Last week, many QuickBooks Desktop users in the US and Canada were hit by an error resulting from digital certificate rejection when attempting to integrate or sync with a third-party solution that used the QuickBooks Web Connector for remote-server based solutions or the QuickBooks SDK for solutions running on the same server (or computer) as your QuickBooks application.
Intuit spent several days trying to identify the cause(s) of this problem. Its final determination was based on the rejection of a Symantec Root Certificate that invalidated many other digital certificates. Many companies issue certificates, and some of those companies have been absorbed by Symantec in recent months, making them vulnerable to this root certificate error.
After negotiating with Microsoft, Intuit was able to get them to agree to temporarily, for an as-of-yet unpublished length of time, re-authorize the rejected certificates so that QuickBooks Desktop users could go back to working with their third-party apps.
But the time frame for that process was also not known.
Accordingly, Intuit took two additional steps to help resolve these problems.
First, it rolled out updates to QuickBooks Desktop, as previously discussed in my article, QuickBooks Pushing Out Updates to Desktop to Resolve Issues. Suppose your QuickBooks Desktop is still experiencing issues when you attempt to use a third-party app that connects via the QuickBooks Web Connector.
In that case, you must update to the most current R#_## version of your software. I list the most recent versions in the article I just mentioned.
But Intuit took a second step as well. This step was aimed at helping to resolve connection issues with third-party apps that connect directly to QuickBooks via the Integrated App preferences using the QuickBooks SDK.
Some third-party app developers were able to jump on the bandwagon and immediately identify the issue and take steps to resolve the connectivity issues; however, literally thousands of integrated apps don’t have such resources immediately on hand.
So, Intuit released a downloadable zip file containing a certSync.bat file that can be used to resolve most of these issues temporarily.
Below are the steps for this fix:
- Download the file and locate the zip file folder in your Downloads folder to extract it
- Right-click on the certSync.bat file
- When the Windows file menu opens, select Run as Administrator
- The Windows Command Prompt window will open and run the bat file
- Don’t get in a rush, and don’t close the Windows Command Prompt window
- When the fix has been successfully installed, the Command Prompt window will display CertUtil:-veritfyCTL command completed successfully
- You can close the Windows Command Prompt window when the fix has been successfully completed
- Then, launch QuickBooks, connect to your third-party software and sync data normally
- If this fix does not work, evidenced by the fact that you still get an error when you try to sync QuickBooks Desktop with your third-party software, you need to contact the developer of your third-party software
Best of luck to all those who were working under stressful conditions last week due to the inability to connect to your third-party applications.
And thanks to Intuit engineers for diagnosing the problem and its cause and developing remedies in the short-term.
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