What QuickBooks is
QuickBooks is Intuit's accounting software, first released in 1992; Intuit itself was founded in 1983 and is based in Mountain View, California. QuickBooks Online, the cloud version, covers bookkeeping, invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliation and financial reporting, with versions for several countries, the United Kingdom and France among them.
Small and medium-sized businesses use it, along with the accountants who look after their books. Its Accounting API lets an authorised app create journal entries in a QuickBooks company, which is why it is one of the accounting systems our Ledger module connects to.
What it does in your platform
Ledger
Receives the ledger's daily totals as journal entries on your QuickBooks chart of accounts, so your accountant works with the same numbers the platform runs on. The entries behind every line stay in the ledger, ready for any audit question.
How the connection works
One connector in the Ledger module talks to the QuickBooks Online Accounting API. It is authorised once for your company through Intuit's OAuth 2.0 sign-in, and every call names that company by its ID.
The day is booked
Payments, transfers and trades are recorded in the ledger as balanced debits and credits, in real time.
The day is reconciled
The ledger is matched against bank statements and processor files, and differences go to a queue in the backoffice.
A journal entry is built
The day's movements are summed per account and mapped to your QuickBooks accounts, each line marked as a debit or a credit. QuickBooks requires the debits and the credits to total the same.
QuickBooks records it
The module creates the entry with an access token that lasts an hour, renewed from a refresh token in the platform's secrets. QuickBooks returns the entry's ID, kept next to the day in the ledger.
Changes are reported
QuickBooks webhooks report changes to records in your company, signed with a verifier token so the module can check where they come from.
Your accountant closes
In QuickBooks, the entries sit with the rest of your company's books, ready for reconciliation, reports and the month-end close.
Next to other providers
QuickBooks keeps your company's books; the ledger keeps every customer's money. Daily totals go to QuickBooks, every entry can also go to a data warehouse such as BigQuery for your analysts, and a core banking system, where you have one, stays the book of record for accounts.
When the business needs more, for example several companies to consolidate, the connector changes to NetSuite or SAP. The ledger, its history and your apps stay the same.
When QuickBooks fits best
A strong fit when
- Your accountant or finance team already keeps your books in QuickBooks Online.
- You are a small or mid-sized company that wants the platform's numbers in its books every day.
- You want totals split by class or location, the way your accountant reports them.
Also worth a look
- Xero, if that is where your accountant prefers to work.
- NetSuite or SAP, when you consolidate several companies or need deeper approval chains.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your QuickBooks Online account and contract in place, or connect the company your accountant already uses.
The mapping
We map the ledger's accounts to your QuickBooks chart of accounts with your accountant, including classes or locations if you use them, and agree when entries post.
The keys
The app's OAuth credentials, the refresh token and the webhook verifier token stay in your platform's secrets.
A full test run
Every posting runs first against a sandbox company from Intuit's developer portal, and your accountant checks the entries before your real company is connected.
