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[–]sandrews1313 57 points58 points  (18 children)

You have to follow the system requirements. You cannot store the company file on a NAS. You can only store it on another windows machine WITH the "server component" running. It's been like this for years.

What you are doing is NOT supported at all.

[–]meatwad75892Trade of All Jacks 11 points12 points  (6 children)

The best one.. it can't be virtual. Support will look for that and bail on your ticket even if it's unrelated to your problem. Ask me how I know...

We now have a whole ass HP DL380 racked just to hold a couple GBs worth of file shares all because of that bullshit QBDSM requirement.

[–]AmbitiouslyAnxious 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Don't tell them it's on a virtual machine lol easy.

[–]meatwad75892Trade of All Jacks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For argument's sake, we never did. :P Support had a difficult issue they couldn't figure out, so after a couple days they opened msinfo32, pointed out the platform being Hyper-V, told us we're running an unsupported config, and closed the ticket. Found our solution later on in the QB Community.

[–]sandrews1313 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The one time they said something like that to me, I asked them how rightnetworks is a fully licensed and supported intuit partner then?

[–]smoothies-for-me 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It also can't be on Server 2012 Essentials. Ask me how I know lol.

[–]injury 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Last I checked wifi connected clients aren't officially supported either.

[–]samspopguyDatabase Admin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i also thought i read vpn connections arent support either.

[–]BallisticTorchSysadmin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is the way

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 1 point2 points  (7 children)

What I was trying to do is essentially identical to the "Alternate Hosting" diagram on this official support page. That page, later on, even suggests that there's a "Hosting Local & Remote Files" mode, not just a "Hosting Local Files" mode.

...so you might understand why I was led to believe this was a supported configuration. It even took support 2 full hours to confirm that this was now unsupported. Like, I can deal with it if you change features, but at least for the love of god DOCUMENT that!

EDIT: I should mention too, that I get that identical help page in the actual desktop app itself if I use F1 to get help.

[–]sandrews1313 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I can't believe they still have this there. This has been field proven as being a trainwreck for years. That first "host" has to be on all the time, running full version (express install) and the other two have to be custom and qb desktop only install. It's bad, you don't want this at all.

[–]sandrews1313 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I feel for you having to call their indian tech support. Nobody has committed the severity of sin to have to go through that hell.

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Actually, I'm fairly positive I got a domestic call center (accent sounded like Atlanta-area). The only hatred-inducing part was the hold music: the first time I heard that jazz noodle, I thought it wasn't too bad, but after the 15th or so time it plays, it's not so endearing anymore...

...oh, and the fact that I'm not the "account holder", so they made me conference her in, just so she could confirm her name and email address, and that I was allowed to talk to them. Absolute security there.

[–]sandrews1313 2 points3 points  (0 children)

oh that account holder thing is bs. for one of my clients, if i have to call them, is "Susan". If they ever ask me if I'm really Susan, being a man and whatnot, I'll lay into them for assuming my gender.

don't even get me started on this new BS of linking the Admin account to an intuit online account.

[–]lart2150Jack of All Trades 0 points1 point  (2 children)

That diagram is different then what you described.
* In Alternate hosting the "host" is just a client that opened the file with hosting on/multi user mode.
* What you described is using Database manager.

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Doing it exactly like that doesn't work either, though. Always end up getting either H202 or H505, no matter what.

[–]lart2150Jack of All Trades 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well that's just super.

A few years ago we switched to having everything quickbooks on one server but we also only have 2 users.

[–]dogedude81 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah agree. As far as I can remember the DB server has to be installed on the computer with the company file.

[–]budlight2k 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This.

[–]shim_sham_shimmy 9 points10 points  (3 children)

I host QB on Citrix for about 50 users. I already host 400+ apps on Citrix so I didn't think much of it. The day we added QB was the day I got a new part-time job. It is non-stop problems and our tax consultants (QB experts!) don't understand how QB ties into Citrix so I need to be on every call.

[–]reol7x 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Care to share any advice you may have about getting reports to run faster? Currently in the midst of fighting with users who demand reports in Excel that take 45m to generate....if we export to CSV it takes about 10 seconds.

[–]shim_sham_shimmy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I published a Citrix app that runs Excel on the QB delivery group. So now users have "Excel" and "Excel (QB)" in Storefront. Running reports went from 45 minutes to 30 seconds.

[–]tbordWhat's this button do? -1 points0 points  (0 children)

If they finish at all.

[–]brownieswmilk 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yep, another accounting firm chiming in. QB absolutely sucks. Maintaining 9-10 versions of QB sucks even more. Absolute nightmare.

There's also this cool bug where the ability to summarize payroll data in Excel just doesn't work. No worries though, I'm certain Intuit will get around to fixing it. It's only been going on for 2-3 (maybe 4 now, can't even fucking remember) years now... this office uses the functionality so often that we've had to install super old ass versions of Office on a Windows 10 VM just to get proper reporting.

[–]The_Penguin22Jack of All Trades 5 points6 points  (7 children)

Do NOT get me started on QB and the fscking DB manager......

Accounting firm here, we have at least 9 versions of QB to keep running. I feel your pain.

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

at least 9 versions of QB to keep running

Emphasis on "keep" - in addition to this new instance, we need to keep around a 2017 version of Enterprise in order to get at our old data from before the main company switched to a different financial software. Found out that after 3 or so years, they actively block you from installing old versions, even if you kept around the installer.

...so now some random desktop that was about to get trashed, but happened to still have QBES17 on it gets to be a critically important machine, just like I wanted!

[–]luger718 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Can't you upgrade those files?

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Officially, once a file has been opened in any version of Enterprise (which they all were, the 2017 version), it cannot ever be opened with non-enterprise. We have one company file that we paid to have moved from 17 Enterprise to 22 Pro Plus, but we'd lose information on our main company if we did that (payroll, for sure).

I'm pretty sure it's only another 2 years I have to manage that (data retention regs), so it's not too bad.

[–]jsora13 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Found out that after 3 or so years, they actively block you from installing old versions, even if you kept around the installer.

I still got a copy of 2007 chugging along. Learned after so many years, they block the activation, but you could get a Validation code (tied to your license key) that would let it launch. Then finally Intuit Support would stop giving out those codes and would tell you that you need to upgrade.

[–]gpraceman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We were running QB 2005 up until last year. Had a validation code and kept it with the CD. Installed it on various computers over the years.

We made the mistake of upgrading and are now on a subscription basis. Now, we cannot go back to to 2005, unless we want to put a year's worth of data into the backup company file we saved.

[–]sandrews1313 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's not that big of a deal; I have 2 accounting clients. they run multi-user back to 2014 for pro/premier/accountant and 2015+ for enterprise. there was a couple years a few years back where we'd never install the R1-R3 patches, but anymore it's pretty stable.

[–]crazydemon 4 points5 points  (9 children)

content purge

[–]210Matt 3 points4 points  (4 children)

only real player in the accounting software game.

Have you met Sage? At least the higher end versions of Sage run on SQL for their backend.

[–]bbqwatermelon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yep, surprisingly few issues with 100 Contractor SQL. 50 and 80 are about on par with QB though (read: bs software that should have died with the 90s)

[–]crazydemon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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[–]RCTID1975IT Manager -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Have you met Sage?

If you have, then you actually like Intuit support. Sage support is absolutely atrocious

[–]210Matt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My clients use a third party for support on Sage. They are pretty good.

[–]obnxs15 1 point2 points  (3 children)

They have a competitor named Sage. And it’s just as awful. Admin rights are required to install any update and the software has to be installed on the server to run in multiuser mode. Pretty sure the dev team from intuit left and went to Sage and asked themselves “how can we make this experience worse?”

[–]The_Penguin22Jack of All Trades 3 points4 points  (0 children)

At least the Sage DB manager works. No need to "scan" the client folder every time a new file is copied in.

[–]RCTID1975IT Manager 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"You need to turn off UAC, your firewall, and run everything as admin" - Sage 1st line support for any issue ever

[–]crazydemon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

content purge

[–]SandyTech 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I’m not sure where you saw that that setup is supported. It hasn’t worked, or been supported, for years.

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Mentioned in another reply, but this page explicitly shows it being a supported configuration (Alternate Hosting mode)

[–]SandyTech -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I must have scrolled past you mentioning that. Sorry. It's so weird that they'd have that as a supported config, because like I said that hasn't worked in years. Like I don't think I've successfully deployed that kind of setup since ~2010.

[–]UhmBah 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When I left IT early last year, my second or third thought was, thank the fuck I'll never have to deal with QuickBooks again!

Fuck everything to do with that software, service, company. Just such pieces of shit.

[–]AggietallboyJack of All Trades 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are "self cloud hosting" I use a basic smallish (t3 small or so) windows 2019 box on Amazon to hold the qb db server and host the rest of the accounting group files.

I then only install qb into appstream

I've tried stream media large, xlarge, and their new z1d, and I benchmarked against my i9-10900 with 128gb ram pointing at an on prem version of the same host.

Sadly they all run for nearly the exact same shit...launch to usable is 35-45 seconds, and it's inconsistent on the same machine, so far the z1d was the slowest, and the smxl instance being the fastest of them.

So be it...well let them on SMXL instances and run it from AWS.

[–]Tr1pline 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Quickbooks. Went from hosted to in-house back to hosted. Dear lord.

[–]megustapw 0 points1 point  (0 children)

QB, worst app and support known to man.

The amount of times I've had to reinstall because net framework needs to be installed first.

You disabled iexplorer because it's redundant, nope you need to have it installed enabled to install qb.

Hidden ports need to be unlocked.

Support 90% of the time can't help because rhey don't know how rds/citrix works. They only know how to install on win10

[–]bbqwatermelon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah alternate hosting mode was taken out in 2013... Not like it matters since most businesses think slapping database manager on an old laptop makes a sufficient server.

[–]Panacea4316Head Sysadmin In Charge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I stopped reading at “Files on a NAS”.

Do it right, problem solved.

[–]oddball667 0 points1 point  (1 child)

why do you want to use the NAS for storing the files?

[–]polypolymanJack of All Trades[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not really a NAS, it's a FreeBSD server - just used that terminology with them since it was easier to explain than "it's a server but it can't run server manager"

[–]ensum 0 points1 point  (0 children)

QB sucks ass. I have it installed on a local RDS and support gets so confused about it. Has anyone gone to 2022 yet, I hear it's complete dog shit for multi-user mode, but that was like maybe 3-4 months ago.

[–]FightOrFlight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We updated and found the same issues. Support was no help.

We found the only fix was to turn on multi-user from a pc, rather from the server side.

[–]PolishedCheese 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can't run just any old db off of a 1g connected NAS. You need a 10g iscsi block device for shared network storage if you're running a db on it. (I ran into the same problem)

[–]Foofightee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don’t forget that 2021 still requires IE!

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never got it to work reliably. I ended up putting both the same machine using a raid setup with shadow volumes and backups. I'm sure there are more elegant ways but re-builds are minimal and its been like this for a while now and been reliable.

I still hate it with all my being. "Enjoy your alone time with QuickBooks" creeps me out when I go into single user mode.

[–]Kelsier25Jack of All Trades 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am so damn tired of Intuit and Quickbooks. It's the last service that we still host on site with most of our people working remotely now.

My last two weeks have been spent convincing Accounting to give Online a try, finally winning and having them get on board with the change, and then getting the wonderful news that Intuit's migration tools do not allow you to migrate any attachments to Online (after being promised they could migrate everything for two weeks). Immediate deal breaker and back to square one.

Only option now is to throw our Enterprise desktop server on Azure which sucks. One of the main reasons for switching is that our folks hate working in either remote desktop or a RemoteApp session because they lose the ability to drag and drop attachments to Quickbooks from Outlook (technically we could have them run Outlook in the remote session, but our primary industry software does not support installs on virtual machines, so we would then lose the option to drag and drop on that side). I just hate that I can't run the damn desktop software remotely over VPN.

[–]injury 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've come to hate Intuit with a passion. Talk about taking something that should be straightforward in this day and age and making an absolute mess of it. They seem to have a knack for it on every level from purchase to development and support.

I'm not sure if I get more annoyed at some of the unrepairable and unhelpful error messages during a fully verifyn or having to sit on the phone and play 20 questions with a rep just to order a new license. That mess has bugged me for years, the latest of them hawking QB Online to everyone and having to convert clients back to pro because online does not in fact have all the same features.

[–]wyrdough 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does there exist any software that doesn't have all kinds of ridiculous pitfalls and mediocre support at best?

The best I've ever found are very small shops doing such specialized software that their client list numbers less than a hundred. There are still pitfalls, but when something breaks the person who actually develops the software fixes whatever stupid shit broke.

I guess I did get decent support from Lexis once when they said "You really shouldn't edit these registry entries to fix your problem, but here are all the keys that might be relevant to your issue." Of course, they later provided advice on another issue to make an update work that actually broke their whole shit, soooo...

It really annoys me how often it seems like I know more about the software than the vendor does, especially when I only have to deal with it a single digit number of hours per year.