There is an invalid reference to a parent "" in the Customers list. QuickBooks error message: Invalid argument. The specified record does not exist in the list.

Hello @pprabhakaran,

As much as I'd love to offer help and share how you can get rid of the error message, we've got a separate team who can better address this in no time. With this, I'd recommend contacting the Technical Support of your third-part application.

With their tools, one of their specialists can pull up your account they've got on file and explain how the app integration works. They can also help you update how your customers' list is from the app to QuickBooks.

Also, our Community Help Articles related to your sales and customers allow you to browse for references while working with us. In this reference, you're able to read through the steps commonly used to review your business transactions.

If there's anything else that I can help you with aside from how you can manage the list of your customers, please let me know by leaving any comments below. I'll be here to lend a hand.

Which is the separate team that you mentioned in this reply? Could you give more info.

Hi pprabhakaran, 

My colleague referred to your Third-Party Customer Care Team where you can reach out to and help you with the mapping and syncing of information to QuickBooks. You can also use our Apps Center to look for the app and check their contact information from there. 

As always, you can check out our Community Help Article for future reference in handling your customer lists and transactions. 

Feel free to mention me in your reply if you need anything else. Take care!

The third party application is not part of the QB forums. We already did an anlaysis with the third party. The syncing to QB seems to be okay when we try to add a customer by itself and not to an existing parent customer. By verifying the XML generated in the QB logs , the XML that is being sent from the tool to QB seems to have no issues. We used the same XML with SDKTestPlus and were able to add succesfully to QB.

What could be the reasons/ scenarios that could cause QB to throw this error?

Hello there, pprabhakaran. Thanks for getting back to us.

I'll make sure to provide details on why you're receiving an alert message when adding a customer to your company file.

The error message occurs when attempting to sync a child customer to a non-existing parent customer in QuickBooks. A parent must be created in QuickBooks before the child is synced. Based on the information you've posted above, you're certain that the parent exists in the company file. 

In your case, it could be that the parent has been marked inactive in QuickBooks, or it has a child record associated with the parent. 

Here's  how to check the parent status:

1. Go to the Customers menu.
2. Select Customer Center.
3. In the Customers & Jobs tab, make sure to select All Customers to include the inactive ones.
4. Find the parent one. If you see an X mark, right-click the name. Then, select Make Customer:Job Active.
   

If there is an associated customer to the parent one, you can delete it. You'll only have to right-click the associated name and select Delete Customer:Job. This way, you'll be able to add the customer successfully to the existing parent in QuickBooks.

You may want to check the links below. Each of them provides information about handling your sales, customers, and reports:

• Sales and customers. 
• Create and manage reports. 

Please don't hesitate to go back here if you have additional concerns or need further help with this matter. The Community team is always here to help. Take care always.

Hi 

Thank you for the suggestions. I checked the company file and the parent is set to Active.

I didnt quite understand the below suggestion in your reply. Sorry.

"If there is an associated customer to the parent one, you can delete it. You'll only have to right-click the associated name and select Delete Customer:Job. This way, you'll be able to add the customer successfully to the existing parent in QuickBooks."

Are we suggesting here to delete any customer that is already there within the parent customer? So in that case is it that we cant have more than one customer under a parent customer? 

Could you please clarify on this. 

Also since the parent is not inactive is there anything else that I can do or verify?

thanks

praveena

Hello there, @pprabhakaran.

I'd like to add some clarification regarding the response shared by my peer above.

Yes, you're right. The system allows you to add multiple sub-customers to the parent. Just highlight the name of the parent account and choose Add Job.

I'll guide you how:

1. In the Customer center, highlight the name of the Parent Customer (name of the customer).
2. Click Add New Customer.
3. Select Add Job.
4. Type in the sub-customer's information.
5. Select on OK.

Repeat the same process if you 'll need to add more sub-customers. Once you create an invoice, you'll be able select which sub-customer will it be sent.

On the other hand, to verify why your XML fails, I recommend reaching out to our Intuit Developer Team. They do app development, integrations, and programming. This team has the tools that can help identify the root cause of this matter.

You can visit this link to reach them: Intuit Developers.

Get back to me of you need anything else about this or with QuickBooks. I'm always ready to assist you. Take care!