Expert: Evan Gilder - 8/24/2006

Question
I have been doing some work for a company by setting up their computers & network and they are using Quickbooks.  They were using the 2005 Premier Edition up until today when I upgraded them to Quickbooks 2006 Premier.  It took about SIX hours to install the program and ALL of its patches to take it from Release 1 to Release 7 on five computers (including the server).  Granted the company .QBW file is 401 MB and the power went out about 3/4 of the way through the first time when we had start over.  Other than that, there were no technical glitches and things went smoothly, but it took forever!  One thing that slowed the process was when Quickbooks was verifying the integrity of the file before it was being backed up.  It would "get stuck" on 19% on the progress bar when trying to back up.  Do you have any other thoughts on why it took so long?  Is there anything that can speed up Quickbooks that you know of?  Do you think the program has too many unnecessary .dll's or other files that makes it too slow?  Are Quicken and Microsoft Money faster or better than Quickbooks?  They are not using it for payroll but they do use it for billing purposes.  Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!


Answer
The only thing I can think of as to why this is taking so long is because the validation of the data file has not been performed for a number of years.  Quicken and Mocrosft Money are not options compared with quickbooks, since it is a General ledger, while the other two are not.  Only Quicken Premier Home and Business can even do billing bt it is on a very rudimentary basis.

I hope this helps.

Thanks, Evan
egilder@redlig.com
www.redlig.com