QuickBooks 2019 Desktop - System Requirements

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We are in the process of wrapping up our lengthy series on QuickBooks 2019 Desktop, and as you start downloading the products and your clients want to start installing running them it is essential you are aware of the requirements for operation. With this in mind, let's look at the various minimum, recommended and 'best practices' for each of the three most commonly used 'Windows environments' for QuickBooks.

But before we actually look at those system requirements, I felt we should talk a little about the concept of RAM (memory), and some of the applications on your computer using RAM, so you can understand the importance of sufficient RAM in relationship to not only QuickBooks, but your computer as a whole.

A Bit About RAM Memory

Memory (RAM, DRAM, SDRAM, ECC or Non-ECC) is the component in your computer that provides short-term data access. Your computer's moment-to-moment operations are typically performed using short-term data access; functions like loading applications, browsing the Web or editing a database like QuickBooks all rely on Memory; so, the amount, speed and type of memory play a critical role in your computer's performance. Inside your computer, the memory works in conjunction with your processor and hard drive (or Solid-State-Drive) to access and use your data, and the amount, type and speed of memory you've got installed helps determine how fast applications, like QuickBooks, are able to operate. The memory also helps determine how effectively your computer can multitask.

In preparation for an upcoming webinar, I developed the following PowerPoint slide that helps to show you the various RAM requirements for some of the more common software applications most 'Windows' computer users have on-board. (Note: All of these specifications are based upon a 64-bit computing environment since that is the most common in use today, as opposed to the 32-bit environments of a few years back.)

As you can see, all ‘supported’ version of Windows in use (Windows 7 and 8.1 as well as Windows-10) all require a minimum of 2 GB of RAM. I haven't included any of the Windows 'server' software which require even more RAM to operate properly.

While Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook all require 2 GB of RAM (minimum) when in active use, they will run in a background mode (not the primary window) with a single GB of RAM.  Depending on your use of these applications, the application can easily use 4 GB of RAM (or more) if available when performing tasks like ‘copying large amounts of text between documents,’ ‘formatting a large spreadsheet,’ ‘numerous large spreadsheets open simultaneously,' etc.

Most Antivirus or Internet Security software, depending on manufacturer and offered services, require 1 to 2 GB of RAM. Most Browsers require a minimum of 1 GB of RAM, but will run in the background using only about ½ GB of RAM.

Adobe Flash Player and Java are both essential components of a number of other applications, including QuickBooks, they require 1 GB of RAM (each) and both have ‘dynamic’ properties allowing them to use as little or as much as ¼ of available or ¼ of total RAM. Obviously, performance is impacted based upon the extent to which either is ‘limited’ or ‘maximized’. 

Many of these applications have ‘related windows services’ that continue to run even after you have closed the application completely on your desktop. That's why if you look at processes running within Task Manager you may not actually see the 'kernel' of any application consuming as much memory as the specified requirement, but if you add up all the related applications they will be consuming the minimum or more, depending upon availability.

All of this is my way of saying whether you are talking about QuickBooks, or any other computer application, when an amount of RAM is specified, the requirement isn't referencing the total amount of RAM installed on your computer, it is referring to the amount of RAM that is actually available to the application while running on your computer.

So, let's add up a typical example just for 'grins': Windows X 2GB, MS Word 2GB, MS Excel 2GB, MS Outlook 2GB, Internet Security 2GB, and any Browser 1GB.  If we add that up, we have 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 11. With any two of the three Microsoft applications, plus our Browser running in background we are down to 8.5 GB of RAM in use. If we say that we are going to minimize our remaining Microsoft application, then we are below 8 GB of RAM.

As far as I am concerned, this is pretty much a 'core' configured Windows X computer, and we will consider it as such during the rest of our discussions in this article.

So here are a couple of 'off the sale rack' computers. I know these are 'towers,' not 'rack' computers, but you get my meaning. The question we want to ask ourselves is how would these two computers 'fair' when it comes to the basics of our software configuration as I outlined above. 

The answer is 'adequate to fair' because of the 'dynamic memory management' of the Windows Operating System, specifically Windows X (ten). Windows has the ability to minimize some of the background component services and processes to make more memory available when things get tight.  So, does this mean that these two machines with their 8 GB of memory are sufficient to run 'full blast' with all of our applications open simultaneously, the answer is "at a snail's pace."  In our scenario, we really need a minimum of 12 GB of RAM in either of these computers because if you remember the applications added up to 11 GB of RAM. But even then, 16 GB of RAM would really be 'Murph's minimum recommendation' and folks, we are not even talking about QuickBooks yet.

With this understanding of RAM behind us, we are now ready to talk about QuickBooks System Requirements.

Single-User 'Stand-alone' QuickBooks 2019

For many users, QuickBooks operates in a stand-alone fashion on their laptop or small desktop computer. They may use the application only occasionally or may use it multiple times per day every day of the work week. In most of these case users have installed QuickBooks Pro (or Premier) and it will be running in single-user mode with 'hosting' turned-off because they chose the simplest or 'default' installation configuration.  For 2019, the actual system requirements are those illustrated below.

The key thing to look at here is the RAM requirement, which is a minimum of 4 GB, although Intuit recommends 8 GB. In our scenario from the last section, and the sample computers we looked at, we would be hard pressed even with the 'dynamic memory management' features of Windows X, to run QuickBooks effectively with almost any application running other than the Windows OS, our Antivirus software and QuickBooks simultaneously if our computers only had 8 GB of RAM total. 

In addition, because QuickBooks will dynamically-limit itself at the time of installation to available RAM as the maximum allocation available to QuickBooks, the fact that other programs were open at installation will likely limit the use of RAM by QuickBooks even when such applications are closed in future sessions.

When we consider the operating requirements of our 'core' system, and the minimum and recommended RAM requirements of QuickBooks (running in stand-alone mode), we can see that my recommended 16GB computer minimum is really the bare-bones minimum you can get away with. You should more likely be looking at 20 to 24 GB of RAM.

Further, if you happen to be running the Accountant Version of QuickBooks (even in stand-alone mode) which allows two-instances of QuickBooks to be running in tandem, with potentially larger Company files open than a typical QuickBooks user, you had better be considering 24 to 32 GB of RAM on your computer configured as per our 'core' design previously outlined.

One last word here. For the most part, the configurations and requirements we have discussed here apply if you are using a computer like these as a 'workstation' (client) in either a peer-to-peer or client-server environment. If your workstations are configured so as to run QuickBooks and our other 'core' applications in stand-alone mode, they should work just find as workstations within a network where QuickBooks is being hosted on some other computer.

QuickBooks 2019 Peer-to-Peer Network Host Computer

When a fledgling small business first starts to grow they may find a need to have more than one QuickBooks user, so they begin considering the use of QuickBooks in a multi-user environment. The most economical approach is peer-to-peer networking in which one of the computers, hopefully the most robust, will serve as both the QuickBooks Database Server host and a QuickBooks client. Then one or two other computers are joined to the peer-to-peer network as workstations relying upon the host computer for access to the QuickBooks Company files.

Since we have covered peer-to-peer networking, as well as client-server environments, in multiple articles in the past I won't take time to go into the specifics of these configurations, but it is essential to remember that in a QuickBooks Peer-to-Peer Network all workstations have QuickBooks installed and 'hosting' is turned OFF with the exception of the one computer that is acting as the QuickBooks Database Server host.

The illustration below outlines the minimum system requirements for the computer acting as the 'host' for a QuickBooks 2019 Peer-to-peer network.

The increased RAM requirement here makes perfect sense. We are not only using QuickBooks on this computer for day-to-day work, but we are also using this same computer as the host computer for the peer-to-peer network. This means that the networked version of the QuickBooks Database Server must be running and will require a minimum of 4 GB of RAM to support the requirements of multi-user mode.  It would certainly be advisable to increase the RAM of these hosting computers especially in cases of multiple files as well as in situations of larger Company files.

This year, Intuit is actually recommending that Solid-state-drives (SSD) be used on any hosting computer in support of larger files to provide more rapid access to stored data.  Because SSDs are not subject to the typical 'disk and file fragmentation' associated with 'Disk Drives' they provide more contiguous storage and rapid response in the read/write of data between the database server and the drive itself.

QuickBooks 2019 Client-Server Network Host Computer

While peer-to-peer networks may work fine for smaller business operations, most companies ultimately reach a point where they information technology requirements rise to the level of a 'Windows Server' based network. Such networks may be small using a single server version like 'Windows Server Essentials' or may actually be composed of multiple-servers including a 'domain controller', a 'file server', an 'exchange server', and an 'RDS server' (just to name a few types) all sharing a common 'domain'. In these cases, QuickBooks will be run in a client-server configuration in which one of the Windows servers acts as the 'host' for the QuickBooks Database Server and its' companion QuickBooks Database Server Manager (utility). 

Some IT and QuickBooks professionals prefer to install the complete QuickBooks Application along with the Network-server applications, others will elect to install only the QuickBooks Network-server applications.  While the full application maybe installed for purposes of direct access to the various 'file features' (like the Verify, Backup, and Rebuild) functions, QuickBooks is typically not being used on the server except in those instances.  Regardless, the hosting computer must have sufficient resources to not only meet the needs of the entire network operations, but also the QuickBooks Database Server (which runs as a 'Windows service') and the QuickBooks Database Server Manager utility. 

There is a critical factor to remember in these configurations. While QuickBooks is installed on all workstations, hosting is always turned OFF on every workstation. There should be NO other instances of QuickBooks hosting running on any other computer other than the designated QuickBooks server.

In regard to QuickBooks 2019, the illustration below provides the system requirements for the server operations.

The RAM requirements are based in part upon the minimum needs of the QuickBooks Database Server (QBDBS) in addition to the number of active QuickBooks users to be supported by the QBDBS. Consideration should also be given for the number of multiple instances being supported, and the cumulative file size being supported along with the average number of files in use.  It is far better to err on the side of too much RAM then it is to underestimate the RAM needs when supporting multiple users, with multiple files in use, with many users have dual-instances of QuickBooks running and average files sizes approximating 1 GB of data.  

In response to complaints that Intuit over-stated the minimum RAM requirements for 2018, they lowered the requirements for 2019; however, I personally believe the lowered requirements may be under-estimated for typical conditions such as those I just described.  If on the other hand you are dealing with say 10-users, and 1 Company-file which is 600 MB in size, then the new minimums shown above are probably adequate to your situation.

As with the peer-to-peer host, it is recommended that the client-server host be equipped with solid-state-drives, especially for larger files, to provide faster read/write response between the database server and the drives. While many IT professionals tend to configure 'RAID' drives for servers, both Intuit and Sybase have noted that RAID may actually increase response times and diminish performance, Intuit recommends against the use of RAID for QuickBooks data storage.

In most cases, if client-workstations meet the minimum requirements (or better), then networked QuickBooks performance will be directly related to how well the Database Server performs. As a general rule, the more RAM available to the Server and the faster the drive performance (Hard Drive or Solid-state), the better the server will perform with regard to QuickBooks.

Note: While QuickBooks Enterprise v19 offers support for both Windows Remote Desktop Services/Terminal Server networking and Linux networking, these are beyond the scope of this article. For details consult the appropriate networking installation and operations support documents available at the Intuit QuickBooks Enterprise Installation & Setup website.