Prevent QuickBooks sync errors by excluding special characters and limits

Santosh Updated by Santosh

While we've tried our absolute best to create a pain-free syncing experience with QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online, sometimes errors occur. Some of those errors are caused by limitations within QuickBooks itself. In this article, we cover the acceptable characters and the character limits within QuickBooks, so that you can avoid any potential errors.

Characters to avoid

QuickBooks has a few special reserved characters that you should avoid using in certain fields within shopVOX. Avoid a bunch of error by NOT using the following characters within certain fields inside shopVOX.

Object in shopVOX

Characters to Avoid Using

Customer > Name

"

:

Contact > Name

"

:

Product > Name

"

:

Transaction > Line Item > Name

"

:

Acceptable characters in QuickBooks Online

Sometimes, having invalid characters in your QuickBooks Online company name, or in the name of one of your list items (such as Customers, Vendors, Products and Services, or the Chart of Accounts), can lead to server errors or other problems in the application. To avoid or remedy these errors, make sure your company name on QuickBooks Online only contains accepted characters from this list.

Here is a list of accepted characters:

  • Alpha-numeric (A-Z, a-z, 0-9)
  • Comma (,)
  • Dot or period (.)
  • Question mark (?)
  • At symbol (@)
  • Ampersand (&)
  • Exclamation point (!)
  • Number/pound sign (#)
  • Single quote (')
  • Tilde (~)
  • Asterisk (*)
  • Space (  )
  • Underscore (_)
  • Minus sign/hyphen (-)
  • Semi-colon ( ; )
  • Plus sign (+)

Character limitations for fields in QuickBooks

Each field in your company data file has a maximum number of characters that can be entered. To sync properly with QuickBooks Desktop or Online, please make sure you don't go over these limits inside shopVOX because you will receive nasty little errors that can be hard to diagnose.

QuickBooks Field

shopVOX Field

Maximum characters

Account Name

POS Settings > Chart of Accounts > Name

31

Account Numbers

POS Settings > Chart of Accounts > Account Number

7

Customer, Vendor and Other Names

  • Customer > Name
  • Vendor > Name
  • Contact > Name
  • Vendor Contact > Name

41

Item name

  • Transaction > Line Item > Name
  • POS Settings > Pricing > Products > Name

31

Employee Name (first and last)

User > Name

25

Item Description (Invoices)

Transaction > Line Item > Description

4095

Item Part number

POS Settings > Pricing > Products > Part Number

31

I've hit an error, now what?

Unfortunately, đź’©happens. Check out one of the articles below based on which version of QuickBooks you are using. If those don't help, please contact our support team.

How helpful was this doc?

Square Payment Integration

Take in-store credit card payments with a USB credit card swiper

Contact