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January 16, 2019
Question

Something you're trying to use has been made inactive. Check the fields with accounts, customers, items, vendors or employees.

  • January 16, 2019
  • 4 replies
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Original commenter did not share additional details

4 replies

lynda11_2
January 17, 2019

Hello @Everestongrand

 

Check your bank/credit card acct. used in the transaction.

 

Lynda

March 13, 2019

I am getting this error message when trying to submit payroll.  

RenjolynC
March 13, 2019

Hi Lee-Ann,

 

This error occurs when an employee, vendor, customer, or account has been made inactive in QuickBooks Online. What we can do is check the Audit Log to see if there are reports regarding the changes.

 

Here are the steps:

  1. Click the Gear icon located in the upper right-hand corner.
  2. Under Tools, click Audit Log.
  3. Click the Filter drop-down menu, choose All User under User drop-down list.
  4. Select All Dates from the Date drop-down list.
  5. Under Events, select Show only these events and check the Lists box.
  6. Click Apply.

You can view all the edited employees, customers, vendors and accounts in this page. If you see an asterisk before the employee's name, that indicates that they have been made inactive. For customers and vendors, you'll see (deleted) after their names.

 

Once you have found what has been deleted, let's make it active and then submit your payroll again. If you're unable to make them active, or if you see that nothing has been deleted, please contact Customer Support. They have the tools to investigate this error.

 

To get their contact information, click Help located at the top, and from the Help window, click the Contact Us button.

 

Please reach out to us for other concerns about QuickBooks Online Payroll. Thanks.

May 13, 2020

If you're still looking for a solution to this error message in payroll, run an audit report and note any Chart of Accounts changes you've made. If you changed any of your payroll expense account names (perhaps you added a header account), you need to reassign it to the new account name within Payroll Settings. 

October 28, 2020

Hi,

 

I feel for the people on this thread who had this issue. 

 

I am not getting this error message when I try to match bills to bill payments from the linked credit card, along with another one that says "Something you're trying to use has been made inactive". 

 

What has been made inactive and by who? There is nothing in my file that is inactive. No account, no supplier is inactive. I have spent a total of 8 hours chatting with support and sharing my screen. Only to be told that I don't know how to match bills to bill payments properly. I have been doing the same thing for over a year and now I don't know what I am doing? I also have a case number....but nothing. 

October 29, 2020

I want you to know that helping you our customers are always our top priority, rktoor.

 

Let's isolate this case by clearing the cache. There are times when a browser's cache data becomes full of frequently-accessed pages, or it is damaged. When this happens, pages like match bills don't load properly. 

 

To better isolate if this is a browser issue or not, let's access QuickBooks Online (QBO) using a private or incognito window. 

 

Here's how you can access private browser: 

 

  • Google Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + N 
  • Microsoft Edge: Ctrl + Shift + P 
  • Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + P 
  • Safari: Command + Shift + N 

Then go back and try to match the bills. If it works, we can clear your browser's cache to delete those temporarily stored files and free some space on your browser's data. You can also do this task on other supported, up-to-date browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, or Mozilla Firefox. Clearing it will refresh the system, and you'll be able to work with clean trash.

 

Additionally, What has been made inactive, and by who? Let's go ahead and check your Audit Log report it lets you view all the changes made in your company file. It also shows who made them. It displays the 200 most current entries or changes made to your company data, by default. You can also easily see older instances by adjusting the date range in the Audit Log. You can refer to this article for more information: Use the audit log in QuickBooks Online

  

Please don't hesitate to visit us here in the Community if you have other questions. I'm always here to answer your inquiries. Take care!

January 29, 2021

I'm getting the error message in my Customers list when I'm trying to edit the customer information (name, address, number, etc).

What I am ultimately trying to do is make the customer "inactive". In order to do so, I need to open that edit window and click on the "inactive" tick box. But once I click on the Edit button, this error message displays.

January 29, 2021

Hi there, particle06.

 

Welcome to QuickBooks Community. I'll share troubleshooting steps on how to fix unusual behavior in QuickBooks Online.

 

Can you please provide the specific error message you encountered when trying to edit the customer's information or make them inactive? I appreciate any extra details so I can present accurate information.

 

In the meantime, I recommend logging in to your QuickBooks account using a private browser. Then, access the Customer's center from there, to rule out the possibility of a webpage issue since private browsing doesn't store local files or cache.

 

Use these keyboard shortcuts based on the browser you're using.

 

  • For Firefox or Microsoft Edge, press Ctrl + Shift + P.
  • For Chrome, press Ctrl + Shift + N.
  • For Safari, hold down Command + Shift + N.

 

If it works in incognito, I recommend clearing the cache of your regular browser. This removes the history or log of sites so you can start with a clean slate. You can check this article to see the steps: Clear cache and cookies to fix issues when using QuickBooks Online.

 

If the steps above didn't work, use another supported browser as alternatives.

 

You can refer to this article to see additional steps on how you can make a customer inactive and make them active again: Make a customer inactive and then active.

 

Please refer to this article to see details of how the Sales page gives you a great at-a-glance view of the status of sales transactions, open invoices, and paid invoices: View sales transactions. You can also view, create, and edit sales transactions from within that page.

 

Please let me know how this works. I'll be happy to help you further or if you have any other questions about QuickBooks. Have a great day ahead.

January 2, 2022

Even Jan 2022 this error message is showing up. I have spent 2hours and still trying to figure this out.

Someone who doesn't understand fundamentals of software/coding writing these softwares! Can't they print a clear error message, rather than printing 'something is wrong'.

August 1, 2022

Has anyone found a fix for this?  I've had this issue since April... several phone calls and no one can seem to help!!