The Desktop App supports QuickBooks sharing on PCs and Macs
QuickBooks file sharing is safe and easy with My Docs Online and the Desktop App. Share any QuickBooks file with colleagues, your accountant, or even yourself when you’re on a different computer. Our file locking technology allows you to open and update QuickBooks directly from your My Docs Online account while keeping the file locked so that no one else can make changes while you’re using the file.
What is a file lock and why is it important when updating QuickBooks? In simple terms a file lock is used to prevent two people from opening and updating the same QuickBooks file at the same time. If that were to happen one person’s updates would wipe out the other’s. That’s a bad situation for any file type but especially bad for something as important as QuickBooks.
The Desktop App File Locking feature supports all PC and Mac desktop versions of QuickBooks.
To use the Desktop App for File Locking for QuickBooks sharing follow the following steps:
Select the QuickBooks file you have previously uploaded to My Docs Online and click “Lock & Open”
The file will be locked on the MDO servers, downloaded to your PC or Mac, and opened for editing in QuickBooks
After you complete your editing Save and Close the QuickBooks file (or close QuickBooks)
In the Desktop App Click “Save & Unlock” for the file. Your changes will be uploaded to the MDO servers and the file will be unlocked. The date and time for the file will be updated
If you change your mind and need to discard your changes right-click the file and select “Unlock without Saving”.
The Desktop App can handle any type of file
The My Docs Online Desktop App can “Lock & Open” ANY kind of file, including the examples shown in the box on the left. All versions of Windows and Mac OS X are supported, and you use the regular program for that file type on your computer, giving you a familiar, fast and powerful way to edit and update a shared file. When you are done editing the file or document you simply “Save & Unlock” so your colleagues can access it.
What about security?
Access to an account via the Desktop App is secured using a Login ID and password, and SSL encryption is automatic.
How do I get started?
If you don’t have a My Docs Online account, Try it today for FREE and discover why our customers have relied on us since 1999.
Using your existing account or your trial account, get the Desktop App and upload your QuickBooks file.
An update this week to the My Docs Online Desktop App allows Administrators to pick and choose what actions group members can use. For instance, if you want all file accesses to be via “Lock & Open” you can “turn off” View, Download, etc. You can set overall rules for the entire group and then make exceptions for specific users.
These controls are in addition to the standard permissions, which control overall access to files in a folder.
Also new in this release is control over the length of Locks for Lock & Open processing, which can now be set to 24 hours, 7 days (the default) or “Until Unlocked”. Using the “Until Unlocked” option essentially turns the Lock & Open feature into a “Check-Out/Check-In” operation giving long-term control of a file or document to a particular user. Of course the administrator always has the option of overriding a lengthy Lock by using “Foce Unlock”.
As always, the update to the Desktop App is automatic the next time you open the application. For additional details clock “Help…Help Topics” in the Desktop App, or follow the detailed instructions on the Account Settings screens.
If you’re a small business using Quickbooks to keep track of your income and expenses you probably share it with your accountant from time to time. If you only need to share the QuickBooks file at the end of the year, when the taxes are due, it’s a fairly simple process. You just create a backup copy of your data file and send it to your accountant for tax processing while you continue to work on the “live” file.
But if you need to share it more often, perhaps with a bookkeeper, you need to be extremely careful that you don’t each make changes to the same data file. If that happens either the changes that you made, or the changes that your bookkeeper made may be lost.
If you may have more than one person, in a different location, working on your Quickbooks file you need to have some sort of file locking process in place so that it’s not possible to have two people updating the file at the same time.
One way of doing this is to just be sure and check with the other person before you make any changes and then be sure to get them the changed file before they make any changes. Setting up a process of checking and double checking will work, but it can be a challenge.
An easier way is to use My Docs Online, with the Desktop Application to access your QuickBooks file. Your file is securely stored at My Docs Online and whenever you or your bookkeeper (or anyone else you designate) opens the file a file lock can be applied that prohibits anyone else from accessing the file while it’s in use.
We’ve got a video that shows how this works here and you can try it out for yourself by signing up for a Free Trial of our Multi-User Enterprise service. Pricing for the service that would secure support two people accessing the file begins at less than $10 per month.
Use file locking when collaborating on the content of Microsoft Office Word documents and files in the internet cloud.
Using “file locking” technology is important when you are sharing a Word or other word processing document with others. A file lock is used to prevent two people from opening and updating the same document or file at the same time, because that would result in one person’s updates wiping out the other’s.
On an office LAN this happens automatically and easily because Word can directly open the file on a LAN server, or even on a colleagues Mac or PC if they are on the same LAN network.
When you share a Word or other word processing file “in the internet cloud” File locking requires special software to do the same thing.
The WebDAV protocol used by Web Folders (and supported by My Docs Online) does this only for Word and Excel, because each application needs to use and understand “WebDAV Locks” and Word and Excel are essentially the only applications that do.
Although Microsoft and Office have supported WebDAV since XP and Office 2003, the support in more recent versions of Windows and Office (notably the combination of Windows 7 and Office 2010) is less reliable. This can be an issue as people upgrade from XP to Windows 7.
File Locking is also implemented in the My Docs Online Desktop App, which has additional benefits, including working with all versions of Windows and Mac OS X, all versions of Microsoft Office Word, and other word processing applications such as OpenOffice, Word Perfect, iWork, and others.
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.
During the course of a given week I may need to access the QuickBooks file from my home, from the office, or when traveling. There may also be others who need access to QuickBooks so I can’t just keep the file on my computer and hope I have the computer with me all the time.
My solution? Well, it’s My Docs Online of course, right?
(Best viewed Full Screen)
I store the QB data file on My Docs Online and I can access it from wherever I happen to be. The problem with that has always been that if I’ve downloaded the file myself how do I let others know not to use it until I’m through? In the past we’d cobbled together a “check-in” and “check-out” method for accessing the file but it was not a great solution. What we really needed was file locking for QuickBooks so that anyone trying to access the file would know when it was in use.
Well, since we needed functionality we figured you might need it as well so we build it into the new My Docs Online desktop app.
Now when I’m ready to access the QuickBooks file I just launch the desktop app, highlight the QuickBooks file and click the “Lock and Open” button which locks the file and launches QuickBooks so that I can work.
Then when I’m done I reverse the process. I just close QuickBooks, then click the “Unlock and Save” button, which uploads the new file into our account and removes the lock so that someone else can use it. It also moves the file to the top of the date ordered list so that anyone can see that it’s been recently updated.
Being able to apply file locking to QuickBooks has been a real benefit to me while I’ve been testing the My Docs Online Desktop App. If you have the same need for file locking please check it out.
If you’re in business for yourself you know that in small companies you get to wear a number of different hats. One of the hats that I wear for My Docs Online is a QuickBooks hat, meaning that I do the majority of the accounting work.