QuickBooks Desktop integration

What you need

The integration works with QuickBooks Desktop 2021 or later, Pro, Premier or Enterprise, on a Windows PC with the QuickBooks Web Connector installed. Both the Canadian edition, with GST, HST, PST and QST, and the US edition, with sales tax items, are supported. Your back office must be reached over HTTPS, and the setup screen shows a red banner if it is not.

The Web Connector runs on the same PC as QuickBooks and checks in with SeroPOS on a schedule. You tick the every-minute schedule during setup, so new sales are picked up within a minute or two of the till closing them. Unattended mode lets the Web Connector open the company file itself.

Setting up the connection

Open QuickBooks in the back office sidebar and choose Set up on the Desktop card. The setup guide walks you through five steps, and the Connection tab does the work: create a connection, download the .qwc file, add it to the Web Connector, paste the one-time password, and tick the every-minute schedule. A last-contact badge then shows when the Web Connector last checked in.

Next, fetch the QuickBooks catalog. SeroPOS reads your items, accounts, vendors, tax codes, payment methods and classes, so you map to what is really in the company file. If the file is new, press Create everything in QuickBooks and the accounts and items are made for you. Accounts and items you already have can be matched instead of duplicated.

• Create a connection and download the .qwc file
• Add it to the Web Connector and enter the password
• Fetch the QuickBooks catalog
• Map accounts, items and expense categories
• Build or map the tax structure
• Choose the invoice mode, then send data

The send data pipeline

Data goes across in a numbered order, so nothing references a record QuickBooks has not seen yet. Products go first, with their opening quantities, then customers, then invoices. In a daily mode the invoice step becomes Day-end, where you can preview the documents as a dry run before you post them. Suppliers come next, then purchases, then expenses.

Expenses go across with the GST input tax credit claimed, so the tax you paid on a supply run shows up on your return. Refunds follow the setting you choose: refund right away, which posts a credit note and an automatic refund cheque, or keep the amount as a credit on the customer's account.

• Products with opening quantities
• Customers
• Invoices, or day-end summaries
• Suppliers
• Bills, vendor credits and supplier payments
• Expenses with input tax credits

One invoice per sale, or one per day

A busy counter can ring hundreds of sales a day, and many accountants would rather see one summary than hundreds of invoices. The invoice setting gives three choices: one invoice per sale, one per day grouped by product, or one per day grouped by category. Daily modes use each location's own day-end time, so a bar that closes after midnight still gets the right business day.

The setting screen includes an accountant view that compares the modes on GST and PST detail, rounding and accuracy. Product grouping keeps totals within 10 cents a day, and category grouping within 5 cents. Where QuickBooks rounds a half cent differently, SeroPOS adds a small rounding correction line so the invoice matches.

Keeping both sides honest

The Health tab shows counts of queued, completed and failed records, and groups anything that is stuck by its cause, such as an unmapped tax rate or a deleted account. A pre-flight check compares your mapped names against the QuickBooks catalog before records are sent. Once you fix the cause, retry the failed records in one step.

Inventory reconciliation reads stock from QuickBooks, by hand or nightly, and shows the drift item by item. Press Correct QuickBooks to post inventory adjustments so QuickBooks matches the counts in SeroPOS. If you ever move to a new company file, Start over on a new company file resets the link once you type RESET.

For bookkeepers with several clients

Accountant mode lets one PC serve many clients. Each client has its own company file and its own .qwc file in the Web Connector, so one bookkeeper can keep several SeroPOS businesses posting to their QuickBooks files from the same machine. It suits bookkeepers who already host their clients' QuickBooks files on an office PC, since each client can be set up with the same steps and checked from the same Health tab.

Because the company file fingerprint check runs on every contact, a client's sales cannot end up in the wrong file. SeroPOS also guards against a Canadian company file being linked to US books, or the other way round. If a client moves to a new company file, the link is reset on purpose rather than by accident. Together these locks mean a bookkeeper can look after several clients' sales feeds without worrying that one client's numbers will end up in another client's books.