Managing financial transactions seamlessly is crucial for businesses, and QuickBooks Online is a popular tool to help with this task. However, users may encounter various issues that can disrupt their workflow. This article addresses common errors and provides solutions to resolve them effectively.
Error: 'Tried to use employee as a vendor or customer'
The Issue
When attempting to publish an expense report from Envoice to QuickBooks Online, you may encounter the following error message:
"Tried to use employee as a vendor or customer. Please publish this document to a vendor or customer."
This occurs because the user is set up as an Employee contact in QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online does not allow certain expense documents (like Bills) to be assigned to an Employee; they must be assigned to a Vendor.
The Workaround
To resolve this, you must set up the individual as a Vendor in QuickBooks Online and link their Envoice user account to that Vendor profile.
Step 1: Create a Vendor in QuickBooks
Log in to QuickBooks Online.
Create a new Vendor for the user.
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Important: To distinguish this new vendor profile from the existing employee profile, add a suffix to their name.
Example: If the employee is "John Smith," name the Vendor "John Smith (UK)" or "John Smith (Vendor)".
Step 2: Sync Contacts in Envoice
Go to Envoice.
Navigate to Contacts.
Click Sync to pull the new data from QuickBooks.
Locate the new Vendor you just created (e.g., "John Smith (UK)").
Step 3: Update the Connected Person
Open the new Vendor contact card in Envoice.
Find the field labeled Connected reporting person.
Select the relevant Envoice user (e.g., John Smith) from the dropdown list.
Save the contact.
Troubleshooting: If you receive an error when saving, the user is likely still linked to their old "Employee" contact. Locate the original Employee contact in Envoice, remove the name from the "Connected reporting person" field, and save. Then, return to the new Vendor contact and link the user.
Step 4: Refresh and Publish
Return to the expense report that failed.
Try to republish the expense report.
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If the error persists immediately, you must refresh the report data:
Cancel the accounting review (if active).
Finalize the report again.
This forces Envoice to update the contact details on the report to the new Vendor settings.
Click Publish.
Error: 'Feature Not Supported Error: We're sorry. This feature is not included in your QuickBooks Online Simple Start subscription.'
Symptom
You are receiving the following error message when attempting to publish an invoice:
Feature Not Supported Error: We're sorry. This feature is not included in your QuickBooks Online Simple Start subscription.
Applies To
- QuickBooks Online integrated companies.
Cause
This error appears on your invoices when your QuickBooks Online subscription is on the Simple Start plan. While Envoice can connect to Simple Start, it cannot publish invoices to Simple Start unless the invoices are both marked as paid and published as an expense. This is a limitation set by QuickBooks Online.
Resolution
Option 1: Publish These Invoices as Paid Expenses
To publish these invoices, you need to change the publishing destination of the payment method to Bank Transactions and select the correct Bank Account. This means that invoices will be published to QuickBooks Online as paid expenses. For more information, refer to the guide on using QuickBooks Online with Envoice.
Option 2: Upgrade Your QuickBooks Online Subscription
To publish these invoices, you will need to upgrade your QuickBooks Online subscription to a plan that supports this feature.
For detailed instructions on upgrading your subscription, please visit the QuickBooks Online support page.