QuickBooks Tip: User Permissions & Third Party Applications

User permissions  issues can occur especially when dealing with third party QuickBooks integrated applications and the Enterprise edition where user permissions can be highly customized.  In some cases, it appears that all users need to have the same administrative rights when they sign into QuickBooks as when the software was installed.

Better understanding of the process may help reduce some of the frustration and allow you to assist your clients in installing the third party application satisfactorily.

When a QuickBooks third party integrated application is initially installed, and sends its first request for data, the person who is the QuickBooks Administrator must be logged into the company data file in single-user mode to grant the application permission to access the company data file.

Example:

Larry is the QuickBooks Administrator and Karen is an employee who will be using the third party application.  Karen does not have the same user rights or permissions to access data as Larry.

When the integrated application sent it first request to the company file – basically the 3rd party software would say “Hi QuickBooks, I’m Application X and I would like to work with the data in this company file.”   Larry would initially grant permission to the third party application by selecting “Yes, Always” in the QuickBooks Application Certificate window.

Larry’s next task would be to choose a user – from the drop down menu, who had sufficient permission to run the program.

In an example like this, Larry would select the Admin user OR create a new user with the applications name with permission to access the portions of QuickBooks that the integrated application needed to work with.

By setting up permissions like this Karen would have to use the 3rd party application with the company data file closed, the 3rd party program would log in with the designated permissions even though Karen herself would not be able to access the data directly within QuickBooks.