QB Accountant’s Copy Issue with Importing Edits

Since today is March 14^th, many of my friends who do predominately taxes for a living are working away trying to get those client trial balances adjusted so they can complete those last-minute C and S-Corp tax returns. If you’re one of those accountants who uses the great functionality of the Accountant’s Copy in QuickBooks (and you know who you are), read on. If you aren’t using Accountant’s Copy (e.g. you don’t have files with a file extension of QBX, QBY, and QBA in your QuickBooks directory, please ignore this issue).

Here’s the issue:

 Unpatched systems using the QuickBooks 2008 Accountant’s Copy can sometimes fail to import edits when converting data from a QBY to a QBW file (e.g. importing the Accountant’s Change file into the client’s production QuickBooks file). This happens only under certain circumstances (some examples below).  This can be a very small problem if the accountant has made very few edits. However, there is also the chance of losing large sets of data when an accountant makes extensive edits. 

QuickBooks 2008 Update Release 5, due March 13, 2008, addresses most of the existing circumstances under which the above issue occurs.  However, we know that not all ProAdvisors install all releases for many reasons (such as the extreme workload compression we all experience this time of the year).

 The error may occur under the following circumstances on unpatched systems:

•  If reconciled account names contain special characters
•  If the accountant enters and then modifies a journal entry
•  If the accountant modifies a deposit, then enters a new line
• If the accountant enters an account number that duplicates a number that the client has entered while the accountant has the file

 Here’s what you should do:

1.  If you are using the Accountant’s Copy feature, you should download and install all available updates for QuickBooks 2008 as soon as possible.
2. You should also advise your clients of the risks here, and pay extra attention to confirm that your client’s adjusted trial balance (e.g. after importing the QBY file) matches the values on the accountant’s final adjusted trial balance.

If you have questions about this, please read Intuit KnowledgeBase Article #1009092, or contact Intuit support.