ERROR_IN_XML_REQUEST

Incident Description

INVOICE and BILL-type transactions to QuickBooks are failing to post with the status of ERROR_IN_XML_REQUEST.

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Resolution

This is usually caused by the QuickBooks API rejecting a transaction because an Item, Customer or Supplier update fails. Usually it is due to “unusual” characters in the description or company name field being rejected by the QuickBooks interface. The troubleshooting strategy for this issue is based on the fact that a description field that is likely to contain these characters will only be posted to QuickBooks if it has been updated in TSM or if it belongs to a new item that needs to be inserted into QuickBooks data. You will need to examine these transactions on a case-by-case basis and compare the data being posted to the data in QuickBooks, remove any special characters if found and re-process.

1. Bring up TSM and QuickBooks beside each other to ease comparison.

2. You can start with the Customer or Supplier record. The parameter field in the Transaction History of the accounting post will display the TSM invoice number and the Order Number.

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3. Bring the transaction up in TSM and verify if the Customer or Supplier is present in QuickBooks. If not, the ActPost was probably trying to post this record into QuickBooks and is the transaction failed to go across at this point. If yes, it possible that it has not been used on a postable transaction and ActPost was trying to synchronise the two records by comparing the CustomerID and Company name in TSM to those in QuickBooks.

4. Check the text fields in TSM for any unusual text characters. In the example above the inverted question mark is a potential problem.

In general any characters not found on your keyboard can be unrecognisable to the QuickBooks API and need to be removed or replaced. For instance ® © ™ can be replaced with (R), (C) and TM respectively.

5. If no problems are found in the contact record, the individual items on the Purchase Order or Invoice need to now be examined.

6. Check first if all items are present in QuickBooks. If one is not found in QuickBooks, that means that it needs to be posted over before the transaction and that the post may have failed to do so. It is a probably culprit and needs to be examined.

7. In the case above the ™ symbols in the description caused the problem. After removing them from the description of the Order Item and the Product in TSM, this Bill was successfully processed.