Special characters (like $^*%$& and such) have long been the bane of computer programs. And although programmers try to write their code to prevent special characters from messing up the program logic, things still slip through.
We just discovered a new variation on this theme in QuickBooks 2012, and it can mess up your accountant’s ability to access some of your QuickBooks data. It involves simply using an ampersand character (&) in your external accountant’s user name.
If you are setting up a user in QuickBooks as an external accountant and use an ampersand symbol (&) as part of the name, when you send the file to your accountant, they will have a problem.
They will be able to open the file fine. But if they try to do the Client Data Review, it will fail. No errors, no crashes. But when they click the command it will not launch.
If, on your side, you rename the external accountant user to something else that doesn’t have the ampersand symbol in it, it will be OK — your accountant will be able to do the Client Data Review with the next file you send them.
I tried some other accountant-specific functions when the ampersand was in place, and everything seemed OK. But I certainly didn’t test everything. I did test a few other special characters without encountering problems with the Client Data Review. It’s hard to say what the scope of the problem is without some serious testing.
The moral of the story is to NOT use special characters in your user names. I think it would be wise to not use special characters in ANY of your user names — external accountant or otherwise.
There are, of course, many other issues that can occur in a set of QuickBooks data that can prevent you making backups or accountant’s copies, and that require data repair.
Have you seen any instances of special characters causing problems in QuickBooks? Share your story.
I’ve encountered something that might possibly be this type of issue. I have a client who uses the “!” symbol in their administrative password. (I have a separate user ID and password to use whenever I work in their live file.)
The problem I encounter is this: if I make a backup of their QB file while at their office and then try to restore it at my office (we maintain QBW files for various reasons such as CPA review for tax projections), I’m unable to restore it if the file needs to update; it requires that you log in as the Admin. At that point, it does not accept the client’s admin password. I’ve verified that I’m using the correct user ID and password by logging into it myself at the client’s office using the same.
Do you think it might be a problem such as you are referring to or am I unknowingly following the wrong procedures in a scenario such as this?
Hi Liz,
I think that is something else; a symbol like that should be fine in a password. And the admin’s user name is simply Admin, right? Is the user able to restore their own backups on their own computer? Will the file rebuild without errors on the user’s machine? If, instead of making a backup, you simply copied their QBW file to your computer and tried to open it, would it be able to update it then? Might try some of those things and see if that sheds light.
Thanks for the question.