Advice on small computer network

[chaddles]

Hi guys

Hoping to get some input on setting up a computer system for a small business. Should be pretty simple for IT guys but I am not 100% sure on the best way to go about it. Basically I want the shop system linked to my home computer.

I want to be able to have the computer system in the shop (retail & service bus.) for point of sale & to collect other business information for wages, accounting and inventory purposes. I have a home office and essentially I want to be able to perform the managing side of the business from home, and analyse sales data etc. The software that I will probably be using is a MYOB Retail program for POS, and one of the MYOB Accounting programs.

How do I go about doing this – such as do I need a server, how do I access the shop system (internet or other means), which computer (or server) to install the POS & accounting software on? In the future I would like to be able to access the system remotely from a laptop.

I do plan on getting an IT person to help out, I just want to know a little about how it all works.

 

[HarryTiger]

Can you clarify if all these computers are in the same physical building or not? That matters.

 

[chaddles]

The computers are not in the same building, my home and office are a few suburbs apart.

 

[spitlizard]

The computers are not in the same building, my home and office are a few suburbs apart.

There are a couple of easy ways to do this.
Firstly you can setup a VPN to your work computer http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/94863,setting-up-a-virtual-private-network-vpn.aspx it's pretty good as you should be able to use RDC to view the screens.

Alternatively you can use a free product called logmein https://secure.logmein.com/US/home.aspx it is what I use to connect to my work PC's and is very easy to setup and use.

Hope this helps a little

 

[seanoff]

at work you'll need a business internet connection with a static ip address. this makes things infinitely easier, believe me.

one POS PC, running MYOB Retail (basics or mgr depending on your needs, i use basics), another PC running the MYOB Accounting program. + others as necessary.

make them all the same workgroup name ie chaddles and give them descriptive names. ie POS, mgr

if you are going to teleport in, it might be easier to give the shop PCs static internal ip addresses too.

employ some one to setup or help setup the remote networking, but don't let them try and talk you into a server or expensive firewalls etc, it's not necessary. you can get a VPN capable switch / router with an ADSL router/modem for $200

MYOB exports from the retail progs to other MYOB programs are really simple.


other things.

make sure you have a backup solution, possibly a decent NAS basically a HDD with a network connection and software to make the HDD visible on the network

a UPS

buy decent PCs.

 

[chaddles]

Thanks for the responses, has helped me out quite a bit.

 

[Jafa]

You don't need to run a VPN. You can simply Remote Desktop to your external IP address and port forward to the relevent machine. RDP is already encrypted and encapsulated within TCP.

BTW - MYOB in a multi user environment works a whole lot better when running on one machine and using Terminal Services (or the WinXP multi RDP hack). Running it on individual machines and sharing the file on a single machine is very slow by comparison - even on the same network.