Troubleshooting Quickbooks Not Open in Multi-User Mode

For many businesses, Quickbooks is what runs the vast majority of their accounting and payroll systems. Yet, for many, the nature of Quickbooks’ multi-user system is somewhat mystical. The challenge is always to provide reliable access to database resources, but what do you do if that doesn’t work? Intuit offers some direction on this topic, but not nearly as much as many would like. We’ve had some experience with these issues over the years and thought it would be a good time to go over the best ways to work with QuickBooks in multi-user mode. First and foremost, you need to decide what computer will be hosting the QuickBooks database file (usually a .QBW file). If you’re just beginning to use multi-user access or are having problems, the key is to define the computer you want to be your server. This computer would ideally be a Windows machine that stays on all the time and is not regularly operated by a user. While there is a way to share files that uses different computers, it’s best that you choose one machine and make it the server.

Once that’s decided, you’ll perform the standard file sharing and mapping processes from client computer or install an Active Directory. That stuff is beyond the scope of this article, but you’re having trouble with QuickBooks in multi-user mode, then all of that has likely been done.

Setup scanning and monitoring on the server 

Included with all versions of QuickBooks is the QuickBooks Database Server – this needs to bee installed on your chosen server computer (you’ll find it on the QuickBooks CD). Also in this package is the Database Manager tool. The Manager needs to be configured for monitoring the correct locations on the server. Be sure to add the directory where the database (.QBW) files are located and that the monitored drives are correctly checked off. It’s not entirely clear what settings, if any, the scanning process acts on – but it appears as though the QuickBooks Database Server needs to know where the database files are located, and this tool does that.

Make sure services are clean
Installing and upgrading various versions of the QuickBooks Database Server tends to create new services, but we also found that the installation process does not remove older services. Be sure to run “services.msc” on your server and have only a single (newest) service of QuickBooksDB## and QBCFMonitorService. If needed, the AutoRuns tool from Sysinternals can be used to delete un-needed  service versions. In addition, make sure that you only install the QuickBooks Database Server (not the full QuickBooks application).

What services need to be running?
As shown in the picture above, only the QBCMonitorService and QuickBooksDB## services need to be running for your database server to operate normally. You do not need the entire QuickBooks Application installed or loaded, only the database server.

What ports need to be open? 
Many of the connection issues you’ll see are likely due to ports not being accessible, open or correctly configured. If you have checked that all of your services are clean and correctly running, you should next make sure that either (1) the server’s firewall has the required ports open or (2) is just disabled altogether (disabling this is is a good quick way to rule out firewall problems). QuickBooks has a full rundown online of all the ports required for each version of QuickBooks payroll.

That big list is messy, but in most small environments ports 8019, 56722, and 55348 through 55352need to be open-able on your server. You can find out what programs use what ports on your server by using the free CurrPorts tool from Nirsoft. You’ll also want to make sure you know what firewall software is installed on the server and either configure or disable it.

What is the “Alternate Setup?” 
In our experience, the Alternate Setup tends to cause the most confusion. Using this option makes QuickBooks multi-user capable but turns the first computer to open the file into a server. If you stop and think, you might see how this could make for a very frustrating environment. You may not know which computer has become a serve, or the firewall may be mis-configured on that computer blocking all access. It’s generally not a good to use Alternate Setup unless you absolutely do not have a computer that is on always on that can be a server.

Use the Connection Diagnostic Tool
Intuit also offers a tool called the QuickBooks Connection Diagnostic Tool (download here). In cases where you’re comfortable that the server is setup right, but can’t tell if the clients are connecting correctly – Using this tool (as well as other basic tools like ping), will tell you if a client computer can open your QuickBooks database in multi-user mode. We’ve even seen scenarios where local client firewalls were restricting access from the client to the server, so using a tool like this may help you find and correct those sorts of issues.

How will I know it’s working?
There are a few ways you can tell you’ve successfully configured this. First, from the client computer’s installation of QuickBooks, you’ll be able to click on File -> Enter Muti-User Mode and not see any errors. The newest versions of QuickBooks we’ve seen are set to notify when another user logs in – this is another sign that things are on the right track. To know that your chosen server is doing the work, log into it and run the QuickBooks Database Server Manager, click on the “Database Server” tab and the “Refresh List” button. What you should see is a listing of open database files and connected users (listed as: User1, User2, User3).

What versions of Windows work with the Database Server?
We’ve seen, installed and tested the QuickBooks Database Server on Windows XP, Windows 7 (x86/x64), Windows Server 2003 (x86/x64), and Windows Server 2008 (x86/x64).

There you have it. Hopefully this helps give you some tools to setup and troubleshoot various problems related to QuickBooks multi-user access. If you have more details about using this software and other supported operating systems, pass along the information and we’ll keep this article updated. If you are unable to solve “QuickBooks Not Open in Multi-User Mode” to Dial QuickBooks technical support phone number 1-800- 518-1838 with toll free. Our technical experts are available 24*7 customer support.
Ref Link:https://cwl.cc/2012/11/troubleshooting-quickbooks-multi-user-access.html

Advantages of QuickBooks Pro for Small Businesses

For self-employed individuals and small businesses, Intuit designed software application QuickBooks Pro, which allows you or your accountant to track expenses, monitor income and prepare for tax season. There are many advantages of using an accounting program like QuickBooks Pro, but the extent of those benefits depends on the size of your company and whether you need industry-specific accounting or not.

QuickBooks Pro Features

Being more than just accounting software, QuickBooks Pro offers a comprehensive business management solution. It provides small businesses numerous integrated business solutions:

• Easy Accounting, QuickBooks Online Payroll & Direct Deposit Service
• Online Banking and Bill Payment
• Integration with Microsoft Word and Excel
• One-click Access to Quicken Business Cash Finder
• QuickBooks Support Network
• One-click Access to QuickBooks Customer Support Experts
• TurboTax & TurboTax for Business Integration

The common features of QuickBooks Pro are:

General ledger: The General ledger will provide you with a consolidated view of who owes you money, who you owe money to, important reminders, and income/expense performance.

Accounts Payable: The software helps you to keep track of expenses, and scrutinize the money flowing to in each category. It also helps you to fill out sales tax form and make sure sales tax balance is accurate and up-to-date.

Account Receivable: It gives you the ability to create a central data repository, containing all QuickBooks customer contact and transaction data. This allows you to easily track and follow up on past-due accounts and answers all customer requests more efficiently.

Payroll: The payroll application allows you to process payroll with appropriate tax deductions, of your employees. It uses direct deposit as well to pay the staffs. Even the system automatically populates and prints 1099s for independent contractors.

Inventory: QuickBooks Pro gives you the ability to easily track your inventory. This enables you to avoid overbuying and back orders.

Purchase Orders: QuickBooks Pro gives you the ability to quickly create purchase orders for your purchases.

Time Tracking: The Time Tracking functionality allows you to properly track your employees’ time to avoid under-billing your customers. The system allows you to track time by employee, service, and customer through timesheets.

Advantages of QuickBooks Pro

QuickBooks Pro is the desktop software for your small business, which gives you advantages of:

• Income: One of the main advantages to using QuickBooks Pro is that much of the data that makes up your accounts is generated automatically no matters what is the type of your company, is it in retail, commercial or any other sector.
• Expenditure: QuickBooks Pro’s automated features for managing and tracking expenditure for a business keeps track of outstanding bills and payments, with different tools. It features utilities for managing  QuickBooks payroll, including taxation. The application also provides tools for tracking inventory items.
• Documentation: To capture accounting data, QuickBooks Pro produces automated documentation. A wide range of commonly used document types such as invoices, reports and even business plans are modelled as templates within the software.
• Planning: QuickBooks Pro is primarily a tool for capturing accounting data, but it can play a central role in the daily and long-term operations of your business, from sales to planning for the future.

More information to Dial QuickBooks Customer Support Phone Number 1-800-518-1838 with toll free. QuickBooks Customer Support experts are available 24*7 support & help.

Top 10 QuickBooks issues and how to resolve them

QuickBooks is a crucial tool for businesses. It helps organizations manage their money, pay their employees, and pay their bills. But QuickBooks is also a fairly complex application. This complexity means that QuickBooks is prone to having problems.
I do a lot of work on QuickBooks and have gathered some of the common issues I deal with almost daily. These tips may help you solve those issues before you lose your hair or your money.

1: Updating the data file fails This

can be very tricky. When you are upgrading QuickBooks from one version to the next, sometimes the earlier version’s data file can’t be read by the newer version. Because of this, the data file must be updated. Usually this will happen during the installation process and will require you make a backup first. However, to avoid any issues with the data file, make sure you run a verification on that file before you uninstall the old version or install the new version. Better yet, install the new version side by side with the old version so you will always have a fallback.

2: Rebuilding the data file fails

Sometimes, that verified data still will not upgrade to the newer version. In this case, you will have to go back to the older version and do a rebuild of your data. For some users, this is an easy task. But when dealing with the file that holds the keys to the company’s financial kingdom, others will hesitate. If you do find yourself in a situation where you have to rebuild the data, do it in this order: Back up your data file, verify your data file, rebuild your data file. If the rebuild simply won’t work, you might want to make sure that data file is located on the local machine. QuickBooks is insistent that the data file be located on the C:\ drive. That means even if your data file is on the Q:\ drive (and that Q drive is on the local machine but shared, so QuickBooks THINKS it’s on a different drive), QuickBooks could have an issue with the rebuild. So before the rebuild, copy the data file to the C:\ drive, do the rebuild, and move the data file back where you need it.

3: You lose the connection to the data file

This is probably the most common issue, as well as the most challenging to troubleshoot. QuickBooks is finicky about the network connection to the data file. If there is the slightest hiccup in the network, your connection can be lost. If you’re sure QuickBooks is set up correctly, you might want to use the QuickBooks Connection Diagnostic Tool to help you figure out what’s going wrong. Also, make sure your firewall and your antivirus are allowing the connection through.

4:The reinstall fails

If you need to reinstall QuickBooks, there is a little something you might not hear about from Intuit: The clean uninstall. Before you do your reinstall, go ahead and uninstall using the standard Windows uninstall methods — but then go back and delete the C:\Program Files\Intuit\QuickBooksXXX directory (where XXX is the release number), as well as the C:\Windows\Users\Documents And Settings\Program Data\Intuit\QuickBooksXXX directories (again, where XXX is the release number). As with any time you are dealing with QuickBooks, BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST!

5:QuickBooks run slowly in multi-user mode

This one is tricky because there can be a number of issues (as with any slowdown). If you have ruled out hardware, you might be facing issues in your data file. The fastest route to solving this is to use the Clean Up Company Data tool found in File | Utilities. If this doesn’t give you much of a speed boost, you can always turn off the Audit Trail feature.

6:QuickBooks client machine can’t locate the data file on the server

The first thing to do here is to make sure that the Server Manager is installed on the server machine and that it’s running. If that doesn’t work, map the drive to the server from the client and try to connect that way. Most likely, if you can see the server from the client, the issue is that the Server Manager is not running.

7:You can’t find the licensing information

If you’ve lost your documentation and can’t find your license/product numbers, you can always locate them by hitting either [F2] or [Ctrl]1 when QuickBooks is open (and you’re logged into your data file). But you can’t find your validation code. If you have to reinstall, you’ll have to re-register (unless you wrote that validation code down… HINT HINT!).

8: A new printer won’t print

This one is simple but still flummoxes users all the time:

1. Close QuickBooks.
2. Search for the file qbprint.qbp.
3. Rename qbprint.qbp to qbprint.qbp.old.
4. Restart QuickBooks and printing should work.

9: You’ve lost the admin password

Shame on you for losing your admin password. It does happen, though. Or maybe you’re a new administrator coming into a tricky situation where the old admin didn’t leave the password. Fear not; you can recover that password by using the QuickBooks Automated Password Reset Tool. It’s not 100 percent foolproof, but it works most times.

10: You can’t copy or move the QuickBooks data file

Have you ever tried to copy that QuickBooks data file from your hard drive to a removable drive (for backup or migration purposes), only to find out the file is locked? This is a simple one. QuickBooks Server Manager and Directory Monitor have that file locked down. Close out QuickBooks, click Start | Run, enter services.msc, look for the QuickBooks Payroll support service, and stop those two. Once the services are stopped, you should be able to copy and paste that file.
More tips?
These 10 quick tips will make your QuickBooks administrative life much easier. Have you come across a QuickBooks tip you’re dying to share? If so, tell your fellow TechRepublic members about it.
More information to dial QuickBooks Technical Support Phone Number 1800-518-1838 and visit our website.

Ref Link:- http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-quickbooks-issues-and-how-to-resolve-them/

How to Connect Bank Accounts With QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks online is the most-efficient online solution for organizations across the globe. QuickBooks online is highly secured and a reliable web hosting where the application is hosted remotely on robust servers. The best part is that if you are using QuickBooks online, then you can simply connect bank accounts with QuickBooks online easily and instantly with the help of remote technical assistance. To know more about how to connect Bank Accounts With QuickBooks Online go through below given article.

QuickBooks is a powerful QuickBooks tool  that changes the strategy for working and running the records. Bookkeepers are experts who work the organization QuickBooks and trade while QuickBooks is considerably more disentangled as those clients who have no ability or information on QuickBooks can take in the application and turn into an expert. Online courses are live and recorded at whatever point is advantageous for clients can take on the application stream. The improved QuickBooks procedure is clarified completely in the entries where clients can comprehend the procedure of QuickBooks.

The important modules of the QuickBooks solution are stock, receipt, finance, VAT, and client service. Besides Intuit offers modified tailor made elements of the QuickBooks item of interest as it were. Facilitating is the inclination of the clients in this way clients select the technique for getting to the QuickBooks solution taking into account their accommodation.

Desktop facilitating has all the more working cost contrasted with cloud. Cloud is a new innovation that has conveyed huge adaptability and flexibility to work anyplace, whenever. QuickBooks Payroll Support Online is all over the place access on any gadget with a little gadget and web empowered. Clients can utilize Smartphone Article Search, tablet or portable PC to get to the web application while mobiles keep clients upgraded moment with the most recent reports on the business.

Go through step-by-step instructions to connect your bank accounts to QuickBooks

1. Navigate to the ‘Add an Account’ Menu

Just go to the home screen, then click the Connect an Account button on the right. Select your bank from the banks shown in the drop down list.

Now you need to select banking on the sub menu. This will take you to the Banks Card screen.

     2.Now Log In to Your Bank Accounts

Enter the username and password to log in to your bank account, then click Log In and enter the login credentials in the text fields. Wait for a few minutes while your bank communicates to QuickBooks.

3. Now you need to select an Account to Add to QuickBooks

When you see on the left of the Connection Screen, below the heading labeled Account Name, you’ll see a list of all the accounts you have with your bank (e.g. Checking, Savings, Credit Card, etc.).

Check the box next to the account you use for business and want to connect to QuickBooks.

4. Name Account(s) for QuickBooks

You need to choose an appropriate QuickBooks Account name with the kind of Bank Account you are adding to QuickBooks. select a suitable account name from the list of options available.

5. You simply customize Account Name and Type for QuickBooks

If you are unable to see a QuickBooks account name in the drop-down list suggestions that matches the kind of Bank Account, you are adding to QuickBooks, you need to click Add New at the top of the drop-down list menu to open the Account Modal window.

6. Finally, you need to Connect Account with QuickBooks

Once you have saved all your account details, now you need to click Connect. Wait for a while QuickBooks downloads your transactions. Let’s Go! Now you can recover your transaction history in QuickBooks. More information to dial QuickBooks Technical Support Phone Number 1-800-518-1838 with toll free.

This article is originally published on go4website.com April 4, 2016.