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Troubleshooting: Quickbooks Online Integration Issues

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Below is a list of common Quickbooks Online (QBO) issues and steps to resolve them.

Duplicate Document Number Error

Full message: Duplicate Document Number Error : You must specify a different number. This number has already been used. - Exporting invoice - [invoice number]

To prevent this error from occurring, you can either turn off the requirement that invoice numbers are unique, or you can edit the duplicate invoice to have a unique number.

To turn off Quickbook Online's requirement for unique invoice numbers:

  1. Click the gear icon to open the additional menu options.
  2. Under Settings, click Account and Settings.
  3. Click Advanced in the left menu.
  4. In the Other preferences section, uncheck "Warn if duplicate bill number is used".

To edit the invoice to give it a unique invoice number:

  1. Find the invoice number by looking at the error message. It is the number or alphanumeric reference that follows "Exporting invoice -".
  2. In Duoplane, search for the invoice using the shipment search (Orders > Shipments): https://app.duoplane.com/shipments.
  3. Enter the invoice number in the Vendor invoice number field and click Search.
  4. In the search results, click View for the last shipment with that invoice number.
  5. In the shipment record, click Edit.
  6. Give the shipment a new invoice number and save.
    1. Usually if you add a suffix "-1" or "B" after the invoice number, it will make it unique. You can confirm by searching for other invoices with the new number you've chosen.

Duplicate Name Exists Error

Full message: Duplicate Name Exists Error: The name supplied already exists. : Another customer, vendor or employee is already using this name. Please use a different name. - Exporting vendor - [vendor name]

Quickbooks requires that all names within your QBO account be unique. The name must be unique across any kind of contact (customer, vendor or employee). It also includes inactive records.

To resolve this error, the first step is to see why Quickbooks is complaining about a duplicate name. To do that, search within your Quickbooks Online account for any contact that has the same name as the vendor that is named in the full error message displayed by Duoplane. Remember to look in active records as well.

Once you have found the record in Quickbooks Online, you have a couple of options to give the new vendor a unique name:

Rename the existing QBO contact

  1. After you have found the existing QBO contact with the same name as the Duoplane vendor, give it a new name in Quickbooks.
  2. One easy way to do that is to add a suffix to the existing name.
    1. For example, if the existing contact is a customer named "Acme, Inc.", you can rename it to "Acme, Inc. (Customer)".
    2. Or if the record is inactive, you can add a the suffix "(Inactive").

Give the Duoplane vendor a different "Accounting system name"

  1. Search for and open the vendor record in Duoplane.
  2. Scroll to the Wholesale account section, and click Edit.
  3. In the Accounting and payments section, fill in the Accounting system name with a name that is different than the existing QBO contact.
    1. Adding a suffix to the existing name is a good way of keeping the record-keeping consistent. (For example, "Acme, Inc. (Vendor)".)

Account Period Closed

Full message: Account Period Closed, Cannot Update Through Services API: The account period has closed and the account books cannot be updated through through the QBO Services API. Please use the QBO website to make these changes.

If you set a closing date in Quickbooks, all transactions exported to Quickbooks must be dated after that date. If Duoplane attempts to create a transaction in Quickbooks that is dated on or before the closing date, an "Account Period Closed" error will be returned.

In order to avoid this error, you will need to tell Duoplane what the Quickbooks closing date is. Any transactions that precede that date will be given a transaction date one day after the closing date. For example, if your closing date is December 31, 2015, and Duoplane is exporting an invoice dated December 15, 2015, the invoice will be dated January 1, 2016 in Quickbooks.

(Unfortunately, our system is also not able to automatically retrieve the closing date from your Quickbooks Online account due to current limitations in the Quickbooks API.)

To set the accounting closing date in Duoplane:

  1. Navigate to your accounting settings (Settings > Accounting).
  2. Set the Closing date field to the same closing date that was set in Quickbooks.

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