Thanks for joining this conversation, @Eric27. 

I hear your sentiments and I'd feel the same way if I'm in your situation. I'll be with you in getting past this error so you can continue paying your employees.  

The error message you're getting occurs if there are employees, vendors or customers named differently, missing items, or out-of-sync between the payroll & QBO database.

To begin with, review these following information below if you have any duplicate, deleted, or inactive items in your QB account:

• Customers
• Employees (Payroll)
• Employees (QBO Lists)
• Vendors
• Items (Products/Services)
• Accounts (in Chart of Accounts)
• Classes (Class Tracking)

If you found an identical name, I'd recommend you edit the display name or make it inactive if no longer in use. For more detailed steps, refer to this help article: Error: Something you are trying to use has been deleted or made inactive. It will guide you through changing or make customer, vendor, or employee inactive. 

You can also follow the steps provided by my peer @RenjolynC in checking the audit log. If there are large number of employees that are set to inactive in QBO but are active in payroll, I'd suggest you contact our Customer Care team again, and let them verify your data. They can use the employee sync tool to ensure that payroll & QBO are in-sync. 

I appreciate you for extending your patience about this issue. Let me know how it goes, @Eric27 by leaving a comment below. I'm always around to help if you need further assistance.