Emailing pay stubs

Hi,

A bit more information for those looking at this.  Our system information is as follows:

• Windows 10
• Quickbooks Accountant Edition 2020

This issue seems to have occurred after a certificate refresh using Let's Encrypt certificates.  The newer certbot client that we use to refresh certificates on the mail server now defaults to requesting certificates using elliptic curve algorithms.  By changing this option to request RSA certificates and forcing a certificate refresh Quickbooks is now able to communicate with our e-mail server.

Quickbooks Accountant Edition 2020 cannot communicate with an e-mail server with elliptic curve-based certificates.

Sorry for the noise.  Hopefully, this helps someone.

Thanks,

Thanks for the details, KimKWalker.

I've got you covered to resolve the error message.

To start with, let's try updating your QuickBooks file to the latest release. Then, try sending an email again.

If the issue persists, check the settings in the webmail preferences. I've added this article for the detailed steps to configure the settings: Fix Error: Could not connect to the email server.

I've also added a reference on how your employees can view their paystubs online: Set up QuickBooks Workforce for your QuickBooks Desktop.

That should do it, KimKWalker. Don't hesitate to mention my name to how things work on your end. I want to ensure that this gets resolved!

Adrian_A,

Thanks for the response.

Updating Quickbooks was one of the first things we did when troubleshooting and it didn't resolve the issue.  The issue turned out to be that Quickbooks (our version at least) doesn't support newer elliptic curve ciphers when talking to an e-mail server.  We managed to get the issue fixed by installing RSA certificates on our mail server.  Things are working fine now.

We'll try elliptic curve certificates again whenever we decide to upgrade since the newer certificate types support forward secrecy.  We're thinking that newer versions of Quickbooks should support these newer certificates since they are becoming more common.

A bit of background on ECC certificates: https://www.digicert.com/faq/ecc.htm#:~:text=Because%20of%20the%20smaller%20key,volume%20or%20high%2....

Thanks,