myob/quickbooks -- Always giving grief.

Forums › IT Pro and developers › myob/quickbooks -- Always giving grief.

breakaway

112 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#139199 31-Jan-2014 09:53

I support a lot of small businesses, a lot of them are still using MYOB and/or quickbooks. And it almost always translates to no end of issues, manily presenting as slow speeds in the application. Apparently, a RAID 10 array with 4 x 15,000 RPM disks and a gigabit network is not fast enough for MYOB.

Their knowledge base/sites help reads like some rubbish from 1999: http://myobaustralia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9322

e.g. To minimise issues with the NIC, ensure that:
- All NICs operate at a minimum of 100 Mbps.
- Avoid mixing different brands to ensure consistency.
- Many "off the shelf" computers have NICs pre-installed, however some have "onboard" models or are of poor quality. Consider upgrading the NICs if this is the case for any of your systems.

Seems like rubbish. So they want me to purchase an Intel Pro 1000 pci-e gigabit network card for every machine running this accounting application?

I think the real issue is the application is a terribly bloated cancerous tumor that they have no intention of investing time to fix, but I digress.

The entire company file is 200 MB. The whole thing can be transferred from the server in 4 seconds flat. And yet, users are experiencing HUGE delays switching from screen to screen in MYOB.

Whenever I post on the official support forum, the solution is to "use a terminal server", as if that's something you can set up in one afternoon and call it a day.

Is there someone here that has MYOB running properly? If yes, what did you do to get it working right? I've tried all the simple solutions like ensuring financial data is split off from year to year into a new MYOB file to reduce file size etc. I've also run iperf to test performance of the network and it always comes out as expected.

Edit, thought I'd add that in all cases that I'm having trouble in is when I've moved the company file to a server and shared out the folder as a SMB share. Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 all seem to suffer from the same issue.

1 | 2

4015 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1852

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#977937 31-Jan-2014 11:22

We put a couple of QuickBooks databases on SSDs to see if this would make a difference. It was noticeable but not a game-changer. What I assume to be inefficiencies in how the application operates in its interaction with a remote database seem to be the cause. QB has it's database manager software, but that has given clients more than its fair share of grief as well - especially on 64bit servers which they all are now anyway.

We've had a number of clients move from MYOB/QB to Xero (where it has met their requirements) and their experience has been invariably positive, but there are still delays as the request is processed and the resulting web page delivered. We made that move from MYOB ourselves 2 years ago. Overall I am absolutely convinced the positives outweighed the negatives.

“Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.” Douglas Adams

richrdh18

232 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 102

#978000 31-Jan-2014 12:23

Change to Xero

SATTV

1670 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 658

ID Verified

#978049 31-Jan-2014 13:10

I know you dont want to hear this but MYOB in its current for i.e. V19.5 has to work on a terminal server so all users get full speed.

I installed a gigbit network for a customer and that did not help much.

There are some TS programmes available for windows machines that appernently work quite well but I am not sure on the microsoft licencing and I dont want to get into trouble.

MYOB have been trying for the past 4-5 years to make a multiuser version using a SQL database and they can not get it right, every time I speak to MYOB they say it is 6 - 9 months away.
MYOB have released some of their products to market too early and they have not been right and caused even more greif. To MYOB's credit they have learned from their mistake and are wanting the product to work properly when released to market.

regards
John

I know enough to be dangerous

richrdh18

232 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 102

#978199 31-Jan-2014 16:04

I recall when I was in my own business, providing IT support to SME's, we had a similar issue with Myob and multi-user access. Myob blamed a corrupt data file, so we sent it too them and they were unable to find any fault with it. I put it down to the data file containing too many inventory line items. Why, because when we created a new company file and ran comparison tests, things worked fine.

I also had a second business that used Myob multi user and had no issues. (but they didnt have a lot of stock items)

The only good thing to come from all this was, that we learnt to call Myob Support 0800 # from our mobiles, as they answered right away. When we call from a land line it took forever to get through.

askelon

942 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 233

ID Verified

#978213 31-Jan-2014 16:16

I always use some form of RDP over a network for MYOB. Otherwise the speed is pathetic.. rdplus.com.au does a nice product for it.

chevrolux

4962 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2638
Inactive user

#978298 31-Jan-2014 18:28

richrdh18: Change to Xero

I'm actually a little disappointed with Xero.

The site does it's "upload" every few hours. We use to be on ADSL and now have UFB. Uploads are still 'slow' in my opinion.

I haven't done much in depth investigation but so far it looks like it is all going to somewhere on the east coast of the US. One day I will do a packet capture though to see where the traffic is actually going for these uploads. Bit disappointing for a NZ company to be sending stuff that far away.

Dyson

Shop now for Dyson appliances (affiliate link).

breakaway

112 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#978322 31-Jan-2014 19:29

I'm afraid "Change to Xero" is a little easier said than done. Admittedly I don't use this software, but what I've been told by my clients is Xero doesn't quite do what they need it do for some of my clients (although its possible that this is just a case of resisting change).

And there is absoutely no way I'm letting "rdplus" anywhere near any of the networks I manage. Any software that advocates transforming a SBS into a terminal server just fills me with dread. Hacking the OS with some third party utility to make it do something it wasn't intended to sounds like a pathway to trouble.

For S&Gs, I created 2 VMs on the same ESX host, and MYOB was still slow over the vNetwork! There must be something in the network stack that's causing problems.

It will have to be terminal server.

Jax

92 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 6

#978344 31-Jan-2014 20:32

I feel your pain.

I have recently come out the other end of long troubleshooting period with MYOB Exo following a file server upgrade.
Many MYOB products share the same (archaic) back-end database which is Visual Foxpro:

"In March 2007, Microsoft announced that there will be no VFP 10,[8] thus making VFP9 (released to manufacturing on December 17, 2004) the last commercial VFP release from Microsoft"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxPro

You would think a software company would plan a succession following the annoucement the DB they based all their product on is EOL (in 2004!) but here we are today in 2014 without too much progress. Another project I was working used MYOB AO which has just (partially) released a next gen release based on SQL

"MYOB Accountants Office is having a significant upgrade. The next generation is known simply as MYOB AO. It has a contemporary new look and feel, is built on the latest technology"
http://myob.co.nz/accounting-practices/accounting-client-service-support/ao-resources-center/the-latest-1257829648599

Until you read the fine print: "For MYOB AO, Microsoft SQL Express 2008 R2 32 bit only is supported and will be supplied in the product installation. Other versions of SQL are not supported with MYOB AO." - what you mean like the current SQL version?
http://myob.com.au/products/accounting-practices/accountants-office-ao/client-accounting-1258090776219?productArea=SystemRequirements#other

Anyways, the root cause for most of the issues was SMB2/3 improvements in Windows 2008+ and Oplocks.
Foxpro can't handle it. So either you have to disable SMB2/3 or re-home the MYOB data files on a 2003 Server (SMB1)

For the one job I moved the DBs back to 2003 and the other I disabled SMB 2/3. Neither a good solution but the crashes dried up (as much as possible with an MYOB product)

Another thing to check is the NTFS permissions are pretty open.

Extra info
http://www.dataaccess.com/whitepapers/opportunlockingreadcaching.html

raytaylor

4076 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1296

Trusted

#978556 1-Feb-2014 15:58

Yep anything that is based on old single file fat direct client access databases i find to perform like crap.

At the three accounting firms I look after, we put in terminal servers (2008r2) to handle accountants office and it works quite well.

We dont bother with small business server anymore. Not for any company with less than 15 workstations anyway.

Ray Taylor

There is no place like localhost

Spreadsheet for Comparing Electricity Plans Here

nathan

5695 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1630
Inactive user

#978578 1-Feb-2014 17:10

chevrolux:
richrdh18: Change to Xero

I'm actually a little disappointed with Xero.

The site does it's "upload" every few hours. We use to be on ADSL and now have UFB. Uploads are still 'slow' in my opinion.

I haven't done much in depth investigation but so far it looks like it is all going to somewhere on the east coast of the US. One day I will do a packet capture though to see where the traffic is actually going for these uploads. Bit disappointing for a NZ company to be sending stuff that far away.

they currently host using Rackspace in the US

nathan

5695 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1630
Inactive user

#978592 1-Feb-2014 17:13

Oplocks, that brings back some memories from 15 odd years ago :)

Geekzone

Want to support Geekzone and browse the site without the ads? Subscribe to Geekzone now (monthly, annual and lifetime options).

jaymz

1136 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 76

#980219 4-Feb-2014 16:53

I had the exact same issues a few years ago. Client changed from 2003 to 2008 and speeds were shocking as soon as two people connected to MYOB.

Pretty sure these commands helped performance:

netsh interface tcp set global chimney=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

There was also a security checking protocol that can be disabled using GPOs but i cant remember exactly what that was, it basically disabled Windows 7 and Server 2008 security checking of network traffic

jaymz

1136 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 76

#980221 4-Feb-2014 16:58

I found this MS article which may be of help too:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951037

redherring

86 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 46

#980292 4-Feb-2014 20:13

A few years ago I set up a terminal server for MYOB 19.5. It's still unstable but it does work.

MYOB seems to be completely incapable of using available system resources - on a 64 bit Xeon server with SAS RAID and plenty of RAM, a simple task like upgrading a database file from an older version takes just as long as on a standard PC, and the CPU and disk activity is barely noticeable in task manager / resource monitor.

breakaway

112 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#980493 5-Feb-2014 08:29

I see, disabling SMB2/3 may well be the solution for me.

Has anyone here implemented this solution? Due to the size of most deployments most sites are a single server -- usually a 2008 R2 or a SBS with DC role, with DFS for file replication (user profiles etc to datacentre). Just wanted to confirm disabling SMB2/3 woudn't have a detrimental effect on DFS/AD-Related services.

1 | 2