurrent users and an associated level of database transaction handling. We already know that a QuickBooks Pro or Premier data file is limited to allowing up to five users in multi-user mode in any given file, but this database engine tuning speaks to the total number of users and data files being served by the file server (and database transactions being performed), not to the number of users in a single data file. The file server, where the database engine resides, typically hosts the QuickBooks data files. When the engine in use on the server is Pro or Premier, that file server is expecting to serve up to five concurrent users and their associated data files.

In a large network, this becomes a problem because there could be a larger number of users (users with QuickBooks properly installed and licensed on their PC workstation), and all may be accessing files stored on a central file server. If the number of concurrent QuickBooks users exceeds five (regardless of whether they are all working on the same data file), the database manager will get bogged down and may start disconnecting users from their sessions. The problems may not be seen in some networks, where users are working largely in single-user mode. But where multi-user access is required on the network, the thresholds are easily reached.

The QuickBooks Enterprise edition of the database manager was tuned to handle a larger number of concurrent users and database transactions. We are not certain where the upward limitation really is with this database engine, as configured, but the thresholds are far higher than with the Pro/Premier engine.

When a network has a potential number of concurrent users greater than five, and where multiple data files are located on a central file server, my recommendation is to use the Enterprise edition database manager rather than using the engine that ships with Pro or Premier. The Enterprise database manager is compatible with Pro and Premier data files, and it significantly improves file server performance. For Pro and Premier users on larger networks, this means that you should plan the additional expense of a multi-user Enterprise license for the file server. The workstations can continue with their Pro/Premier versions.

In addition to the above recommendation, it’s worth noting that if the user launches QuickBooks via a shortcut to the data file rather than launching the program first and then “opening” the file, it could possibly crash the database engine or, at a minimum, limit the functionality of the application once it launches. For example, if there are multiple versions of QuickBooks installed on the machine, Windows will launch the most current version (which is not necessarily the version required to open the data file).

How Big is Your File?

Another important part of performance tuning is to consider the size of your QuickBooks data file.