Choose where to install BudgetLink
Overview
BudgetLink is an Excel Solution. What that means is that Excel is the application and the solution is a fundamentally a folder containing Excel workbooks with Macros and databases. Only one instance of this workbook should exist in your organisation. The choice of where that instance should exists depends on costs and benefits
Options
The possible locations include:
Local Machine
This option is suitable if you have just one user.
The benefits are that its generally easy to install in that location
The cost of this location is that when a new user takes over the solution may need to moved and also you may not have this folder backed up to an offsite location which is advised.
The default Local Machine path is C:\BudgetLink and this is what's recommended because its generally the most reliable location and its easy for us to find if we need to support you
Its not advised to install Budgetlink in the Programs folder be cause BudgetLink contains databases which change
While it is possible to install into myDocuments, if your folder path is long that can cause issues with the operation of the software
This is generally the preferred installation location if you have multiple users wanting to access and update BudgetLink
It can be any location so long as only the users you want to have access to the software are given full read write permissions to the BudgetLink Folder
For single user use this location would also be advisable if your not able to back up BudgetLink on your local machine or if you plan to hand over the solution to other users soon or frequently as its easy to grant others access
The cost of this location is that if your network speed is slow then this can negatively impact the performance of the BudgetLink Get Data process
Terminal Server
This option is suitable if you have multiple users wanting to update data simultaneously and you also want to run the get data from an external location
The cost of this approach is that you often have some IT permission hoops to jump through in order to get it working and from a cost perspective you also require the Pro Edition to run in this environment
Drop Box
Drop box is suitable for single users who want to be able to run the sofware from there home computer and who also want the database backed up automatically.
It also works OK for multiple users so long as only one users makes any updates to numbers. Its not suitable for multiple users trying to update budgets at the same time
Drop Box
Drop box is suitable for single users who want to be able to run the sofware from there home computer and who also want the database backed up automatically.
It also works OK for multiple users so long as only one users makes any updates to numbers. Its not suitable for multiple users trying to update budgets at the same time
NAS Drive
NAS drives typically do not perform that well and we advise not to choose this location unless its necessary
VPN's
Its not advisable to access BudgetLink via a VPN as they are typically too slow