DIY is a great way to save money on home repairs or Halloween costumes — just not for hosting essential software.
With QuickBooks Premier and Pro sunsetting, many small to mid-sized businesses are faced with moving to QuickBooks Enterprise — the only full-featured accounting product from Intuit’s QuickBooks. And once they choose which version of QuickBooks Enterprise to use, they’re faced with another choice: how to get it online.
Unlike the aptly named QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Enterprise is not automatically available in a virtual environment. For businesses who don’t already have a cloud hosting provider in place, there may be an urge to “save money” by hosting QuickBooks internally. But as anyone who’s ever gotten overly ambitious on home renovation knows, savings is unlikely to follow. If you’re remodeling your kitchen, you might be able to get away for a few days without a functional dishwasher. As an enterprise, even a small outage — or worse, data loss — can set off the consequence dominos.
Let’s look at what self-hosting QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise requires, so you can decide whether maintaining it is something your team can handle.
The Basics of Self-Hosting QuickBooks Enterprise
The instructions seem cut and dry, but so does filing your taxes. Once you get into it, you’ll find a long list of pieces to collect and juggle. Just look at any forum of QuickBooks users attempting their own hosting. At the most basic level, self-hosting QuickBooks Enterprise requires that you:
Choose and Maintain a Server
Maybe you already have an unused server up to the task of hosting all of your company’s financial information. Probably, you do not. Procuring and setting up a server will always be a large capital expense outlay, and one you have to plan on repeating once the technology advances beyond what you have.
Say you do set up the server, though, and get multi-user access up and running. Now you have to maintain it. Not a problem if you already have the cool, dry location staffed with technicians. But then again, what small to mid-sized business does? If you’re hoping to set up a server under the desk of your most technically proficient employee, you should also be putting together an extensive backup and business continuity plan, because you’re going to need it.
Install QuickBooks Desktop on the Server
This part you can absolutely handle. Download QuickBooks Enterprise to the server as if it’s your desktop computer, because it sort of is. Tweak all the settings so that it’s optimal for your business. Great! Then create a plan and assign a person to test and make the regular updates needed to keep the program running smoothly and secure. Kind of like the server itself, it’s never just set it and forget it.
Setup Permissions Inside QuickBooks Desktop
Once installed, you need to activate multi-user mode on the server, set up your security systems so the people who need access can get in from anywhere, while keeping all outsiders out. QuickBooks will always be an attractive target for hackers — it’s literally where the money is. An advanced firewall needs to be in place to separate the verified users from the bad actors.
An Ongoing Relationship with Your IT Department
Once QuickBooks Enterprise is up and running, the real work begins. Keeping your company’s instance of QuickBooks operating smoothly isn’t a full-time job, but it is a job that requires constant attention. At least one person needs to be responsible for making updates, monitoring for unusual activity, and putting a backup plan into place when something goes wrong.
You’ll need an employee who is extremely well-versed in:
- Network administration and server configuration: How quickly can they switch a malfunctioning server to keep company finances running smoothly?
- Performance optimization: The more users and data go in and out of a server, the slower it can run. Is someone able to continuously monitor the server and make adjustments for optimal performance, so QuickBooks Enterprise is always running as it should?
- Data backup and security: Do you have the internal skills to confidently back up all the financial data regularly and semi-permanently, knowing that the outcome of an audit may depend on it? And can someone keep both the backups and the main program safe from outside agents who want access to your most sensitive business data?
If you can confidently say that someone in your IT team can do all these things — congratulations. It’s hard to hire and keep that kind of talent within a small to mid-sized business. Great work!
If you can’t, you’re in the majority. Most businesses don’t have the volume of IT work necessary to keep someone in-house. For them, they need to find a partner who is already doing this work, and doing it at scale.
How a Hosting Partner Makes QuickBooks Enterprise as Easy as QuickBooks Online
By hiring a dedicated and experienced cloud service hosting provider like Summit, you get to forget about the last 800 words of this article. Which, now that we say it, we probably should have put that caveat at the top of the page. Still! It must be some kind of a relief to rely on QuickBooks as a service, rather than a piece of software you need to manage.
Our team at Summit can help you find the optimal setup for your accounting needs, then watch it 24/7/365. Your people will experience seamless access from anywhere they need to work, and hackers will meet a brick wall keeping them out. When you have a question, you call us. We always answer.
And it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than hiring.
Summit Team
We're the Summit team – cloud geeks, tech tinkerers, and security sleuths on a mission to keep your business running smoothly in and out of the cloud.
