ProAdvisors who use the Accountant's Copy in QuickBooks 2008 to do a bank reconciliation for clients whose reconciliation-related account titles include one or more of several special characters (including the "&" or ampersand).

Dear QuickBooks ProAdvisor,

We have discovered an issue with the Accountant's Copy after a reconciliation where related account titles included several special characters. To help you prevent the error or cure the error, we are alerting you to the specific symptoms, preventive steps, and access to resources available to you as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.

The problem will be made known to you when you attempt to view or export changes for your client in an Accountant's Copy working file (.qba).  If the problem exists, you will receive the following ERROR MESSAGE:

We are unable to display the accountant's changes,
please contact Intuit technical support for more help.

This issue is covered in the Knowledge Base item KBID 1009092. Our response to this issue continues to develop and as this alert goes out, the KBID is expected to be updated shortly.

The error message is typically triggered when you have already done a reconciliation in the Accountant's Copy and then go to View or Export the Accountant's Copy.

It is triggered because one of the account names for the financial institutions (or less commonly, a renamed Interest Earned or Bank Charges account) includes one of five special characters. These characters are

& [ampersand]
> ["greater than"]
< ["less than"]
' [apostrophe or single quotation mark]
" [double quotation mark]

Currently there is a flaw in how any of these five special characters is handled in the active QuickBooks file.

NOTE: Other special characters (including dashes or slashes) in the account title do not appear to cause problems.

Here are two examples of problematic account names:

    My Local Savings & Loan
    Bob's Bank

In the first example, the account name includes an ampersand; in the second, an apostrophe.

To prevent this problem from occurring in the future, Intuit is now developing a patch to update the program. The current Release is QuickBooks 2008 R3, and the next Release is expected to be R4. ProAdvisors will be alerted when the dates for the Release are announced, and you can also ask to be added to notification list.

Please click here if you would like to be notified via e-mail when a solution to this issue becomes available.

Other comments on prevention appear at the end of this Alert.

If the error occurs, QuickBooks ProAdvisors have two options to repair the Accountant's Copy.

Workaround. The ProAdvisor deletes certain files and newly converts the client's file into an Accountant's Copy, edits the account names as needed, does other work as needed, and then redoes the reconciliation. Specific steps are shown following.

Intuit File Repair. ProAdvisors can also ask Intuit to repair the affected file.

Both options are set out following.

Caveat: Workarounds by their nature are not fully tested. However, the following steps have the benefit of fixing the problem with the least amount of delay. If you are confident about deleting one or two files from your hard drive, you can consider this workaround:

1. Close the Accountant's Copy file (the .QBA file) in which you encounter the problem.
2. Delete this file, which will have a filename following this convention: CompanyFileName.qba. (If it exists, also delete the CompanyFileName.qby file.)
3. Open the original Accountant's Copy as sent by the client. This will be a QBX file and will have the filename CompanyFileName.qbx. When you open this file it will convert to a QBA file.
4. Review the account names for financial institutions affected by the reconciliation.
5. Remove any special character and include the word RENAMED in the renamed account name.
6. If applicable, check any Bank Charge or Income Earned account that has been created for bank charges or interest and renamed in a way that introduces a special character. As before, remove the special character and add the word RENAMED to the account name.
7. Proceed with the reconciliation. Complete any other work done previously in the Accountant's Copy.
8. View and then Export changes.
9. Send the QBY file to the client to be imported into the client's QBW file.
10. If the error occurs again, contact ProAdvisor Technical Support.

Note: Please let your client know that the account names will be renamed. Once the client's account names have been updated, the problem is not expected to recur.

For this problem only, if you are willing to send in the affected Accountant's Copy (qba), our Technical Support team will forward the file to Product Development specialists who can repair the Accountant's Copy for the file in question. Projected turnaround time is five business days or less.

Note: This file repair service offer applies only to the specific error identified in KBID 100902. Accountant's Copy files with other problems are not covered under this offer of service.

Contacting ProAdvisor Technical Support: What to Say and Do

Follow these steps to send in the file for repair:

• Request a callback from Technical Support and specify that you are a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, or call ProAdvisor Technical Support at 1-888-333-3451.
• Ask for a file upload request.
• Ask to escalate the case to CERT.
• When you prepare the file upload request, include your current and preferred contact name, phone number, and e-mail address in the documentation.
• Send in the file as instructed.

You may decide that you have some clients who would be able to identify and remove the five special characters from the account names identified above. If so, you can ask them to proceed.

You can also make it a habit in any Accountant's Copy to review the account names involved in reconciliation and edit out any of the special characters identified above.

These notes supplement the above instructions:

A. QuickBooks 2008. Because bank reconciliations within the Accountant's Copy were not available in QuickBooks 2007, this issue affects only Accountant's Copies which you access from QuickBooks 2008.

B. Triggering Event. If the accountant has completed the reconciliation, the error is embedded in the Accountant's Copy, although the error message does not appear until the accountant goes to View or Export the Accountant's Copy. After the reconciliation, it is not possible to edit the account names in the same Accountant's Copy and redo the reconciliation to remove the error.

C. Care in Naming Accounts. We recommend adding the word RENAMED when account titles are edited to avoid the off chance that a renamed account would exactly duplicate the name of an existing account.

We very much apologize for this error and the related inconvenience. We appreciate your patience while we work on a solution to be made available soon in a new Release. We understand how crucial reconciliation is at this time of year, as many of you are preparing financials for income tax purposes.

We will continue to rush you new information on this issue, as it becomes available.

Sincerely,

The QuickBooks ProAdvisor Team

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