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showskier
February 9, 2021
Solved

Quickbooks data file stored on server

  • February 9, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

System info-

Mac OS 10.15.7 (Catalina)

Quickbooks Mac 2021 (V20.0.3 R4)

 

The Quickbooks data file is stored on a drive on a central server (running Mac OS 10.15.7).

When running Quickbooks on another client machine (running Mac OS 10.15.7) after a few minutes

I get the the following error dialog.

QuickBooks could not update your company file! Your system may be low on disk space.

The volume that contains your company is inaccessible and may be low on space. QuickBooks still has an updated copy of your company file that can be saved to a new location. Please choose a different location to save your company file.

 

The network volume has over 2TB of free space.

 

If I click ok in the dialog it pops up a new dialog to navigate to a new folder to save the file to.

I can successfully save the file to a different folder on the server.

 

Then after a few minutes I get the same error dialog about the file in the new location.

 

My thoughts -

This seems like a bug in quickbooks.

It seems that quickbooks works for a few minutes and then stops being able to save onto the central server.

I had been previously running quickbooks 2016 (on Mac OS High Sierra) for several years without a problem.

So I'm sure the network (gigabit wired) is fine.

We just updated everything to Catalina a few days ago due to some other software requiring a newer version of the OS.  Which forced us to upgrade quickbooks.

 

I found this thread that describes something similar - https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/other-questions/bug-with-file-on-remote-server/00/598550

 

I am running the single user version of quickbooks, just storing the file on a server.

If I run quickbooks on the central server machine I do not have any trouble with the file.

It only happens when I'm trying to remotely access the quickbooks data file.

 

Also note that quickbooks is set to backup every time you exit.  It can and does successfully save the backups to the central server.

 

Also I have tried saving a copy to the local desktop and then moved that file to the server.

When I open up that file on the server I get the same error.

 

Also anyone that suggests I just manually copy the data file between machines will be ignored.

That's not a solution in our networked world.

This is obviously a problem.

 

 

 

Best answer by IntuitBrooks

When you are accessing files on a network mounted drive you are using an networking protocol (AFP, SMB, maybe something else if the OS on the mounted drive machine is not macOS). These aren't fully supported by Apple's CoreData which is used as the underlying data base engine for QuickBooks Mac. It comes down to file locking protocols on the network OS which vary and have latency issues.

 

The safe and approved way to do this is to run the QuickBooks Server application on the machine with the file and then have the clients access that over the network using the Multiuser connection built into QuickBooks. The server application ships with QuickBooks.  Just run that on the server machine, open the file, then have the QuickBooks client machines connect to the hosted file in Multiuser mode.

 

Even if you only have one license of QuickBooks Mac you can do this by quitting QuickBooks client on one machine before launching it on another.  The server stays running. 

 

Y

1 reply

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IntuitBrooksAnswer
February 9, 2021

When you are accessing files on a network mounted drive you are using an networking protocol (AFP, SMB, maybe something else if the OS on the mounted drive machine is not macOS). These aren't fully supported by Apple's CoreData which is used as the underlying data base engine for QuickBooks Mac. It comes down to file locking protocols on the network OS which vary and have latency issues.

 

The safe and approved way to do this is to run the QuickBooks Server application on the machine with the file and then have the clients access that over the network using the Multiuser connection built into QuickBooks. The server application ships with QuickBooks.  Just run that on the server machine, open the file, then have the QuickBooks client machines connect to the hosted file in Multiuser mode.

 

Even if you only have one license of QuickBooks Mac you can do this by quitting QuickBooks client on one machine before launching it on another.  The server stays running. 

 

Y

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IntuitBrooks
February 9, 2021

Also using it as you are now if both copies of QuickBooks happen to access the file at the same time the results are "undefined".  It might hose the file.

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showskierAuthor
February 14, 2021

Actually there was file locking.  And quickbooks would only allow 1 copy of the software access to the file until  you quit out of that copy before it could be opened on a different machine.

 

We "bumped" into each other numerous times without any issues.

 

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