Troubleshooting & Support
Fixes for the issues you are most likely to hit, how to capture a diagnostics bundle for Pivoten support, and how to reach us.
Common issues
On first connection, choose Yes, always allow access so Lift Off does not prompt on subsequent runs. The dialog appears in QuickBooks itself, not in Lift Off — switch to the QuickBooks window if you do not see it.
Open QuickBooks Desktop and load your company file, then click Check again on the System Checks panel. Lift Off will not open QuickBooks for you.
The path saved in your workspace no longer points to the .qbw file. Use Reconfigure extraction… from the workspace menu (top-right corner) to browse for the file again.
Your internet connection is down, or a firewall is blocking outbound HTTPS traffic to s3.amazonaws.com:443. Check your network settings or ask your IT department to allow that address. See System Requirements for details.
Click Start Extraction again — Lift Off resumes from the last completed step rather than starting over. If the error recurs on the same step, enable verbose logging (below) and send the diagnostics bundle to Pivoten support.
Make sure the .zip file is somewhere Lift Off can read and is not blocked by antivirus software. If the bundle was copied from another machine, verify the transfer finished before opening it.
Reopen Lift Off — it detects the in-progress extraction and returns you to the Extract step, where you can monitor or cancel it. The extraction keeps running in the background as long as the app is open.
Verbose logging & the diagnostics bundle
When a run misbehaves, the fastest path to a fix is to reproduce it with verbose logging turned on and send Pivoten the resulting diagnostics bundle. The bundle is a single self-contained archive, so support can diagnose your run without asking you for individual files.
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1
Enable verbose logging Open the workspace menu (top-right corner) and choose Enable verbose logging.
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2
Reproduce the run Start the extraction again so the problem occurs with detailed logging active.
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3
Find the bundle Lift Off writes a
liftoff-diagnostics-….tar.gzfile to your Documents/LiftOff Exports folder — on success or failure, so a crashed run still leaves one. -
4
Send it to support Email the bundle to support@pivoten.com and describe what you saw.
The bundle contains the run log (every entity, report row counts, per-entity counts, and timings), the extracted data snapshot, and the exact QuickBooks request/response traces for the run.
Data: the bundle holds the same QuickBooks data already in your snapshot — it is not a new category of information beyond what the upload already carries. Size: because it captures every query, the bundle can be large (hundreds of MB) on big company files. Turn verbose logging back off after troubleshooting to avoid producing large bundles on routine runs.
Where Lift Off saves files
| File | Location |
|---|---|
| Data snapshot & report archive | Documents/LiftOff Exports |
Migration Package (.migr8.pivoten.zip) | Documents/LiftOff Exports |
Diagnostics bundle (.tar.gz, verbose runs) | Documents/LiftOff Exports |
If the Documents folder is unavailable, Lift Off falls back to the OS cache directory and then the temp directory.
Contacting support
When you reach out to Pivoten, include:
- A short description of what you were doing and what went wrong.
- The diagnostics bundle from a verbose run (see above), if you can reproduce the issue.
- Your QuickBooks edition and Windows version.
Email support@pivoten.com or contact your Pivoten account team directly.