conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Spend with the genre: Computers & Technology, Software?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'QuickBooks 2010 For Dummies'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: QuickBooks 2010 For Dummies
  The easiest way to understand record locking is to compare it with the other variety of locking: file locking. Most of the other programs that you use — perhaps every one but QuickBooks — use file locking. What file locking means is this: If one person on the network has, for instance, a word processing document open, nobody else on the network can open that document. Others may be able to open a copy of the document that they can save on their computers, but they can't edit the original document. The operating system locks the original document (the file) so that only one person can fool around with the file at a time. This locking ensures the integrity of the data and the changes that people make to the data. (If this business about ensuring integrity seems weird, think about the difficulty of making sure that both people's changes end up in a word processing document that both people are simultaneously editing.)
  Record locking works differently. With record locking, more than one person on the network can open and edit the same file at once, but only one person can work with a specific record.
  This information sounds like too much confusion, but differentiating between files and the records within a file is what makes sharing files possible. In QuickBooks, for example, if Jane is entering one bill for the Alpha Company in a file, Joe can edit a bill for Beta Corporation because the two bills are different records. However, Jane can't — because of record locking — fool around with the Beta Corporation bill that Joe is editing. And Joe can't — again, because of record locking — fiddle with the Alpha Company bill that Jane's entering.
  Restated more generally, no two people can edit the same record in the file at the same time. Record locking enables employees to use a file in a multi-user environment because it lets more than one person work with a file.
  To install QuickBooks for network use, you must first install QuickBooks on all the computers on the network that need to access and work with the QuickBooks file. This task isn't tricky. You don't need to install QuickBooks in any fancy way to be able to share QuickBooks files.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The administrator has access to all areas of QuickBooks, so picking a good password is especially important. Other users (especially those with higher levels of access permission) also need to select their passwords carefully.
  A good password is one that you can easily remember but that other people can't easily guess. Combinations of letters and numbers are the best way to go. For example, use your grade school nickname plus the number of your favorite basketball player. Or use a random number combined with the name of your favorite restaurant (as long as you don't walk around all day muttering "Number nine, number nine, number nine" and raving about your love of this particular eatery). Avoid using telephone numbers, family names, and family dates (such as the birthday of a family member). And absolutely do not use banking PINs or Social Security numbers.
  One last tip: QuickBooks lets you create passwords from 0–16 characters in length. As a general rule, choose a password that's five or more characters long.
  You can tell QuickBooks who else will use the file and set permissions for these other people during the EasyStep Interview (see Chapter 2). I'm going to assume that you give QuickBooks this information later. To do it later, use the User List dialog box, as shown in Figure C-1. To display this dialog box, choose Company⇒Set Up Users and Passwords⇒Set Up Users.
  Doing so displays the first page of the Set Up User Password and Access Wizard (see Figure C-2). You use this wizard to add new users and specify user permissions.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'For more than one person to work with the QuickBooks file at once, users must work with the QuickBooks file in multi-user mode'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: For more than one person to work with the QuickBooks file at once, users must work with the QuickBooks file in multi-user mode. The first person who opens the file needs to specify multi-user mode for others to be able to open the file. To specify multi-user mode, choose File⇒Switch to Multi-User Mode. You can tell that you're working in multi-user mode because the QuickBooks title bar indicates so. When other people open the QuickBooks file, it automatically opens in multi-user mode. For another user to work in single-user mode, the other users must close the QuickBooks file and the user wanting to work in single-user mode needs (or may need) to choose File⇒Switch to Single-User Mode command.
  Sharing a QuickBooks file over a network involves a couple of tricks. First, you need to make sure that no one who is in single-user mode is using the file that you want to open. If someone is, and you try to open the file, QuickBooks displays a message indicating that someone is using the company file in single-user mode. Tell the person to switch to multi-user mode and then click Try Again.
  As soon as you begin creating or editing a transaction, QuickBooks locks the transaction. This way, no one else can edit the transaction while you work on it. You can tell whether you have a transaction open in edit mode by what QuickBooks indicates on the title bar at the top of the form: QuickBooks displays Editing Transaction on the title bar. Other users can open the transaction while you edit it in edit mode, but they can't make changes to it until you're through.
  For example, if you attempt to edit a transaction that your co-worker Harriet already has open in edit mode, QuickBooks displays a message that reads (and here, I paraphrase), "Excuse me, Bubba? Harriet is working with that transaction. You need to come back later."