PDF Paystub for One Employee missing

I understand your frustration under the printing stubs section, @ChiefBridgeFuser. I'll add some insights about the error you encounter in QuickBooks Desktop.

If the software prevents you from printing the paystub as PDF, I've got remedies here. 

Let's download and install the QuickBooks Tool hub to aid the common errors in printing. In this case, we need to close the QuickBooks account to utilize this tool.

Here's how:

1. Close QuickBooks.
2. Download the most recent version (1.6.0.3) of the QuickBooks Tool Hub. Save the file somewhere you can easily find it (like your Downloads folder or your Windows desktop). Note: If you've installed Tool Hub before, you can find out which version you have. Select the Home tab. See the version at the base.
3. Open the file you downloaded (QuickBooksToolHub.exe).
4. Follow the on-screen steps to install and approve the terms and requirements.
5. After that, double-click the icon on your Windows desktop to open the tool hub.

Next, let's run the QuickBooks PDF & Print Repair Tool for additional aiding material.

1. In the QuickBooks Tool Hub, select Program Problems.
2. Select QuickBooks PDF & Print Repair Tool. It will take about a minute to run.
3. Print, email, or save as a PDF from QuickBooks Desktop again.

Let me know if you still have concerns. I'll gladly join back in this session. 

Anyone reviewing this conversation is going to be confused as to the reason for your reply.

No, running this general PDF repair tool did not help.

To repeat the specifics of this problem: I have exactly 1 of 8 employees for which I cannot produce a PDF of his paystub.  For the others, including myself, a correct PDF is generated.

My frustration is not specifically with this problem but with the low quality of an accounting & payroll tool and the horrible support AFTER being forced to spend 4x the typical cost of the last 15 years of using this.

This issue, and its lack of support is burning through the last fragments of goodwill that we may have had.

Good morning, @ChiefBridgeFuser. 

I appreciate you coming back and letting us know that the tool my colleague provided didn't help. 

NOTE: Before doing any of the details below, please make sure to back up your company file. 

Since this is only happening to one employee, I recommend creating a new employee to see if that helps. Sometimes there are glitches in the system that can cause these problems to occur in your account. 

After creating the new employee, you can use these instructions below to merge the old and the new employee since they have transactions associated with them: 

Merge list entries in QBDT

I hope this helps. Feel free to reach back out if you have any trouble. Have a wonderful day! 

What you suggest is both high risk and will only be testable once per payroll cycle.  "Glitches" mean that you've got a bug, again that your software has a serious quality issue with this update to 2023.  Your suggestion that we do this complicated step is unacceptable.

There is a risk that we wind up with a tax witholding issue if something goes wrong here.

You've coerced us into paying far more for this than we were paying while at the same time providing flippant answers that risk more incurred cost than this has already taken.

What else can you do to diagnose whatever this update has corrupted and repair the data?

Good afternoon, @ChiefBridgeFuser. 

Thanks for chiming back in. Let me point you in the right direction to get this handled once and for all. 

I can see how trying to merge the old and new employee could be high risk for your business. However, this is the reason to perform a back up before using any of the steps that I provided. 

If you'd like to walk through your account with someone from our team to help you resolve this error, I recommend requesting a callback in the product. 

Here's how: 

1. Go to the Help menu. 
2. Press the QuickBooks Desktop Help option. 
3. Tap the Contact us button/hyperlink. 
4. Give a brief description of the problem and click Let's talk. 
5. Scroll down and pick to Get a callback. 

Afterwards, you'll receive an estimated time of when they'll be in touch. 

It's my priority that you get back to running your business as soon as possible. Have a wonderful day! 

No, I'm not wasting time on a call with you to do something that I will have to wait two weeks to see if it fixes a problem that probably wouldn't have been fixed anyhow.  @tammylucero identified, on her own, the the problem that makes this happen!  Like I've said in this thread already, Intuit support for this horrible product is horrible and robotic.

As Tammy has identified, the problem preventing generating employee paystubs in this case is the presence of curly braces in the employee name.  In her case, removal of the text in the curly braces is possible without creating another problem.

I've tested this by removing the curly braces in this employee's last name field, replacing it with "-Empl" and confirmed that the {}'s are what is causing the failure to generate the PDF/email the PDF.

In our case, a fix for this isn't as simple as just removing those {}'s:

This particular employee was a contractor a long time ago.  As such, he exists in the Vendor List as his legal name.

When he was added as an employee without the {employee} at the end of his last name, a dialog box pops up saying, 'This name is already in use in the Vendor List. To differentiate, after the last name add a space and any character string in curly brackets, e.g., Smith {engineer}.  Note: The name in the "Print on Checks as" field will be used on checks, and the First, M.I., Last Name fields will be used on tax forms, without the curly braces or text inside the curly braces.'

This direction from Intuit QB (probably back in about 2010 or so) is why we have that there.

When I removed the {employee} text and replaced it with "-Empl" as an experiment, I received another warning to "Please make sure that this information matches the employee's current social security card."

As it stands now, with this $800 stinking pile of Poo, I have two choices:

1) Submit information to the IRS with an incorrect name.

2) Generate and send a paystub for this employee.

This is clearly a bug that was introduced sometime after QB 2020 and on/before QB 2023: QB can no longer work with something that it tells you to do with an employee name!

Please proved me with a date as to when I can expect to see an update to correct this bug.

Image file with warning dialog images attached.

Exact same issue on my end. Any solution?

I want to ensure this is taken care of, @Civil. Let me share additional information on how emailing paystub works in QuickBooks Desktop. 

We can perform a few troubleshooting steps to get rid of the unexpected behavior. First, let's make sure QuickBooks Desktop is at its latest release. The system provides maintenance releases and product updates to patch and fix unexpected behavior and other issues.

The user should be an admin to update QuickBooks Desktop. However, you can set up QuickBooks to automatically download the updates.

Let me show you how:

1. Click the Help menu at the top, and select Update QuickBooks.
2. On the Update QuickBooks window, go to the Options tab.
3. To turn on Automatic Updates, select the radio button for Yes (see the first screenshot).
4. To share automatic downloads with other computers on your network, select the radio button for Yes.
5. Select Mark All, then click Save.
6. Click the Update Now tab.
7. Tick the Reset Update button.
8. Click Get Updates (see the second screenshot).
9. Restart QuickBooks. When prompted, accept the option to install the new release.

Once done, close and reopen QuickBooks. Let's also run the payroll tax table update.

Here's how:

1. Click Employees.
2. Choose Get Payroll Updates.
3. Select the Download entire payroll update radio button.
4. Click Update.
5. Wait until the update is complete.

However, if the issue persists, we can run the Verify/Rebuild tool utility to detect the data damage: Verify and Rebuild Data in QuickBooks Desktop.

Lastly, I'm also adding this article again so you can see steps on how you can fix issues about employees having issues seeing or opening your emails: Email pay stubs from QuickBooks Desktop.

If you need additional assistance with payroll, please let me know so that I can help.

I am having the exact same problem now that they have forced me to upgrade to QB Enterprise 2024 and a new update downloaded today....and there is no way to turn off the updates now as well.

Did you ever figure out how to fix this problem?

I had the EXACT same issue on my end. I just removed the curly brackets, changed the vendor name by adding (old) and tried re-sending the pay stub and it worked. Thanks so much for your help!!