If your a QuickBooks user like me, you’ve probably noticed all of the mentions of errors popping up in QuickBooks about the time anyone gets up a head of steam to do a bunch of work. Again, if you are like me, you want all of your software to work all of the time. So, those annoying QuickBooks errors could be a real problem. Fortunately, they’re not typically a problem for me.
If you find yourself having to deal with application errors, Intuit can shed some light on them for you. They’ve received the calls so often that error code resolution’s built into the default search on their support web site.
I recently took the opportunity to respond to a question on LinkedIn at the Successful QuickBooks Consultants – QuickBooks Technical Questions group. You must join LinkedIn or sign in to see comments in this group.
Here’s the question. I hope my answer might help you.
I’ve used and supported QuickBooks environments almost twenty years. I agree that the proliferation of errors and increased sophistication of QuickBooks can be problematic. On various forums, blogs and visits to new clients sites, I primarily see two types of errors; errors related to connectivity to company files both on the local computer and across the network and errors related to data integrity issues. I also occasionally see setup and update errors.
Improvements to and increased sophistication of QuickBooks in recent years has increased the demand on both the computer where QuickBooks resides and the network where QuickBooks accesses company files in a multi user environment. End users need to be more careful about purchasing and configuring production computers and networks, as well as executing regular automated backups and an overall maintenance program in a typical QuickBooks production environment.
Intuit’s done a decent job of publishing necessary information about configuration, backup and maintenance, but I think much of the information is difficult for most end users to both access and understand. Computer and network configurations for reasonable performance of a typical QuickBooks environment exceed normal consumer understandings of such things.
My installations tend to be relatively error free because I remove any connectivity problems by doing things like utilizing fully certified cabled gigabit networking, moving any firewall software to the Internet gateway, using fast processors with maximum memory and automating computer maintenance. I eliminate data problems by automated backups and regularly scheduled file maintenance. QuickBooks updates are typically not automated to prevent installation and update errors.
QuickBooks offers a lot of bang for the buck, especially the Enterprise version. I know of multi thousand-dollar software that can’t do what QuickBooks does. But along with this level of sophistication comes the price of sophisticated infrastructure and close attention to detail. Most end users need to know that their expectations and level of computer systems understanding might be a bit skewed by their consumer frame of reference and that it might be time to call a seasoned IT professional.
