Tag: Error

“Data Extension Add” Error

If you are using CCRQInvoice you may see a Data Extension Add error when you are trying to process a QuickBooks order. This occurs if you are using QuickBooks Enterprise and are using a process that is updating a custom field in your order, such as “Total Quantity”. The error comes from using a format for the custom field, which causes difficulties.

The error message will point out the name of the custom field that is causing the problem.

When you create a custom field in QuickBooks Enterprise you can select from a list of options in the “What kind of data?” column. Due to the way that CCRQInvoice works with custom fields you must always choose “Any text” for this value.

This may seem counter-intuitive, aren’t you usually saving some numeric data in the field, like the total quantity? Unfortunately, QuickBooks requires the data to fit the EXACT format you have chosen. If you specify (for example) “Numbers, 2 decimals”, and you have an order where CCRQInvoice calculates a value like 3.234, QuickBooks will reject the value and generate an error.  The value has three decimals, not 2. Neither QuickBooks or CCRQInvoice will perform any sort of rounding or precision formatting.

Intuit doesn’t let us see the “What kind of data” value easily, so we don’t know if there is a format requirement. And, if the data is saved in a different format, the entire transaction is rejected.

The solution is to change the value to “Any text” for all of your custom fields used by CCRQInvoice to store a value.

Cannot open this QuickBooks Company (access permission)

There are several reasons why you may get an error saying  “Cannot open this QuickBooks Company”.  If you look at the details of the error message one of the common issues you will see is the following:

In this case, QuickBooks is returning an error to the CCRSoftware product saying that the QuickBooks Admin user has not given permission for the product to access this QuickBooks company file.

Please note that there are other issues that can cause the “Cannot open” error. See this article for one variation, and the Windows 10 article for another.

The first time that you run the CCRSoftware product with a particular company file, QuickBooks must be open using the Admin user account. You will see a message similar to the one shown below.

If the Admin user doesn’t give permission here, the CCRSoftware product cannot access the QuickBooks company file, and you will get the error.

Similarly, if you don’t have QuickBooks open with the Admin user account when you first run the CCRSoftware product, you will get the error.

One situation does cause some confusion. You may have been running a CCRSoftware product without any problems, but then you install an updated version. Often QuickBooks will consider this to be a new program, and it will require this program to be authorized by the Admin user. Often a user won’t realize that the authorization is required, since they had already been running the program. This is a common occurrence when people are upgrading their program due to the Windows 10 security update.

How do you fix this? Run QuickBooks using the Admin user account and then run the CCRSoftware product. You should see the approval window as shown above, and you need to select the option “Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open”. Note, though, that sometimes this won’t work due to some internal QuickBooks permission settings. In  this case:

  1. Run QuickBooks as the Admin user
  2. Select Edit in the main menu, then Preferences.
  3. In the Preferences window, select Integrated Applications in the left menu, and click on the Company Preferences tab.
  4. Locate the CCRSoftware product in the list of applications, click on it to select it.
  5. Click the Remove button to remove it from the list. If there are multiple occurrences of the same application in the list, remove those also.
  6. Click OK to close this window.
  7. Run the CCRSoftware product, and you should get the permission window.

Access to the path is denied

On occasion you may run into an error message about access to the log path being denied, such as:

Access to the path ‘C:\ProgramData\Computer Consulting Resources\CCRQBOMLog.txt’ is denied.

The name of the file depends on which CCRSoftware product you are using. It could be “CCRQBOMLog.txt” or “CCRQInvoiceLog.txt”.

The log file is created by CCRSoftware products on your local drive, and is used to track activity in the program. Our support team may use this to diagnose problems. It doesn’t contain any critical information that will affect the operation of the program, but the program cannot run if the log cannot be updated. What this error indicates is that for some reason, the program cannot write information to the log file due to a Windows permission error.

There can be several reasons why Windows is denying access to this file. Sometimes when you reconfigure Windows, particularly in a Windows Server environment, this location (C:\ProgramData) has been removed, although that is unlikely. The most common reason is that the program was initially set up with a particular Windows user account, usually the Windows Administrator account, and then you have switched to use a different Windows user account on this computer to run the program. In some cases, this causes Windows to mark the file as read only, so that it cannot be updated by the current user.

Usually the simple fix for this problem is to go to that location (C:\ProgramData\Computer Consulting Resources, or whatever path the error message specifies) and delete the log file. Again, it is just a trace file, one that contains a log of activity, so no important data is stored there. The next time that you run this program with this Windows user account, the CCRSoftware product will create a new log file that this user can access.

Note that in some Windows Server environments you will find that the “ProgramData” folder is shared amongst multiple users. This isn’t the proper way for the users to be set up, each user should have their own copy of this folder.

“Can’t Open QuickBooks” Error on Windows 10

In some new installations of CCRQInvoice and CCRQBOM on Windows 10 systems, users may be confronted with the following error:

If you click OK here, you may see this startup menu (sometimes after a long delay):

And if you click the Currently Open Company button you may get a further error message:

This can be very frustrating and sometimes difficult to resolve. At this time we have not pinned down a specific cause for this error, as there are many variables. It doesn’t always occur, and the resolution isn’t always the same.

At this time we believe that it occurs only in up-to-date Windows 10 installations. It has been seen in a variety of versions of QuickBooks, but so far it only seems to be occurring in recently updated versions. There could be a Windows 10 update that is causing problems – there have been several Microsoft components updated this year that have caused problems with QuickBooks. It also could be related to some updates that QuickBooks has been releasing.

There are several ways that this problem has been resolved in different situations. We have not determined what the common thread is with each of these. It is possible that there are several different issues that are occurring, depending on the version of QuickBooks involved. So far, all problems seem to happen with Windows 10 installations that are new.

It is important to note the following points when installing a new copy of CCRQBOM or CCRQInvoice:

  • The CCRSoftware application must have been installed and run with standard user permissions, not elevated to run as Administrator.
  • Keep in mind that the first time that you run the CCRSoftware application, you must have the QuickBooks file open using the Admin user account, so that the Admin can give permission for the application to access the file.
  • Make sure that you don’t have any dialog box open in QuickBooks when you run the CCRSoftware application. These are windows in QuickBooks that don’t allow you to do anything else until you close the window. Editing preferences, for example. Or one of the many popup windows that QuickBooks may throw your way.
  • Make sure that the general preference Keep QuickBooks running for quick startups is not enabled. If it is, uncheck the box and reboot your computer. Note that Intuit is removing this option from currently supported releases, so you might not find this option. It caused a lot of trouble.

Here are several solutions that have been used to resolve this error for some users, once you have followed the steps above:

Solution 1 has worked in our test environment. We had a new installation of QuickBooks, and then installed the CCRSoftware product. Sometimes new installations don’t start up all QuickBooks services properly. For our test system, the simple solution was to exit QuickBooks, make sure that the CCRSoftware product wasn’t still running in the background, then restart QuickBooks and try again. A simple solution, it has always resolved this error in our own test systems.

Solution 2 involved turning User Account Control to the lowest level, rebooting the computer, then turning User Account Control back to the normal setting. This has resolved the problem for some users.

Solution 3 was provided by a user who resolve the issue on their own. This particular user uninstalled the CCRSoftware product, “cleaned the registry” using a product called CCleaner, and then reinstalled. That resolved the issue for them. Please note that we have not tested CCleaner and we aren’t endorsing it. It is important to note that in the past, with different QuickBooks installations that have been updated multiple times, “cleaning” the Windows registry by some method has often resolved odd problems. However, you have to be careful with this kind of thing.

Solution 4 is a catch-all attempt to fix a number of potential issues. This actually was written to resolve a similar but different issue, but if you have tried all of the above then this is worth trying. See our writeup on 80040408 errors.

If you have any other solution to this, please let us know.

 

 

The QuickBooks Administrator has not given permission

In some cases, when you start a CCRSoftware product you may see an error message similar to the following: Cannot open company file (Session:1009,0) Cannot open this QuickBooks Company. This application does not have permission to access this QuickBooks company data file. The primary issue here is that the QuickBooks admin user has not given permissions to our product to work with this particular QuickBooks company file. Keep in mind that these permissions are set per company file, so you will need separate permissions for each file.

Ask your QuickBooks admin user to perform these steps to resolve this issue:

  1. Run QuickBooks as the Admin user and open the QuickBooks file that you want to work with.
  2. Select Edit from the QuickBooks main menu, then Preferences.
  3. In the Preferences window, select Integrated Applications in the left menu.
  4. Select the Company Preferences tab.
  5. Make sure that the Don’t allow any applications to access this company file box is not checked.
  6. Locate the CCRSoftware product in the list of applications. Make sure that the Allow Access column has a check mark by the application name. In the screen shot below, CCRQInvoice does not have the box checked, and that is what is preventing the program from accessing this file. Click once in that column to add a check mark.
  7. Click OK to close the window, and exit QuickBooks

That normally will resolve the problem.

In some cases you may continue to have problems. Here are a few additional considerations:

  • Sometimes you may find that there are several instances of the same CCRSoftware product in the application list. This occurs if you have installed an updated version – both the original and the update will be listed separately. Make sure that all instances of the program have the allow access column checked.
  • In rare occasions there may be some data corruption in your QuickBooks company file, due to issues that have nothing to do with the add-on program. To resolve this, locate the CCRSoftware application in the list, select it, and click the Remove button to remove it from the list. Remove all instances of the CCRSoftware product that you are using. Then, exit QuickBooks and restart it (as the Admin user). Run the CCRSoftware product again, and you should be asked if you want to allow our product to access your file. It is important to answer Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open.

These steps resolve 99.99% of the issues we’ve seen that generate the error. If it does not, this indicates that you may have some file corruption in your QuickBooks file and that you should consider a “file rebuild” process to clean up your file. Please consult with a qualified QuickBooks ProAdvisor before proceeding, and always make a backup copy of your file before running a File Rebuild process.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Sometimes people run into this cryptic error message, “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”

This is confusing, and uninformative.

What happens is that you are running into some error, such as the Cannot open/create a parameter file error, and then clicking the “Continue” button to move on. Because of the first error, the program hasn’t been set up correctly in memory, and when you try to access some function of the program you may get this second error.

The real cause of the problem you are having is the first error. The second error, the “object reference” error, just means that the program has run into issues and can’t figure out what to do.

So what we need to see is that first error.

Unfortunately, there is one copy of the “error.pdf” file created at a time. When you get the first error, that is saved to the error.pdf file. Then you click “Continue” and the second error occurs, which creates a new error.pdf file that overwrites the first one. If you then locate that file and send it to us, we get the meaningless error information and cannot help you.

Two ways to resolve this:

  1. Exit the program and try again. When you get the first error, stop, don’t continue. Locate the error.pdf file that was created and send that to us. Once you have saved that file, then you can continue. You’ll get the error, just exit the program. You can examine the details of that first error message for help.
  2. Alternately you can set up the log file to save more information. See the article on getting detailed diagnostic information.

Revoked Certificate Errors

Under certain circumstances QuickBooks may display an error when you start a CCRSoftware product, “Application with Revoked Certificate”, similar to the one shown here.

This error prevents you from running the program. Note that if you try to run the CCRSoftware product again, after this, you may get a different error (probably something about the admin not giving permission to this program).

Why Did This Happen?

The explanation of why this error occurs is very long and complicated. I’ll try to summarize the main points:

    • Software products can be “code signed”, which gives them a “certificate” that authenticates that the program is created by a real, not bogus, company.
    • Once a certificate is issued to a developer it is supposed to last FOREVER.
    • Some years ago one of the very widely used certificate issuing companies messed up and sold certificates without checking that the companies were valid.
    • Microsoft decided to “revoke” the certificates from that company. So ALL certificates from this time were invalidated, even those for companies (like CCRSoftware) were considered to be legit.

Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t announce the “revoke” process, they just did it, and suddenly a wide range of software products stopped working with QuickBooks. Even some of those created/sold by Intuit. No advance notice! This occurred late in August 2023. Panic!

A few days after this occurred, Microsoft revalidated the revoked certificates (again without telling anyone). All the software products started working again. HOWEVER, at the time I’m writing this (8/30/2023) we don’t know how long this will last. I anticipate that Microsoft will revoke the certificates again.

Fixing the Revoked Certificate

Unfortunately, CCRSoftware is no longer able to create new releases of our products. This means that we cannot create versions that have an updated certificate. However, for MOST of our customers, there is a fix. It is complicated – you may need a computer system technician to help you implement this.

Note that at this time we aren’t able to fully test these solutions, since we cannot duplicate the “revoked certificate” issue after Microsoft pulled it back. We have to wait until Microsoft decides to revoke them again. But we have a reasonable expectation that these steps will work.

There are two files that are signed with certificates that may be revoked. One is the “executable” file for our program, such as CCRQInvoice.exe. The other is a file provided by Intuit, interop.qbmlrp2.dll.

We have little control over the Intuit dll file, although in some circumstances we have been able to remove the certificate error. Hopefully our fix will resolve THEIR portion of the problem.

As for CCRSoftware products, we have been able to update our certificate and create a new executable for many of our products. After installing our product on a system (or, with a system where our product is already installed), you can replace the program executable with our updated version. This might be a bit technical for some users, our apologies. We have limited ability to assist with this process, but a knowledgeable Windows expert should be able to follow the procedure.

Here are the files that are available at this time. These are “zip” files, you will need to download them to your system and unzip them. There is a “readme.txt” file in the zip file that lays out the procedure you must follow, which varies depending on which product you are working with. Note that you will need Windows Admin permissions to copy files into these locations. Do this for every workstation that has our software installed.

Note that it is VERY important that you keep a copy of your original installer, a copy of this zip file, and a written copy of your serial number, in a safe place in case you will need to reinstall the software on another computer at a future date. We cannot guarantee that all of these files will be available from our website in the future. The zip file is NOT a complete installer. You would need to use the original installer to install the program, THEN update that installed program with the files from the zip file. Please make a backup of the original installer, the update zip file, AND your registration/serial number.

Here’s the list of file updates. Note that some products have multiple versions listed. It is IMPORTANT that you download the file for the version that your license/serial number matches.

There are two kinds of serial numbers.

    • Standard Release: Your registration key will be in the format XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX  (doesn’t start with “STD”)
    • Pre Release:  Your registration key will be in the format STD-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX

If your software is not on this list, we might not be able to provide you with an update. However, contact us to discuss the situation. Note that a response may take several days, our apologies.

Files listed here are ZIP files. Download them, unzip them on your system, open the “Readme.txt” file for specific instructions.

After You Place the Updated Files

After updating the files you need to connect the updated program with QuickBooks. QB will notice that this is a changed file.

Open QuickBooks as the Admin user.

Run the CCRSoftware product. Since the certificate has been updated, you will be asked if it is OK for this product to access your file (just the same as the first time you used our product). Select “Yes, whenever this QuickBooks file is open”.

Note on Interop.QBXMLRP2.dll

This file is provided by Intuit. It is used by Intuit features as well as many different add-on products. It is “signed”, and possibly with one of the revoked certificates. So it must be updated.

The problem is, there are many versions of this file. CCRSoftware products need a specific version, which must reside in a specific location. If you search for this file on your computer you may find MULTIPLE copies, only one of them works with our product (and, different versions of it with different products of ours).

Intuit will sign the file with a new certificate and install it if you have a CURRENTLY SUPPORTED version of QuickBooks, with the most recent update. But that might not be the version that our software needs.

For SOME of our products we are providing you  with an unsigned version of the dll file, which should take care of the problem, but it is important to install it in the correct location as specified in the readme.txt file. Note that some of our products do not require an updated file.

 

Cannot open this QuickBooks Company (multiple instances)

This can be one of the more frustrating errors, “Cannot open this QuickBooks Company”. Why not? If you look at the details of the error message one of the common issues you will see is the following:

The application trying to connect to QuickBooks is not supported while multiple instances of QuickBooks are running. (80040438)

There are a couple of situations where you may see this.

Two Copies of QuickBooks

The first one is a bit obvious – you’ll see this message when you run the second copy:

 

This implies that there aren’t many problems (“a few exceptions”) on the first copy, and more on the second copy. Unfortunately, if you look at the Learn more information, you’ll see that add-on products like those from CCRSoftware (“SDK Applications”) cannot work with either of these QuickBooks windows.

If you check that “Do not display…” box then you don’t see this reminder again, and people can easily forget about these restrictions. You can bring the warning back by selecting Edit and then Preferences, then checking the box “Bring back all one time messages” in the My Preferences tab of the General preferences.

The short answer is – you can’t run CCRSoftware programs if you are running two copies of the same version of QuickBooks at the same time on the same computer.

Keep QuickBooks Running

Another issue is a bit more subtle. There is an option in QuickBooks that was added a few years ago that lets you keep a portion of the QuickBooks program running in the background when you exit the program. The reason for this was that it could make QuickBooks start up faster the next time that you run the program. Note that if your QuickBooks program is starting off slowly the most common fix is to make sure that you close all QuickBooks reports when you exit, as they can really slow down the startup process if QuickBooks has to open them all in the beginning.

Most people don’t see a big benefit to having this feature enabled, and by shutting it off you also may improve the performance of your computer when not running QuickBooks.

We find that many add-on connection problems are resolved by turning this feature off. To do so, select Edit and then Preferences in QuickBooks. Select the General preferences, and on the My Preferences tab un-check the box Keep QuickBooks running for quick startups.

 

Please note that in 2017 Intuit started removing this preference from supported versions of QuickBooks, so you might not see the preference.

After un-checking it, click OK to close the window, close QuickBooks, and reboot your computer. Note that this preference is specific to each user account, so every user of the system needs to un-check this.

Please note that often when you upgrade QuickBooks from one year of product to another the program may re-check this preference. We often get calls about this from people who have been using our product for years without problems, then run into the error just after upgrading QuickBooks.

CCRQInvoice and QuickBooks Permissions

If you use user accounts in QuickBooks and limit user permissions (and you should!), you need to provide users of CCRQInvoice with a basic set of permissions. It can be a bit confusing, because of the odd way that Intuit has configured things in QuickBooks. Here’s the basic permissions that you need to be able to use CCRQInvoice.

The Error You Might See…

If you have CCRQInvoice working with QuickBooks as the admin user, but you then open QuickBooks with a different user account that doesn’t have the proper permissions, you’ll usually get a 3260 error code.

There are several possible errors that can be displayed, but the common thread is the “3260” code at the end. That indicates a QuickBooks user permission error. The user running CCRQInvoice doesn’t have the correct data access permissions necessary to work with the transaction.

QuickBooks Pro and Premier Permissions

This is pretty easy. All you usually need to be able to run CCRQInvoice with QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier is to set Sales and Accounts Receivable Create permissions to Yes, and set Changing or Deleting Transactions to Yes.

 

With some older versions of QuickBooks you may also need Create Transactions permissions for Inventory. This might also be the case in some non-US versions of QuickBooks.

QuickBooks Enterprise Permissions

QuickBooks Enterprise is more complicated, and somewhat confusing. In Enterprise you have users and you have roles. You create the permissions in the roles and then assign the role to the user.

In addition, Intuit has a tendency to tinker with permission settings every once in awhile, so there may be some variations in how this works in different versions/releases.

There are two areas that you have to work with, Customers & Receivables and Lists. The permissions that I’ll lay out here should provide you with access to all features of CCRQInvoice (as of the version currently in production at the time this is being written), including sorting. You might be able to get by with fewer permissions if you don’t sort, although that isn’t certain.

In Customers & Receivables you need to provide View, Create and Modify permissions for Estimates, Sales Orders and Invoices (assuming you will work with each).

For Lists we have a number of permissions to set:

  • Item List needs to be set to View List.
  • Fixed Asset Item List needs to be set to View List. This isn’t intuitive – but internally, the Fixed Asset Items are actually a part of the overall Item List, so when CCRQInvoice asks for a list of all items, it has to be able to see the Fixed Asset Items as well. This catches a lot of people.
  • Terms List, which is a part of the Customer & Vendor Profile Lists, needs to be set to View List. This is a hard one to figure out – there isn’t any logical reason for this, but without it you can’t use the program.

Note that there isn’t a Customer List permission in the QuickBooks preferences – I think that may be why we have to have the Terms List there, something is slopping over to cover the customer list. But that is speculation.

In some cases you may need to give the user access to “sales tax” as well.

If you set your user permissions to be at least what I’ve listed above, your user accounts should be able to access CCRQInvoice without difficulty.

Error "Cannot update, can’t find the record"

With CCRQInvoice you may see an error in the “processing results” window as follows:

Cannot update, can’t find the record, possibly deleted by another user? (3120)

There are two reasons why you would see this.

First, the obvious. You “loaded” an invoice into CCRQInvoice, and then before you could click the “process” button, another user deleted the order. Yes, that can happen, but we’ll admit that the odds are against that.

Second, the less obvious. You are doing some sort of processing that saves a value in a custom field (such as “total weight” or “total quantity”). You specified a custom field in the CCRQInvoice preferences to hold the value. Then, at some later point, somebody changed the name of the custom field (or deleted it) in QuickBooks, without updating the preferences in CCRQInvoice. When CCRQInvoice processes the order, it tries to add the total value in the custom field that you specified, but it doesn’t exist in QuickBooks and an error occurs. Unfortunately, the error from QuickBooks is misinterpreted, and this misleading error is displayed.

The simple fix is to determine what the name of the custom field is in QuickBooks, and then updating the preference setting in CCRQInvoice to match.