Resolve errors when creating or working on an accountant's copy

When you create an Accountant's Copy (.QBX) or converting an Accountant's Copy to an Accountant's Copy Working file (.QBA), you get the error, "Failed" or "QuickBooks has detected an error with your installation. Please Reinstall QuickBooks," with a big red "X" or ✕ .

What you should do:

Solution 1: Copy your file on your Desktop.

Solution 2: Create a QuickBooks portable company file

Solution 3: Resolve data damage on your company file

Due to insufficient space on your drive, you may receive this message when creating an Accountant's Copy: “Not able to create Accountant's Copy - to export your company file on drive (letter of the drive). There must be (number of kilobytes) space on drive (letter of the drive). There is only (number of space) amount of space available".

What you should do:

You can free up some space from your hard drive or save the Accountant's Copy to a different drive with more free space.

You might encounter this error if the folder permission is not set properly or the file is being restored over the network.

What you should do:

Solution 1: Copy the file locally

• If you are opening the file from a portable drive (USB or thumb drive), copy the file locally.
• If the file is saved on a server, either copy the file to the local drive or perform the task on the server.

Solution 2: Set folder permissions

1. Right-click the folder where the file is saved, then select Properties.
2. Open the Security tab.
3. Highlight the user that is getting the error, then select Edit.
4. Select Allow and Full Control, then OK.

What you should do:

Solution 1: Copy the file locally

• If you are opening the file from a portable drive (USB or thumb drive), copy the file locally.
• If the file is saved on a server, either copy the file to the local drive or perform the task on the server.

Solution 2: Remove the special characters on the file name

1. Right-click the Accountant's Copy file, then select Rename.
2. Remove all the special characters.
3. Reopen your Accountant's Copy file.
   Note: Remove special characters from the file name when prompted to save the file as .QBA.

When you try to create a backup (.QBB) of an Accountant's Copy Working file (.QBA), you get the warning,“You are backing up an Accountant's Copy. While this is allowed, you must be very careful not to restore this backup over the existing primary file. Do NOT deliver this backup to your client.”

As a precaution, you can backup the Working file and use it if the original .QBA file gets damaged. However, you should not send this backup file to your client.

To send the changes back to your client, you need to export the accountant's changes.

When you try to upgrade your company file to a newer version of QuickBooks Desktop, you get a prompt saying: "Accountant's Copy exist."

Upgrading a company file with Pending Accountant's Changes to a newer version of QuickBooks Desktop is NOT recommended because the upgrade may cause problems when you import the Accountant's Changes.

If you did not intentionally create an Accountant’s Copy for your file, you can remove the Accountant's Copy restriction.

This message will appear if you try to reconcile accounts after creating an Accountant's Copy (.QBX). If you just want to verify if your books are correct, you can still continue with the reconciliation but you either let the reconciliation rollback or enter the Accountant's Changes manually.

Reconciliation will be retained after the Accountant's changes are imported if:

• None of the transactions you have marked as cleared are dated on or before the Accountant's Copy dividing date; and
• Your accountant did not do or undo any reconciliation for the same account in the Accountant's Copy.