There's another common reason which I keep bumping into why you'll get this error message. If you use v-if rather than v-show to hide an item, it won't be in the DOM, won't load initially and won't be available to reference. I just spent a while working out why this gave the error message above:
vm.$refs.refpersonview.Person = ...
The reason is that I'd conditionally hidden the component in a v-if block. Use v-show instead!