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BrianHart
Level 3

Password changes for seven users in 13 company files

My client has 13 separate small businesses, each with its own QuickBooks company file. There are six users in the office, and I require my client to maintain an extra license on the server so I can manage all the licensing and password stuff without constantly being unable to get in because the users are all logged onto their computers. So, including the admin, there are 91 passwords.


We have intentionally stayed on QB 2016 R5, the last update that did not require all the insane new password nonsense. Intuit moderators: if you can actually read, please pay attention to this: do not post anything here about "we did this for your protection". That is a lie: the truth is that you did this so that nobody could ever blame you for a loss of private information when they do something stupid like leaving a copy of a company file on a pubic drive. You do not fool any of us by posting the same old "for your protection nonsense". We here in the community are tired of hearing it and getting closer and closer to just dropping QuickBooks entirely. We need a separate topic in the community for "best QuickBooks alternatives that allow single password across multiple company files and do not require periodic password changes".


At any rate, we now need to add another user, and that, of course, means upgrading everyone to QB 2022. That makes 91 passwords (13 company files X 7 users) I would have to change immediately after upgrading! That is horrible enough in itself, but what really scares me is this: is the 90-day password change requirement. Is that still in effect? It was when I first tried an upgrade beyond QB 2016 R5 and had to revert to that version to avoid all of this.


There is exactly a 0% chance that my users would remember or have time to change their passwords in all 13 files when prompted to change it in one of them. And that just means that I would have to spend all my time fielding calls to change passwords for users. There is also a high probability that someone who knows the admin password would change it in five files but not the other eight, then have no idea which are which. So the only option I can see is for me to proactively schedule password changes and do all 91 at once, every 90 days.


So my question is this: does Intuit still have the requirement that passwords be changed every 90 days? Keep in mind that I have no idea how much "private" information the users keep in any of these files. I am not privy to whether they keep credit cards, EINs, etc. So do not ask me to answer any question about that. Just give me the worst case scenario, and if it involves changing 91 passwords every 90 days, there is no way we can do this upgrade. Like many small companies, this client uses less than half the functionality of QuickBooks, and with Intuit's longstanding unwillingness to consider cross-company single-password synchronization and lack of any actual care for their customer base, QuickBooks is becoming less and less usable. And while I could never hope to duplicate the rich feature set QuickBooks offers, I could spend a hundred hours programming and come up with something that absolutely meets my clients' needs for basic COA, customer/vendor management, bank recon, invoicing, bill payment, financial reports, and check printing.

 

All over a stupid password requirement:(

3 Comments 3
AbegailS_
QuickBooks Team

Password changes for seven users in 13 company files

Hi there, @BrianHart

 

I appreciate your time voicing out your feedback with regard to your experience. Let me provide you with additional information on the importance of password security in QuickBooks Desktop software.

 

I understand that it's frustrating to keep entering your login credentials at repeated occurrences. 

 

For the security of your critical data, QBDT requires passwords for data files to meet certain complexity requirements. Passwords required/must be changed every 90 days. This is implemented as an extra security layer within your QuickBooks files. 

 

The only way to stop the password protection is to remove this information from the company file. However, this won't be the smart thing to do. If you think the option of removing the password is what you need for your business, I suggest sending this idea straight to our product developers/engineers.

 

To send your product feedback/suggestions:

 

  1. Go to Help at the top menu bar.
  2. Choose Send Feedback Online.
  3. Select Product Suggestion.
  4. Enter your product request/product suggestion.
  5. Click Send Feedback tab.

You can check this article for additional reference: Password security for QuickBooks Desktop.

 

Please don’t hesitate to visit us here in the Community if you have other questions about password security for QuickBooks Desktop. I’m always here to answer your inquiries

BrianHart
Level 3

Password changes for seven users in 13 company files

Anyone else here notice that, although I specifically asked Intuit to NOT reply with any pompous justification for the new unnecessary password nonsense, they just obscured my question by replying with exactly that. We already know it will do no good to report this issue, since it has been here with five years and nothing more than the same platitudes from Intuit regarding every attempt to get it changed. So now, instead of a case that other users might recognize it is an unanswered case and possibly contribute, we have a case with an "answer" that masks the issue.

 

It just dawned on me that this also is clearly intentional; Intuit wants other users to get the impression that the question was actually answered so they are not tempted to participate. This is rather comical, but it is also fairly sad to see a product like QuickBooks go down the drain over stupid decisions like this.

 

I am done with QuickBooks. It was a great product when it actually represented the needs of my clients. I will not longer recommend it to any future customer and will do my best to get any existing customers switched once I find an alternative.

BrianHart
Level 3

Password changes for seven users in 13 company files

The link provided by Intuit earlier in this thread indicated that "Users whose files contain sensitive data such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, employer identification numbers, or who have "Credit Card Protection" on will be asked to set a complex password when they sign in to the file after the update."

 

But it does not address the converse; what if we do NOT have "sensitive data"? I have tried removing anything I thought "sensitive" from a file of my own QB, that is, the EIN (no CC information involved). But when I then upgraded that company file to QB 2020 (probably worse now in 2021/2022), it still required a complex password. It seems like QB flags a file as "sensitive" when certain things are in there and never removes the flag when that information is removed. I simply cannot risk the total chaos that we would have if we do this upgrade, and the information from Intuit is too inconsistent to trust it. There is a phrase in there that only the admin has to change the password every 90 days, but given the other black holes where there should be reliable information from Intuit, I cannot risk going there and finding out 90 days from now that everyone has to change passwords.

 

What a mess.

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