Hi everyone, We migrated from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online Advanced this past Friday, and we’ve hit a major roadblock with employee records that were not properly migrated and appear to be corrupted. Here’s the issue: None of our employees appear in the Payroll > Employees section. Not even under inactive. However, all employees show up in the top-right “Search” bar (QBO's global search equivalent). When we click on an employee from the search preview, it opens to a blank, unusable page — no editable fields, no data, nothing. Yet we can see from the search preview that each profile still contains critical data like: Rate of pay Start date Contact info Internal notes And most importantly — 30+ years of history, timecards, and links to job records Some records are causing errors when accessed from other parts of the system, such as linked locations or jobs, making it clear this is corruption, not just visibility. Important context: We do not use QBO Payroll. We manually enter employee time and wage info, then export an IIF file and send it to our external payroll provider. We do this to keep our P&L and job costing accurate inside QBO. So while we don’t need payroll functionality, we do need these employee records to function — because they tie into financial reporting, internal notes, customer records, and decades of job data. What we’ve tried: Multiple browsers, cache clearing, incognito — no change. Support calls and chats — one rep worked on it for 2 hours then disconnected with no follow-up. Another rep told us we need to redo the entire migration, which we won’t do — we've already rebuilt major parts of our data. What we need:This isn’t about payroll setup or adding new employees. This is a data corruption issue caused during migration. We’re asking for escalation to Data Services or Tier 2 Support to: Purge, repair, or merge these corrupted employee records Without wiping the work we’ve already done in QBO If anyone here has dealt with this — or knows how to force visibility or fix these broken records — I’d appreciate any insight. We’re completely stuck, and support has offered no solution. Thanks,Zach [Removed image attachment with PII.]

Question

Post-Migration Corrupted Employee Records – 30+ Years of Data Trapped, No Payroll Access, No Support Resolution

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
August 5, 2025
0 replies
11 views

Hi everyone,

We migrated from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online Advanced this past Friday, and we’ve hit a major roadblock with employee records that were not properly migrated and appear to be corrupted.

Here’s the issue:

None of our employees appear in the Payroll > Employees section. Not even under inactive.
However, all employees show up in the top-right “Search” bar (QBO's global search equivalent).
When we click on an employee from the search preview, it opens to a blank, unusable page — no editable fields, no data, nothing.

Yet we can see from the search preview that each profile still contains critical data like:

Rate of pay
Start date
Contact info
Internal notes
And most importantly — 30+ years of history, timecards, and links to job records

Some records are causing errors when accessed from other parts of the system, such as linked locations or jobs, making it clear this is corruption, not just visibility.

Important context:

We do not use QBO Payroll.
We manually enter employee time and wage info, then export an IIF file and send it to our external payroll provider.
We do this to keep our P&L and job costing accurate inside QBO.

So while we don’t need payroll functionality, we do need these employee records to function — because they tie into financial reporting, internal notes, customer records, and decades of job data.

What we’ve tried:

Multiple browsers, cache clearing, incognito — no change.
Support calls and chats — one rep worked on it for 2 hours then disconnected with no follow-up.
Another rep told us we need to redo the entire migration, which we won’t do — we've already rebuilt major parts of our data.

What we need:
This isn’t about payroll setup or adding new employees.

This is a data corruption issue caused during migration. We’re asking for escalation to Data Services or Tier 2 Support to:

Purge, repair, or merge these corrupted employee records
Without wiping the work we’ve already done in QBO

If anyone here has dealt with this — or knows how to force visibility or fix these broken records — I’d appreciate any insight. We’re completely stuck, and support has offered no solution.

Thanks,
Zach

[Removed image attachment with PII.]

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