Just a guess but does your timing include printing?  If so maybe you're having a printer re-direction issue?  If it does include printing then I'd have them each print the same exact report (any semi-large report) and check the results.  If it's not printing then I'd do a SQL trace seems unlikely it would be SQL (very unlikely) but that's guess # 2.

One more suggestion - wipe out the slow users profile.  That's one of those when all else fails try this.

Hi John, thanks for the suggestions. The user eventually prints but not until later in the process. He experiences the slow performance issue prior to printing. 

How long have you been using Sage 500 and how many records do you have in the tables?  How often are you doing database maintenance (e.g. updating statistics, rebuilding indexes, etc.).   Have you done a performance review of SQL server and the process itself to determine what the bottlenecks might be?  For the user having no performance issues, have you tried to have that person run the process from the computer of one of the problem users or vice versa to see what the results are?    Also, have you had one of the problem users log directly into the Windows 7 machine (not RDP) to see if the performance issues occur?   Are the users running the Journal process in the same manner with the same options?

Since you have ruled out the user's laptop as a possible problem that leaves the Windows 7 machine where the Sage 500 client is installed, SQL Server/database, and the network itself.  Doing a performance review using the SQL Server tools provided as well as Perfmon will help you to narrow down where the issue may be.  There are several good articles on how to best do this such as this article on Sage City https://sagecity.na.sage.com/support_communities/sage500_erp/b/sage_500_erp_blog/posts/troubleshooting-performance-using-database-tuning-advisor