If you have ever opened QuickBooks Desktop and seen a message about hosting or multi-user access, you already know it is not the most intuitive corner of the software. Hosting mode is the setting that lets more than one person work in the same company file at the same time, and turning it on takes about two minutes once you know where to look. This guide walks through exactly how to turn on hosting mode in QuickBooks, what to check before you start, the errors people run into most often, and the point where local hosting mode stops being enough for a growing team.<\/p>\n
Quick answer:<\/strong> To turn on hosting mode in QuickBooks Desktop, open QuickBooks on the one computer that stores your company file, go to File > Utilities > Host Multi-User Access<\/strong>, then click Yes<\/strong> to confirm. Only enable this on the machine acting as your file server, never on every workstation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hosting mode is QuickBooks Desktop’s built-in feature for local multi-user access. Intuit calls it Host Multi-User Access. Most everyday users just call it multi-user mode or LAN mode, and both refer to the same thing. When it is turned on for one computer, that machine becomes the file server. It stores the company file and manages read and write requests from everyone else on the network, while each workstation connects to it the same way it would connect to a shared network drive.<\/p>\nWhat Is Hosting Mode in QuickBooks?<\/h2>\n