Exporting payroll reports - expired certificates

Thanks for getting in touch with the Community, test7777777. I appreciate your detailed information.

Would it be possible for you to include a screenshot or two showing what's occurring in Excel when your Enable Content option isn't present and the Options option informs you that Intuit's certificate for your file has expired?

If you could, these screenshots would help me to better understand the situation and conduct further research on my end.

For the time being, I'd recommend confirming your books are up-to-date with their latest release.

Here's how:
 

1. In the top menu bar, go to Help, then Update QuickBooks Desktop.
2. Click Update Now.
3. Hit Get Updates.
4. When your update's finished, close and reopen QuickBooks.
5. Select Yes when you're asked to install the update.
6. Once it's complete, follow your on-screen instructions.

I'd also recommend you confirm you're working with the latest tax table update:
 

1. In your top menu bar, go to Employees, then Get Payroll Updates.
2. Click Download Entire Update.
3. Select Update.

I've also included a couple detailed resources about updating QuickBooks which may come in handy moving forward:
 

• Update QuickBooks to the latest release
• Get the latest tax table update

I'll be looking forward to your reply. Have a wonderful Wednesday!

We're fully up to date.

Attached is a screenshot of the expired cert.

I can see your struggle while managing on exporting report in Microsoft Excel, @test7777777. Let's find a way to resolve this issue of why you're unable to export the data from QuickBooks desktop to Excel. 

In this situation, you may receive one or more messages indicating that the digital signature applied to the database is no longer valid. The file's active content is blocked. We suggest checking your Trust Center settings or contacting your IT administrator for assistance.

Furthermore, I also encourage you to contact our QuickBooks Desktop support team, so they can further check if there's current update with this issue with expired certificate concern. 

1. On your QuickBooks account, go to the Help section.
2. Choose Contact Us.
3. State your concern, then select Continue.
4. We'll email you a single-use code. Enter your code and select Continue.
5. Select to chat with us or Have us call you.

Additionally, if you wish to personalize your data report before exporting it, refer to this page for guidance: Customize payroll and employee reports.

Alternatively, you might want to create a backup of your financial files; we can utilize this article for the steps by step process: Back up your QuickBooks Desktop company file.

We are still here to support you on achieving your exporting task in QBDT. Please tag my name if you need one. 

@ChristineJoieR  RE: "The following database usage scenarios are known to invalidate the digital signature"

Most of what you list are not "database usage scenarios".

In any case, the user didn't do any of those things.  As they noted, all they did was launch the reports.

The reason the user is getting the message is obvious from the screenshot they included: The certificate used to sign the excel template is now expired.

If Intuit had just used a timestamping service from their certificate provider as they signed the template then this would not happen after the certificate expired, which is rather common knowledge for people that sign code. They should have known to do this.

In any case, the best way to get the message to go away is for Intuit to re-sign the templates with new certificates and make them part of a patch, not to ask each of their hundreds of thousands of payroll customers that use these reports to modify their Excel security settings - for a feature originally designed so the customers doesn't need to do that.

@BigRedConsulting Well said.  Thank you for the support.

@ChristineJoieR Did you even look at the expiration date in my screenshot?

I understand how this situation has affected your business tasks, @test7777777. I have some information and fixes I can share to resolve the expired certificate you encountered.

The cause of this issue was the revocation of a Symantec Root certificate, which was used in the development of applications. As a result, many certificates were deemed invalid. QuickBooks, in order to maintain the highest level of security, only allows applications with valid certificates to access company file data.
 

Although the warning appears in QuickBooks, it is actually Intuit that is detecting and blocking access to company file data when invalid certificates are detected. This issue affects not only QuickBooks but also other developers who have been impacted by this recent event. The complete resolution of this issue will occur once developers using expired or invalid certificates update their apps with new valid certificates.
 

The temporary suspension of these expired certificates has been put on hold. Intuit and Microsoft have collaborated to find a solution within Windows that allows the resumption of third-party integration. To enable this, your system will automatically receive a Windows update during its scheduled update check. 

I have here a temporary solution you can perform to help you past this situation. Let me walk you through the steps:
 

1. Download zip file - https://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/certSync/certSync.zip
2. Open the downloads folder or location the zip file was saved.
3. Open the zip file and extract the batch file.
4. Right-click on the certSync.bat file and choose Run as Administrator.
5. It may take a few minutes to run, you should not close the Command Prompt window until you see "CertUtil: -verifyCTL command completed successfully."
6. Once completed, close the window and start using your 3rd party app with QuickBooks.

Additionally, you might consider visiting this website where you can find a collection of articles that provide guidance on managing your QuickBooks file: QuickBooks Desktop Help Articles.

In case you require any further clarification or have additional queries about this matter, please notify me. I'm at your disposal to provide you with the relevant information.

@DHeraV  RE: Although the warning appears in QuickBooks, it is actually Intuit that is detecting and blocking access to company file data when invalid certificates are detected.

The warning doesn't appear in QuickBooks and it is not QuickBooks that is blocking anything. It is Excel. That should be clear enough from the OP's post and would be even cleared to you had you actually tried it.

You can tell it is Excel by lowering the security settings in Excel and then running the reports, which then connect to QuickBooks with no issue. Sheesh, this isn't really that complicated.

@DHeraV The certificate revocation issue occurred on 8/22/23.  The expiration date on the certificate in my screenshot is 4/16/23 - a full 4 months before the certificate revocation occurred.

Did you look at the screenshot?

Hi, test7777777. I understand that this situation may have caused you stress, and I want to assure you that we are committed to finding a resolution.

Updating your QuickBooks Desktop to the latest release and performing the temporary steps provided by my colleague @DHeraV should fix the issue. Since the problem continues, I suggest contacting our Customer Care Support so they can further check on this and provide more troubleshooting steps to resolve this matter.

I'm sharing this article again for additional details on how to fix the error: Fix error QuickBooks - Application with Revoked Certificate.

We thank you for your patience while we work on this issue.

@GlinetteC We're already in touch with ProAdvisor support and have reproduced the issue for them on three separate operating systems.  Tier II's response was - "lower your Excel security."

Got that?  Tier II's response was to lower our security rather than Intuit address an expired security certificate.

Support also confirmed that Intuit has reports of this same issue from other customers as far back as June and July - which predates the certificate revocation issue from last month.

@GlinetteC  RE: Updating your QuickBooks Desktop to the latest release and performing the temporary steps provided by my colleague @DHeraV should fix the issue.

Are the payroll report templates part of the QuickBooks patch?  No, no they're not.

So, will updating QuickBooks update the payroll report template files?  No, no they won't.

Has Intuit taken action and re-signed the templates? No, no they haven't. Unless of course, you can confirm that they have.

Can you confirm that there are new report templates available for download?  No, I didn't think so.

Replying here with the conclusion.  Tier II will not refer this issue to engineering and have closed the ticket with no resolution.  I also spoke to a supervisor who said the same thing.

It's an absolute disgrace the way this has been handled by Intuit.  After hours of troubleshooting tier II would not even attempt to reproduce the issue on their side because if they did, they would then have to take ownership of it and actually do something.  The support rep I was working with didn't even have Enterprise 23 installed.  Tier II did everything in their power to point to something in my environment as the cause.  First they balked because the issue was occurring on a Remote Desktop server even though Remote Desktop services is fully supported by Intuit for QB Enterprise.  OK fine, so we reproduced it for them on a Windows 10 system logged in locally.  They still would not refer the issue to engineering to get resolved because "lowering Excel security is the resolution."

Intuit does not care about security and have basically abandoned the desktop product.  Tier II is a disgrace and are not interested in providing actual support.  So is management as the support supervisor I was working with basically just shrugged their shoulders and closed the ticket.

Keep this in mind when considering giving Intuit your money in the future.

RE: "Tier II is a disgrace and are not interested in providing actual support."

Harsh, but rather accurate.

I suppose I could re-sign and publish all of the payroll report templates with current digital signatures. I wonder if that'd be helpful?

You have the ability to do this?

Sure. It's not very hard.