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Overflow in QuickBooks Desktop

by Intuit• Updated 6 months ago

Here are some of the instances where you may get overflows in QuickBooks.

  • When you run the Verify Data utility, you see the error:

    Problem: An overflow error has occurred. One of your accounts has exceeded the maximum value allowed.

  • When you open your Chart of Accounts, one or more of your balance sheet accounts show *overflow* instead of an amount.
  • When you run a report, one or more of the amount columns show *overflow* instead of an amount.

There are several possible causes why overflow occurs:

  • An account balance or other field in your company file has an amount greater than $9,999,999,999,999.99.
  • The format you are copying from an Excel spreadsheet does not match a format that is accepted by QuickBooks.
  • When a large quantity on a Group Item is changed to another large quantity, overflow can appear next to the Group's component items.
  • An Inventory item with a value that is too large for the number of items. e.g., a quantity of 1 and a value of $18,000,000.
  • Damaged transactions in your company data file.

Intuit recommends more than one solution for this problem. For best results, perform the solutions in the order shown.

Before performing any of the solutions, it is best to verify that your computer meets the QuickBooks Desktop (2019, 2018) system requirements. Things to check in particular are Regional Settings, Disk Space and available RAM.
  1. From the File menu, select Utilities > Rebuild Data.
  2. Select OK if you receive a warning message to backup your company file.
    Note: Your computer may display the message QuickBooks is not responding. However, as long as you can move your mouse cursor, wait for it to complete.
  3. Select OK when you get the message Rebuild is complete.
  1. Export your lists to your desktop.
  2. Minimize QuickBooks.
  3. Right-click the export file and choose Open With > Microsoft Excel.
  4. Find all transactions with "overflow" value.
    1. Press Ctrl + F
    2. Enter *overflow*
    3. Select Find Next
  5. Switch back to QuickBooks and correct the data for the field in the Account, Name or Item that contains it.
  1. Set the Group Item Quantity to zero.
  2. Tab out of the field.
  3. Reenter the correct Group Item quantity.
  • If it is a new item, delete it from the Item list and recreate it.
  • If it is not a new item:
    • Audit the item and correct the transaction that is causing an overflow.
      Example: A Bill with an amount of $1,000,000 and an amount of 1 instead of 1,000,000, will change the average cost from $1.00 to $1,000,000.
    • If you cannot find such a transaction, enter an Adjust Quantity/Value on Hand document to adjust the average cost.
  1. Perform basic data damage troubleshooting
  2. Create a portable company file and restore it to a new working file.
  3. Check your Chart of Accounts
    1. From the Lists menu, select Chart of Accounts.
    2. Find the account with a balance of 10,000,000,000,000 or more.
    3. Reduce the balance of that account so that it never reaches 10,000,000,000,000.
  4. Check your Memorized Reports
    • If the overflow appears on a memorized report, run the report from the Reports Menu.
    • If the new report does not show overflow, delete and recreate the Memorized Report.
    • If the new report includes overflow, proceed to the next steps.
  5. Search all lists for all fields that hold an amount or total.
    You may need to include the inactive items as you go through your lists.
    1. Under the Lists > Add/Edit multiple List Entries.
    2. Select Customize Columns and choose any field that holds an amount (such as Credit Limit, Cost and Price).
    3. Look for Overflow then edit, change, or delete that amount.
    4. Check all lists.
    5. In newer versions of QuickBooks under Edit > Search look for *overflow*, search for list elements first, then search for transactions.
    6. Continue running verifies after editing the amounts in the company file until the message no longer appears.

If damaged transactions are the root cause of your issue, they should be easy to find.

  1. Run various reports (Financial Statements, Custom Transaction Detail, Sales by Customer, Sales by Item, etc.) until you see overflow.
  2. QuickZoom on overflow until you get to the transaction level.
  3. Fix the transactions.
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