FinJinni provides for flexibility in its configuration to account for multiple companies, multiple users, and remote access. Which configuration you choose is dictated by your needs.
There are four components we will consider:
- QuickBooks, either desktop files or online access through the internet.
- FinJinni, which requires a Windows PC or server to run on.
- A SQL database, where FinJinni stores the data retrieved from QuickBooks.
- Excel or other applications that will access this data for reporting.
In the simplest case, these are all on the same PC and there is a single user reporting from Excel or other applications. This is how FinJinni Professional is normally installed for a trial.
Additional users can be added and share the same SQL database. Some SQL Server configuration is required. This is described in the FinJinni Administration Guide.
FinJinni is installed with the free version of Microsoft SQL Express. It supports up to 10G per database, which equates to about a 3G-5G QuickBooks company file. Only extremely large files would require more than this. You can have as many databases as you want with this version.
If you have a large number of users or QuickBooks companies, it can be beneficial to move the SQL database to a shared network server. If you exceed the 10G limit for a single database, you will need to purchase a licensed version of SQL Server from Microsoft.
If you or other users need to work remotely, you can move the SQL database to the “cloud” by using Microsoft Azure, which provides a distributed database service that is supported by FinJinni. Microsoft currently provides the first year of an Azure database for free to new customers with up to 250G of online storage.
If you do not have direct access to the QuickBooks companies that you want to report on, you can use the “FinJinni Client Uploader” application to upload the QuickBooks data to a server that you set up, either in-house or hosted on the internet. A FinJinni service will run on that server to import the QuickBooks data into the reporting database. The FinJinni Client Uploader application that runs at client sites only needs access through the internet to upload files to this server (these uploads are all done automatically/scheduled by the FinJinni App).
For security reasons, some companies prefer to have a server to which the FinJinni clients upload files be separate from the server that contains the database. FinJinni fully supports this environment: The FinJinni service that receives the upload QuickBooks data can be separated from the service that loads this data into the shared database.