I use QB Pro V. 2019 and my clients use QB Pro v. 2018. We have this same problem and it has annoyed us for several years. Intuit has no right to require a log in to an intuit account when I purchased the software without that requirement. I just changed my settings as you suggest above. Lets see if it works. I hope so.

To further complicate this problem when I tried to log into my Intuit account for my client's QB Pro v. 2018 it simply buffered endlessly. It is installed on a cloud server. I have the administrator working on the problem. When I called QB tech support I reached someone in Asia who couldnt understand what I was talking about. I could only understand one word out of five that she said. I was on the phone with her for an hour and she insisted that I could only solve the problem of the buffering by buying the newest edition of QB ! Your tech support for regular users is completely inept. This is outrageous. My client doesnt want to buy the new QB where they have a subscription that costs $500 per year. I wish there was a good alternative to QB.