Blog : syncing engine

Right Networks now hosting Method Integration Sync Engine

Method_Danny — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Looking for a solution that will take QuickBooks to the cloud? Do you love the freedom and accessibility you have with Method and wish your QuickBooks could also be hosted and backed up by a reliable provider? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to no longer worry about server crashes and the stresses that come along with not being able to access your data? With Method and QuickBooks in the cloud, you’d have no installations to worry about and no frustrations accessing QuickBooks and Method company files from remote locations, enabling staff, clients and accountants to access data from absolutely anywhere with an Internet connection.

Look no more. You’ve found the solution with Method and Right Networks because you can take your QuickBooks to the cloud with Right Networks, the largest and most trusted provider of desktop QuickBooks hosting. With Right Networks your data will always be online, accessible from any location with an Internet connection, with high security protection to keep your data safe.

We are proud to announce that we are officially partners with this outstanding desktop QuickBooks hosting provider.

What sets Right Networks apart from the competition? Right Networks uses enterprise-class servers that are load balanced, meaning that if a server ever goes down, another server will be up right away, so your data is always online. Be at ease knowing that offsite backups of your data are made on your behalf, and your hosted storage comes with banking-class encryption to keep your data secure and protected. Right Networks’ service is reliable, efficient, and ideal for companies with remote staff and accountants.

By hosting your QuickBooks with Right Networks in conjunction with Method Integration, your entire business system is in the cloud, accessible from anywhere in the world via the web, without any downloads and installations taking up valuable space on your computer. Right Networks has the Method Integration Engine preloaded on their server, so the real-time synchronization between QuickBooks and Method can take place 100% in the cloud. With no downloads and installations to worry about, you can get up and running in no time using Right Networks with Method.

Multiple people can access the same QuickBooks and Method company files simultaneously, making it a convenient solution for remote staff and accountants. While Right Networks makes it possible for business owners, accounting department personnel and/or accountants to login and access QuickBooks desktop without any fuss at all, admin, sales, marketing, support and remote staff login to Method to access the business and QuickBooks data that their user permissions allow. Since QuickBooks and Method synchronize data in real-time, both company files are always up-to-date. With your entire business system in a controlled environment, you can trust that your data is safe, secure and accessible 24/7.

"My firm is the first user on Right Networks with Method and QuickBooks integrated for a fully hosted solution. We have been delighted to have all our data in one place, which has greatly improved our time and contact management, and reduced duplicate data entry. We now have more time for our customers and the confidence that all our data is secure.” - Method & Right Networks user, Judith Valese Syms

Here is how it works:

Right Networks manages your back office- your QuickBooks desktop data is accessible by owners, managers and accountants who need to access QuickBooks directly.

Method manages your front office- All other data entry for admin, sales, marketing, support, CRM and industry-applications, including QuickBooks-related data.

Here are some examples:

Company: Erin’s Mobile Spa

Before:

Erin owns a small mobile spa company that is quickly gaining popularity. Erin needs to be able to schedule her 3 estheticians as calls come in and also have her estheticians track their time and products used at each client’s location. Erin emails her estheticians their weekly schedules and calls to let them know if there are any changes. The estheticians only swing by Erin’s office periodically when they run out of products. Erin would like to avoid having to manually enter in the estheticians’ timesheets. Erin also has an accountant that comes in on a monthly basis to do her accounting using QuickBooks.

After:

Erin now has her QuickBooks desktop hosted with Right Networks. When she needs to access her QuickBooks information, she logs into the Right Networks server, and appreciates knowing that her data will always be accessible thanks to their load balanced servers. She has also setup an additional user so her accountant can login to do the accounting and no longer needs to come into the office to do it on a monthly basis. Erin also setup her Method account and schedules work through Method Field Services. She is able to add new customers through Method and dispatch work for her estheticians. The estheticians also login to Method to view their schedule, enter in their times and check for newly scheduled work. Erin can also see which products her estheticians are running out of, so she can ensure she has everything in stock and ready for pickup in advance. The service times being entered and customers being added by Erin and her staff appear in QuickBooks in real-time and the only people having to access QuickBooks directly are Erin and her accountant. Erin knows that her data is safe and secure using Right Networks and Method and is able to focus on business expansion.

Company: Jacob’s Accounting Firm

Before:

Jacob is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Typically, Jacob logs in remotely to his client’s computers to do their accounting work. He usually calls the client in advance to ensure they are not using the PC he is logging into, and if they are, he calls and tries again later. Understandably, Jacob finds it bothersome when he has to rearrange his schedule to wait for the user to get off the computer before he can login and provide his services. Jacob also has some clients that send him a copy of their QuickBooks file on a monthly basis, so he has to make sure he and his clients are using compatible versions of QuickBooks. Most of his clients utilize basic functions in QuickBooks like creating invoices, bills, entering times or receiving purchase orders. Ideally, Jacob would like to manage the QuickBooks files for his clients while allowing them access to necessary information, in a way that would allow them to carry on with business as usual. Jacob would prefer not to host the QuickBooks files at his office since the infrastructure and security are not in place. He is looking for a reliable, efficient solution to ease his frustrations.

After:

A colleague recommended Method Integration to Jacob and he was delighted at the prospect of hosting the QuickBooks files for his clients and having his clients do their data entry through Method. Not only did Method provide a solution to his remote access needs, but all the business functions his clients needed were available using the Method interface. By using Method with QuickBooks, Jacob would always have access to the QuickBooks desktop data, even when his clients are entering QuickBooks data via Method. Even better, Jacob now uses Right Networks to host all of his clients’ QuickBooks files so he doesn’t have to worry about security issues. Right Networks hosts the QuickBooks files and runs Method, so he logs onto the Right Networks server to do his work, while his clients logon to access Method. Jacob’s clients are pleased that they no longer have to get off the computer in order for Jacob to do the accounting, or send in copies of their company files, and love being able to access to their business data via an internet connection.

To learn more about Right Networks and their excellent hosting solutions, please visit their website: http://www.rightnetworks.com/

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Can poorly written add-ons to QuickBooks impose a drag on your QuickBooks’ performance?

Method_Danny — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:28:00 GMT

If you take a look at the Intuit Marketplace, several applications state they have “syncing” capabilities with QuickBooks. If you have ever shopped for an add-on to QuickBooks, you know that the degree in which these third-party applications can sync with QuickBooks varies depending on who created the application.

The QuickBooks SDK allows developers to also create “listening” add-ons to QuickBooks. So your next question is going to be, “What are listening add-ons” right? These are QuickBooks third-party applications that keep an open ear to activity that is taking place in QuickBooks while it is open. When something does happen in QuickBooks (such as adding a customer, creating a new item, etc.), it then notifies the third-party application that something has taken place. The third-party app can stay current with what is happening in QuickBooks without having to perform a manual sync process. Sounds good, right?

Here in lies the problem. Many of the developers out there are writing poorly written apps that use these “listening” abilities. As a result, they cause QuickBooks to slow down in performance and end up wasting any time that was saved through the automatic syncing process. Not only that, it gives us “good guys” a bad name. By “good guys” I mean, software developers who write properly written programs.

Naturally, when a person experiences this, they easily lose faith in “listening” applications and won’t want to use or recommend them to their customers. So here are some quick things you should know about well-written and poorly written programs.

First the “bad guys” or poorly written program:

The program acts ‘synchronously’, in that it will perform extra functions during the listening. This means QuickBooks has to sit there and wait for those functions to complete before moving on to do more important things.

So breaking that down into more detail:

QuickBooks provides the event details that are taking place to the third-party application.
App then performs one or more additional functions like getting more information from QuickBooks, updating its own database with changes, etc.
App then returns control back to QuickBooks so that QuickBooks can continue doing what it was doing before.

Now the “good guys” or well written program (like Method of course! WOOT WOOT!)

The program acts ‘asynchronously’, in that it will immediately return control back to QuickBooks and perform any additional actions on its own time.

So what does that mean?

QuickBooks provides the event details to the listening app.
App simply takes note of the event details.
App immediately returns control back to QuickBooks so that QuickBooks can continue doing what it was doing before.
App, on its own time, performs additional functions like requesting more information from QuickBooks, updating its down database, etc.

So there you have it! Next time someone asks you “Can poorly written add-ons to QuickBooks slow things down?” you’ll know exactly how to answer. Or at the very least, point them to this article.

Cheers,

Danny Do Couto
Method Integration

Method has made its first patent filing to United States Patent and Trademark Office

Method_Paul — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:49:00 GMT

On Friday (September 5th, 2008) Method has filed its first patent application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office! In fact it is the first and only patent that our company, Alocet Incorporated, has ever filed, and let me tell you, it is quite a process.

What for you ask? Well, if you break method into two parts: the syncing part "Method Integration Engine" and the web platform "Method", the patent is on the syncing part. Specifically, the process by which we devised a way to sync an accounting database, like QuickBooks, with a separate server -hosted, non-accounting database, in real-time.

Most of us, myself included, have never gone through this process. It is quite an experience, and a lot of work going back and forth with a technology-specialized intellectual property guru, hashing out the details and processes of "the invention" in such a way that it can be understood by an outsider. By the end you end up with some 75 pages of processes, claims, diagrams, exhibits.....and quite a headache. :)

For me, because of my personal involvement in the core development of the actual syncing engine, it was a realization of what an amazing feat we have accomplished by creating it. We started it over two years ago, and it has been left fairly untouched for the last year while we shifted more efforts to the platform portion, so I had forgotten about all the challenges and obstacles we faced when creating it.

From an end-user's standpoint you might already take it for granted. You add a customer, or an invoice, or change an item price, etc. and it magically updates QuickBooks instantly (and vice-versa). But the process of finding its way from your browser, wherever you are in the world, through the internet, finding the computer that has QuickBooks on it, and making the appropriate entry into QuickBooks is quite an accomplishment. It's even a lot more complicated that one might perceive with all of its many different moving parts each performing a special function, and all perfectly rigged to follow accounting and QuickBooks specific rules - such as hundreds of little rules like "don't try to add a new invoice until you have added a new customer first".

The syncing process of the Method Integration Engine is a one-of-a-kind accomplishment...and now I am proud to say we have a pending patent to prove for it.

We're off to Dallas next week for the QB Enterprise Solutions conference. I look forward to meeting many of you,

Paul Jackson
Method Integration