Acrobat and Intuit QuickBooks® Blog

Several limitations and bugs of the QuickBooks® interface were found too late to get changes into Acrobat 9.0.  None the problems listed here are nasty and the interface is quite usable!

                . When you try to connect to QuickBooks, you may get a dialog entitled “QuickBooks – Application Certificate”.  Unfortunately the dialog may appear underneath the Acrobat window.  This is actually a bug in QuickBooks, to work around the problem simply switch applications to QuickBooks and continue.

                . When the aforementioned “QuickBooks – Application Certificate” appears; Acrobat is halted and will not redraw window content, which appears messy.  This will be fixed in a future version of Acrobat.

                . When attempting to connect to QuickBooks, you may see a warning containing the message “QuickBooks is not currently running, no company file is open, or the connection to Acrobat was denied.  Please open a company file in QuickBooks and approve connection requests from Acrobat.”  If you are having trouble getting past this warning, try this:

·         Open the QuickBooks Preferences Panel

·         Select the “Integrated Applications” page.

·         Select the “Company Preferences” tab.

·         If you see “Adobe Acrobat” in the list, remove it.

·         In Acrobat attempt your QuickBooks connection again.

                . You can create your own Acrobat QuickBooks templates!  See the document Creating PDF Forms for Intuit QuickBooks. 

. While filling in distributed QuickBooks templates using Reader 7, there are severe performance problems when using the plus sign and minus sign to add and remove rows.  If the performance hit is unacceptable you must upgrade to Reader 8 or higher.

. While filling in distributed QuickBooks templates using Reader 7 there is a limitation of form fill-in.  When you click the minus sign to delete an item, the Subtotal and Total fields do not update.  To fix this bug you can use LiveCycle Designer (included in your copy of Acrobat Pro or Extended) to make the small script change listed below.   Or you can have everybody upgrade to Reader 8 or higher, which really is a huge improvement!  Here is the script change I mentioned:

·         Open the template in LiveCycle Designer.

·         Increase your zoom factor to 100%

·         Select the minus sign.

·         Switch to the “XML Source” tab.  You should be at a line containing name="cmdInvoiceItemDel" in the XML source.

·         Scroll down slightly until you see the following line inside a javascript.  Note that “<x>” is actually a string such as “EstimateAdd”.

xfa.form.<x>.QuickBooks.checkTable();

·         Add the following as a single line after the “checkTable()” call of the previous step.  Make sure to substitute for “<x>” the string of the previous step such as “EstimateAdd”.

xfa.form.<x>.sfmInvoiceLines.InvoiceSubtotal.tblTotal.rowSubTotal.txtSubTotal.execEvent("calculate");

·         Save the file and exit LiveCycle Designer.

·         Use Acrobat to populate the template for distribution.

Overall the QuickBooks interface seems to be working really well and none of these problems are showstoppers!

Posted by at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Adobe Systems, Inc. has improved Acrobat by adding a QuickBooks® interface to Acrobat 9.0. QuickBooks® software is Intuit's excellent accounting program; its many forms tied to a robust database are exactly what accountants need. 

But you can't have everybody take QuickBooks® with them on the road.   It’s a huge improvement to have a portable document format, so that forms can roam while your QuickBooks® software stays safe at the office.  Adobe's PDF is the world's standard portable document, a clean way to bring Acrobat and QuickBooks® software together is a win for everyone!

Accountants will need Acrobat 9 Pro or Pro Extended English, French, or German installed alongside QuickBooks®.  Remote users don't need QuickBooks® but may use Adobe Reader 7.0.8 or greater for form fill in.  Accountants and Remote Users use Acrobat 9 and QuickBooks® together effectively via these tasks:

                . Accountants use Acrobat to open a predefined Acrobat QuickBooks template.  Each Acrobat QuickBooks template emulates the operation of a familiar QuickBooks® form.  If you don't see the QuickBooks® form you want, you can always create your own Acrobat QuickBooks templates from scratch.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to populate the Acrobat QuickBooks template with content extracted from QuickBooks®.  The menu item “Forms > QuickBooks > Prepare QuickBooks Template for Distribution...” shows a Wizard which steps you through the process of establishing a connection to QuickBooks® and extracting the content.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to distribute a populated Acrobat QuickBooks template to remote users for fill-in.  The Acrobat 9.0 form distribution engine is fully leveraged, you can distribute via email, network folder, or via Acrobat.com.  The new Acrobat.com website is an especially compelling Acrobat 9.0 feature!

                . Remote users use Adobe Reader 7.0.8 or greater to fill in forms and return them to the Accountant.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to collect filled in forms to a portfolio.  The attractive Acrobat 9.0 portfolio is fully leveraged; newly received forms are automatically collected to the portfolio.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to synchronize a portfolio of filled-in forms to QuickBooks®.  Acrobat will examine the portfolio and send to QuickBooks® only newly returned forms; forms which have already been synchronized to QuickBooks® will not be processed.  Old filled-in forms may be deleted from the portfolio.

The QuickBooks® interface is implemented using the Adobe's Dynamic XFA technology.  Robust and stable dynamic XFA allows you to achieve a high degree of usable form customization using Adobe's Live Cycle Designer.  The full power of Dynamic XFA script is available.

In this blog I will attempt to:

                . List bugs found since Acrobat 9.0 release.  Full information about limitations and workarounds will be posted.

                . Give Information about how to customize QuickBooks® templates or create them from scratch.

                . Provide solutions to problems found by customers.

                . Help with Acrobat QuickBooks template dynamic form scripting.

Please provide lots of feedback and comments about how Acrobat's QuickBooks® interface is working!  What is your favorite feature?  Are there any bugs or limitations you have noticed?

Thanks for reading and please check back often!

Posted by at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)