CCRSoftware Support

Problems with QuickBooks 2021 R11

If you are using QuickBooks 2021 R11 we are seeing odd errors with CCRSoftware products due to what we believe is a bug in that release of QuickBooks.

Some users report that they are seeing the error Object reference not set to an instance of an object. This typically is a “second” error, not the error that represents the real problem, as described in this support article. What is happening is that see an error message, press the button to continue, and then you get the “object reference” error. That error overwrites the “error.pdf” file from the first, and all it means is that something went wrong before. We need to see the “first” error.pdf (as that article describes).

With the QuickBooks 2021 R11 error some people might not see the “first” error message due to the odd bug in QuickBooks that suppresses it. If we look at the error log (as described in another support article) we are seeing that QuickBooks is generating an 80040400 error, which indicates a data error, but no data error is occurring. This has been very confusing!

The Solution

What we are seeing is that the error is not in the CCRSoftware product, it apparently is a bug that Intuit introduced in QuickBooks 2021 R11. Check to see if you are using that version (press the F2 key when in QuickBooks with your company file open) and look at the “Product” info line at the top of the screen. If you are using this version you need to upgrade your QuickBooks to another version, such as QuickBooks 2022. That has solved the problem for EVERY customer of ours that is reporting this problem. At the time we are writing this article, Intuit has not acknowledged the problem, nor have they released a bug fix in the 2021 product.

Invalid Serial Number

Sometimes a user will have difficulty when trying to register a CCRSoftware product. There are a number of different error messages or situations that you may run into. Let’s show you what might be going on.

Different Registration Systems

To start with, there are two different registration systems that are used to register CCRSoftware products, depending on what version of the program you are installing. The serial number for one system won’t work with the other system. Sometimes a user may install a version that doesn’t match the serial number that they have.

For CCRQInvoice versions 3.0.0.1 to 3.5.5 and CCRQBOM versions 3.0.4 to 3.6.0 the serial number will have the format “XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX”, 4 groups of 5 letters/numbers. For these versions you will see this kind of registration screen:

For CCRQInvoice versions 3.6.0 to 3.7.0 and CCRQBOM version 4.0.0 the serial number will have the format “STD-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX”, the letters “STD” followed by 2 groups of 5 letters/numbers, then 2 groups of 4 letters/numbers. For these versions you will see this kind of registration screen:

If you try to use a serial number that doesn’t match the version, you will either get a message along the line of “The serial number provided is invalid”, or you just won’t be able to enter the serial number.

TO RESOLVE THIS you want to download the proper version. Note that if you had a DIFFERENT version than what is listed below, you should contact our support department for compatibility (or upgrade) information.

I Already Have A License

This throws a lot of people off. Our documentation talks about this, briefly, but who reads documentation any more?

If you have a registration screen like this, and you are reinstalling the software, some people decide that they need to click the “I already have a license” link.

 

Please don’t – that link is misleading, it won’t do what you want. It will ask you for a license file (*.lic), and you won’t have one.

That link is used for a special situation when recovering a license on an existing computer, which won’t be your case (in fact, we’ve never had a user that needed to do this). Just go ahead and enter your name and the serial number in the regular field. If you don’t know your serial number, contact support.

The Serial Number Provided is Invalid

With the standard/public releases, when you enter the serial number, you may see this error:

There are a couple of reasons why you might see this.

Perhaps you have a typo in the serial number? 1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3 is not the same as l968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-XO4W3. The numbers 1 and 0 are not the same as the letters l and O.

A common error is that you copy/paste the serial number from a document, or the original email you received, but you add a space to the end. “1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3  ” is not the same as “1968P-XXXXX-XXXXX-X04W3” for example – there is an added space at the end of the first one, and the program doesn’t like that. Very common error.

Wrong Software Product

Last but not least, sometimes we have people who try to use a CCRQInvoice serial number with CCRQBOM, or vice-versa. Won’t work!

 

“Cannot save application settings” Error

If you see an error message similar to the following: (CCRQOrderParmCommon:5,0) Cannot save application settings – there are several  possible causes for the problem; Essentially, CCRSoftware programs store a parameter file named CCRQ.XML at a location that you specified (the “common location” or “common folder”). For some reason, either that location cannot be accessed or your Windows user account doesn’t have the proper permissions to access that location.

This is very similar to the error Cannot open/create a parameter file. Please refer to this article for details on how to correct the problem.

Cannot open this QuickBooks file. Did you just update QuickBooks?

A recent update to Windows 10 is causing problems with CCRSoftware programs. We are still trying to pin down the details.

You may see the following error when starting any CCRSoftware product on a recently updated Windows 10 system:

Note that some users have reported a different but similar error.

This is not a bug in the CCRSoftware product, it apparently has to do with a Windows 10 update that has damaged QuickBooks. Reinstalling the CCRSoftware product, or reinstalling QuickBooks, has no effect.

The only solution at this time is to roll back Windows 10 to a restore point earlier than approximately August 28, 2020. We don’t have an exact date at this time. This has solved the problem for everyone who has talked to us about this.

Note that there are other QuickBooks problems with this Windows update. For example, if you run certain financial reports (it may be any report, we haven’t tested that yet), you will get an unrecoverable error. Click any button, QuickBooks immediately closes.

No word from Intuit about this, yet.

Creating a QBSDK.LOG Diagnostic File

Error messages generated by QuickBooks itself can be very cryptic and vague. It isn’t always clear what the real issue is. In some cases, to diagnose a problem that a CCRSoftware product is running into, we need to see a more detailed log file that shows information about information being exchanged between QuickBooks and our product. This should only be done if we request it.

This log is created by QuickBooks, and is a different step than looking at the log file that CCRSoftware products create (see this article for that log file).

Setting up this log (QBSDK.LOG) requires a higher level of technical ability than some users may have.You may require Windows Admin level privileges.

  1. Exit QuickBooks.
  2. Look for a folder “c:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks”  Note that there are probably several similar ones, such as c:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks 2018” and others, but you want the specific one that I specified.
  3. In that folder you should see a file “qbsdk.ini” (it may be in all caps). Double click on the file to open it in a text editor.
  4. Add the following to the end of the file – note that if there ALREADY is a “log” section, you want to modify the existing one to match this, but odds are it won’t be there:
     [Log] 
                   Level=verbose 
                   UnlimitedSize=Y 
                   [Parser] 
                    DumpRequestData=Y
  5. Close and save the file.
  6. Reboot the computer.
  7. Run QuickBooks and open the CCRSoftware product. If the error occurs, exit the program.
  8. Close QuickBooks.
  9. Go back to the “c:\ProgramData\Intuit\QuickBooks”  folder. Locate the file “qbsdklog.txt”. Send that to our support team.
  10. When done, go back and edit the qbsdk.ini file
    1. Change the “Level” setting to “Level=info”
    2. Change the “DumpRequestData” setting to “DumpRequestData=N”
  11. Save the file.

Exporting a QuickBooks Assembly to Excel

CCRQBOM was not designed for file exports, but you can export a BOM to Excel with a little work.

Here’s my assembly Assembly RWS, printed with CCRQBOM:

First, note that you can export a BOM from QuickBooks by itself. In QuickBooks, select File/Utilities/Export/Lists to IIF Files. Choose the Item List from the export dialog and save the file. This creates an IIF file that has your entire item list, along with the BOM for your assemblies. Here’s what you see if you open that IIF file with Excel. As you can see, there is a lot of extra “junk” in the file.

 

Let’s see what we can do with CCRQBOM. Select Forms/Bill of Material:

Click Multi Level BOM to select it, and then click Edit.

This opens the Form Designer:

Right-click on the PageHeader band and select Delete to remove it. Do the same for the PageFooter band. Then delete every field in the Detail header band, which is the assembly info (but not the BOM). This leaves you with the basic BOM detail and detail header. You may want to add other fields here, if you wish. The idea is to remove all extraneous information.

Select File/Save As and give this a name, then exit the designer.

To export a single BOM, select BOM from the CCRQBOM menu, select the assembly to export, and click the Display button. In the Display window, click the Print button. In the Print Reports window select your export template, select Print Preview, and then click the Print button. This will display the BOM as a report.

In the Print Preview, click the down-arrow on the green disk icon and select CSV File from the menu.

In the CSV Export Options window I generally leave things at the default settings.

Here’s what you get:

Export QuickBooks Assembly to Excel

Note that this is using the standard version of CCRQBOM, version 3.2.2.0. You can only export one BOM at a time using this version.

We have a “pre release” version of CCRQBOM, version 4.0.0, that is  available via special request (use our contact form to make a request). This version has the ability to print all of the assemblies in one report, which you may prefer.

In this version of CCRQBOM you will create your export report in the same way as above. Then, choose the Assemblies function, click on the Print BOM tab, and select Print All. This will export all of the BOM’s in one file. Note, though, that you will get a header for each assembly. You might want to change the template to add a Page Header band, copy the column headings from the Group Header band, and then delete the Group Header band.

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.

Printing a Costed Bill of Materials

The standard BOM (Bill of Material) report in CCRQBOM does not include any cost values, by design. Many businesses don’t want to show “cost” to employees on the shop floor. However, for management purposes, it can be beneficial to add “cost” to this report. This article will show you how.

Printing a Multiple-Level BOM

First, let’s show how to print a multiple-level BOM with CCRQBOM.

Select BOM from the CCRQBOM menu. This will open a window that lists all of the assembly items in your QuickBooks company file.

Set the Explosion Level to the desired level. Full Level will print all the details of any subassemblies.

Select the assembly that you want to work with from the list, then click Display to see the BOM. In this example, there is a subassembly, and we have chosen Full Level.

The Quick Print button will print the BOM as you see it on screen. Note that you can add columns to this display by right clicking on the column headers, selecting the column chooser from the menu to get a list of columns, and dragging those columns to drop on the header display. Details on modifying a “grid” like this can be found in the printed documentation.

Most people will use the Print button. This opens a Print Reports window that lists any report templates that you have available. Select the template that you want to use (there is only one in this example), then select Print Preview, and then click the Print button.

Here’s the standard multi-level BOM report from CCRQBOM, which includes the details of the subassembly.

Note that “Assembly RWS” is a subassembly, and that there are two of them used in the higher level assembly “Main Assembly”.

For reference, here are the two assemblies as you see them in QuickBooks.

 

Cost vs. Average Cost vs. Total Bill of Materials Cost

The problem with adding “cost” to a BOM is, which “cost” are you referring to? There are three “cost” values associated with an assembly item in QuickBooks, Cost, Average Cost and Total Bill of Materials Cost. For a detailed explanation of these, see the article Understanding QuickBooks Total Bill of Material Cost.

If you look at the “Assembly RWS” item in QuickBooks, as shown above, you can see that there are three different “cost” values shown:

  • Cost: This is an editable field, you can enter any value you wish here. Usually this is the last purchased cost, but that is not guaranteed. In this case it is $13.00
  • Average Cost: This is the value maintained by QuickBooks, based on the cost of components at the time the quantity on hand was built. In this case it is $10.00
  • Total Bill of Materials Cost: This is based on the Cost values from the subassemblies. As the article explains, this isn’t always accurate. You can use the Cost function in CCRQBOM to update this value. In this case, the value is $2.55

As you can see, there are three values that can all be different.

The Total Bill of Materials Cost is not a value that is actually stored in QuickBooks.

Most people will want to see the Average Cost for components in a printed BOM. However, there are times when you might want to see the Cost value. Each of these are available in CCRQBOM.

Adding Cost to a BOM Report in CCRQBOM

Details on how to work with the report editor in CCRQBOM can be found in the printed documentation. This article will describe the steps in a summary fashion.

To create a modified BOM report, select Forms in the CCRQBOM menu, then Bill of Material. This opens the Edit Reports window.

Select the report template you would like to modify (there will only be one the first time you edit a report in CCRQBOM), then click the Edit button. This will open the report editor. Note that the first time that you do this after starting CCRQBOM, there may be a delay while the editor gets ready.

The details of the components are entered in the Detail1 band. Headers for those detail columns are entered in the GroupHeader1 band. Adding a column in the detail section does not automatically add a column header.

We will add the column first. I’ll add it to the right of the Description column.

Click on the data field for the Description column in the Detail1 section, to select it. Right click on the selected field, and in the popup menu select Insert and then Column to Right.

This adds a blank column to the right.

Now, on the right side of the edit window, click on the Field List tab. This will list all of the available fields. Select the MasterDataAssyData item, which is where the fields for the detail lines will be found. This is found within the MasterData section. It is very important that you use fields in this section for detail lines. Click the + symbol to expand the list of fields.

Within MasterDataAssyData you will find two fields. Use the one that represents the cost that you want to use. AverageCost is the average cost of the item. ItemCost is the “cost” field of the item.

Click on the name of the field you want to use, and drag the name over to the report, dropping it on that blank column you added.

Next, insert a blank column in the GroupHeader1 band, to the right of the Description column heading. Double click on the field to select the default text that shows there, and type in the name you want to use for this column, such as “Cost”.

Select File from the main menu, then Save As, and give the report a unique name. Click OK to save the name. Then select File and Exit to close the editor. You will see your new report in the Edit Reports menu.

When you print a BOM you can choose your new report template.

A couple of notes:

  • If you have non-inventory items as components, they will always have an average cost of zero.
  • If you have non-inventory items as components, they will have a cost of zero unless you check the box “This item is used in assemblies or is purchased for a specific customer:job” in the Edit Item window in QuickBooks, and enter a “cost” there.

Formatting the Cost Field

In my example I did not “format” the cost field, so the numbers don’t have the same number of digits after the decimal, and so forth. This doesn’t look good.

Editing the report, select the new “cost” column, and then click the “>” symbol that shows at the upper right. This opens a “properties” window.

In the Format String property, click the ellipsis (…) to open the editor. There are a number of options you can choose here (more details in the printed documentation). I’ll pick “Currency” in this case.

Click OK to close the format editor.

Now, select the Cost column again, and select the Right Justify icon in the toolbar. You might also want to do that to the column header.

Save the report, and print it again.

Extended Cost

Calculating the extended, and total, cost of an assembly is trickier. In this case I’ll use “Cost”, not “Average Cost”, since I have non-inventory items in the BOM that don’t have an average cost value.

I won’t give you the step-by-step process, just some summaries.

In this report I have columns for the level, component item, description, quantity, extended quantity, unit cost and extended cost.

For Extended Cost I will create a “calculated field”. For details on how to add a “calculated field”, see this article, scroll to the section on “creating a calculated field”. Here is the expression that I’ve created:

I’ve named this field “ExItemCost”.

Next, we need to add another band to the report. Right click on a blank area in the report, not on any of the bands. In the popup menu select Insert Band, and then GroupFooter. The name usually defaults to GroupFooter1.

Next, I will add the “ExItemCost” field, found in the MasterDataAssyData section of fields, to the GroupFooter1 band.  Position it under the Ext Cost column, set the format to currency, and set it to align right. In the properties, select Summary and set it to be a “Group” summary.

Save this, then run the report.

Note that this is a full-level BOM. The “Extended Quantity” for a subassembly item itself, and therefore the “Extended Cost”, is going to be zero. That is because the cost is calculated from the component items.

If you would like a copy of this report:

  1. Download the “repx” file from this link (this is a zip file): Costed Full Level
  2. Unzip the file to extract the file BOMCosted Full Level.repx
  3. Run CCRQBOM
  4. Select Forms and then Bill of Material
  5. Click the Import button, and select the repx file from where you saved it.

This will add “Costed Full Level” to your Bill of Materials report menu.

“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.