Since early 2012, we have been working on moving our bookkeeping to QuickBooks Online for a variety of reasons. Probably the most compelling reason is that we have added new Renaissance Festivals to our line up for the year. As we move from place to place and those that need access to this data can become separated by 1000 miles or so, Intuit’s online offering is presently the most affordable solution that we have come across. It has some interesting features that allow classifying income and expense by location.

The road to using this tool has had a few bumps, especially since some updates to my preferred browser, Google Chrome, seem to have caused some hiccups in using QuickBooks Online. Using it requires allowing pop-ups from Intuit and QuickBooks Online, more specifically. For some reason around the time Chrome pushed the 29.0.1547.57 (Official Build 217859) updates, Chrome users have not been able to use the functions in QuickBooks Online that require pop-ups even when they were enabled for that domain and/or website. The symptoms that I noticed are that despite the QuickBooks Online software thinking that pop-ups are being blocked, I receive no warning from Chrome that I have blocked them. None of the solutions offered by Intuit worked, including completely disabling the pop-up blocker (I really didn’t like this one) and downloading the Chrome app (which doesn’t really seem to be an app as far as I can tell but a set of instructions to Chrome to set a bookmark and set permissions as appropriate). I have found a work around that seems to have solved the problem and it is pretty simple.

Some preprocess information about my operating environment:

I run Chrome Version 32.0.1700.77 on Mac OS X 10.9.1. I have the following extensions installed Ad Block 2.6.18, CSS Refresh 2.0, Dashlane 2.2.4.49587, Evernote Web Clipper 6.0.8, Google Docs 0.5, PageRank Status 8.6.1.0, PHP documentation – PHP.net 1.3.1,  and QR Code Generator 1.4.103. I have a non-default theme installed in Chrome.

Fix Chrome to Work with QuickBooks Online

First, go to your extensions in Chrome through Settings > Extensions and disable all of them. Don’t worry, they will not go away. 

Chrome menu to access Extensions

Chrome Extensions Manager

Next, log into QuickBooks Online and verify site permissions by clicking on the green padlock icon to the left of the website address. You need to verify or change the permissions so that Allow Pop-ups says “Allowed by You.”

Website Permissions for QuickBooks Online

With all extensions disabled, navigate to a function that requires pop-ups to work in QuickBooks Online. The two most common are New Customer and Manage Users > New User. They pop-ups will most likely suddenly start working like they should be.

I supposed that there was likely a conflict between one of my extensions and something that QuickBooks Online was doing in their code. So, finally, you will need to re-enable (You installed them originally for a reason, right?) your extensions one-by-one and then reload the QuickBooks Online page and retest whether or not QuickBooks is still functioning as expected. I wound up with no issues after re-enabling all of my extensions. I maintain a fairly small array of them anyway.

If after enabling an extension you suddenly have an issue, I would further recommend disabling all of the other extensions except the potentially offending one and retesting. If it still causes the problem, perhaps you have found a truly conflicting extension.