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 permissionsnot 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.

QuickBooks 2016 R7 Permission Error

There are multiple reasons that you can get an error saying “Cannot open company file”, with a detail of “Common open this QuickBooks Company”. With the release of QuickBooks 2016 R7, Intuit has changed security access and you have to update your QuickBooks preferences for an add-on program to be able to access your file.

Here’s the error message you’ll see, with a QuickBooks error code of 80040430.

To fix this problem, according to Intuit, you must:

  • Open the QuickBooks file with the Admin user.
  • Select Edit and then Preferences to open your QuickBooks preferences.
  • Select the Integrated Applications preferences on the left side.
  • Select the Company Preferences tab.
  • Locate the CCRSoftware application in the list, select it, and Remove it from the list.

 

  • Close the Preferences window.
  • With the company file still open, run the CCRSoftware program.
  • After a short pause you should see a window that asks if it is OK for the app to access the file. Say “Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open”.

 

This should resolve the problem. NOTE that you cannot use the CCRSoftware program in “unattended” mode, which means that you always have to open the QB file first. That is an apparent bug in this update to QuickBooks.

Revoked Certificate Errors

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).

Code signing certificates are a way for a software developer to “digitally sign” their software to show the user that the copy of the program they are installing is a valid copy from that developer. Unfortunately, staring in 2016, Microsoft has decided to change code signing certificates from a format that has been used for a very long time, and in some operating systems the certificates show as no longer being valid. QuickBooks doesn’t handle this well, it will prevent the software with one of these older format certificates from access your company file.

The odd thing is that if the software was not signed at all, it could still access your QuickBooks data.

At the time this article is being written, this is only a problem on Windows 10. Over time, this problem will probably extend to Windows 8 and Windows 7.

Updated Programs

We are working on a resolution to this problem. If your software is not listed below, please go to our support page and submit a support request, stating that you have the “revoked certificate” issue, and we will inform you when an update is available.

Please make sure that you read the “Installing the Update” instructions below.

CCRQBOM

  • Standard release (3.2.2), go to the CCRQBOM download page . This is the version most people should install.
  • Pre release versions (4.0.0), go to the CCRQBOM Pre-release page. DO NOT pick this unless you were using the pre-release version before. A serial number for the 3.2.2 version will not work with this version.

CCRQInvoice

  • Standard release (3.3.1.1), go to the CCRQInvoice download page. This is the version most people should install.
  • Pre release versions (3.6.1), go to the CCRQInvoice pre-release page. DO NOT pick this unless you were using the pre-release version before. A serial number for the 3.3.1.1 version will not work with this version.

CCRQPurchase

Installing the Update

To resolve this problem you need to reset some preferences in QuickBooks, and then download and install an updated program.

Before installing:

  • Run QuickBooks in single user mode with the Admin user account.
  • Select Edit and then Preferences.

 

  • Select the Integrated Preferences option on the left.
  • Select the Company Preferences tab.
  • Locate all copies of the particular CCRSoftware product you are using in the list (CCRQInvoice is used in our example above), and Remove every copy from the list.
  • Close the preferences window.
  • Download the appropriate installer from the list below.
  • Run that installer. It will ask if you want to remove the prior copy (you must say yes). Accept all of the default settings (make sure you select for “all users”).
  • Run the CCRSoftware program. It should recognize your prior registration key (serial number) if you have a registered copy with the same version.
  • QuickBooks will ask you if it is OK for the program to access your data. Select “Yes, whenever this QuickBooks company file is open”.

 

That should resolve the problem. If you have further issues, please submit a support request.

 

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.