Guides · Setup

How to connect QuickBooks Online to ModusBill

Firms that keep their books in QuickBooks end up entering the same invoice twice: once where the work is tracked and once where the accounts live. Connecting the two stops that. Invoices, customers and payments raised in QuickBooks appear in ModusBill, payments taken in ModusBill are written back into QuickBooks against the same invoice, and, if you turn it on, invoices you raise in ModusBill are posted to QuickBooks when you send them. It takes a few minutes and needs an administrator in ModusBill plus an account that can approve app access in QuickBooks.

Which direction each thing moves

This is the part worth reading before anything else, because it decides where you do your work.

• Invoices raised in QuickBooks move to ModusBill. They appear here with their lines, their own invoice numbers and their clients.
• Invoices raised in ModusBill can be posted to QuickBooks. This is off until you turn it on. Once it is on, each invoice is posted when you send it. See Posting the invoices you raise here.
• Customers move from QuickBooks to ModusBill. A customer on an imported invoice is matched to an existing client or created. When you post an invoice, its client is matched to the QuickBooks customer of the same name, or created there.
• Payments move both ways. A payment recorded in QuickBooks lands on the invoice here. A payment recorded here, whether typed in or collected through a card link, is written into QuickBooks against the same invoice, whichever system raised it.

Whichever system raised an invoice keeps the final say over it. For an invoice raised in QuickBooks, edit it there rather than here: an amount or a line changed in QuickBooks replaces what ModusBill shows on the next sync. For an invoice raised here and posted, ModusBill is the record. It is posted once, and a change you make here afterwards is not sent, so make it in QuickBooks as well.

Before you start

• QuickBooks Online. The Desktop products use a different interface entirely and are not supported.
• The QuickBooks module switched on for your firm. It is off until you ask, so write to support@modusbill.com and we will enable it. This is not a self-service setting.
• You are an administrator of the firm in ModusBill.
• A QuickBooks sign-in allowed to approve third-party app access to the company you want to link.

Linking the company

1. Open the QuickBooks screen. In ModusBill, go to Admin, then QuickBooks Online, at https://app.modusbill.com/QuickBooks. If the menu entry is not there, the module is not on yet.
2. Press Connect to QuickBooks. You are sent to Intuit to sign in.
3. Choose the company. Intuit shows the companies your sign-in can reach. Pick the one whose books you want linked, and approve access. ModusBill asks only for accounting data; it does not ask to identify you.
4. Check what came back. You land back on the QuickBooks screen, which names the company it linked and shows its company id. Compare that against the company you meant to pick. One firm links one company, and linking a different one later is refused rather than allowed to mix two sets of books together.

Bringing across what QuickBooks already holds

Connecting only arranges for future changes to flow. The invoices and payments already in QuickBooks are brought over separately, from the Existing history card on the same screen. Choose the last two years, which is usually what a firm is still chasing and still being asked about, or everything.

The import runs a page at a time and shows its progress. Customers come first, then invoices, then payments, so an invoice never arrives before the client it belongs to. Leaving the page pauses it rather than losing it, and reopening carries on from where it stopped. Running it a second time is safe: every record carries the id it came from, so it updates rather than duplicating.

Posting the invoices you raise here

For firms that raise their invoices in ModusBill and want them in their books without typing them in twice. It is set up from the Invoices raised in ModusBill card on the QuickBooks screen.

1. Choose an item for each kind of line. QuickBooks needs every invoice line to name one of your products or services, and the item decides which income account the sale is recorded in. Press Choose items and pick one for hourly time, flat fees, retainers and expenses. You can use items you already have, or create new ones here and choose the income account each one uses. Only active services and non-inventory products are listed, because posting an invoice against an inventory item would take it off your stock.
2. Press Start posting invoices. From that moment, every invoice you send is posted. Invoices you had already sent are left alone: they are very likely in your books already, and posting them again would count them twice.
3. Send invoices as you normally do. Marking an invoice sent and emailing it both count, and so does a payment recorded against one still in draft. Each one reaches QuickBooks within a few minutes, under the same invoice number your client received.

If QuickBooks already has an invoice with the same number, for the same customer and the same total, it is linked rather than posted a second time. That covers an invoice you keyed in by hand while you were getting set up.

Once posted, an invoice is left alone. A change you make here afterwards is not sent, so make it in QuickBooks too. Voiding it here voids it in QuickBooks. Voiding it in QuickBooks does not void it here: the QuickBooks screen asks you to void it in ModusBill instead, because only ModusBill can release its time and expenses to be billed again. Pressing Stop posting stops new invoices going; those already posted are unchanged.

Some invoices are refused rather than posted with the wrong figures, and each refusal is listed on the QuickBooks screen with the reason:

• Invoices with tax. QuickBooks works tax out for itself, so the total it recorded would differ from the one your client was sent. Raise taxed invoices in QuickBooks.
• Invoices with a negative total. Record those in QuickBooks as credit memos.
• Invoice numbers longer than 21 characters, which QuickBooks does not accept.
• A number QuickBooks already uses for a different customer or amount. Renumber one of the two, then try again.

If QuickBooks adds something to an invoice on the way in, usually sales tax it calculates automatically, the invoice stays linked but is listed so you can check it.

How quickly changes arrive

QuickBooks tells ModusBill when something changes, usually within a minute or two, and ModusBill acts on it a few minutes after that. So an invoice raised in QuickBooks generally shows up here within about five minutes. The Sync now button on the QuickBooks screen does it immediately if you would rather not wait.

Payments recorded in ModusBill, and invoices posted from it, reach QuickBooks on the same rhythm, and Sync now sends them at once.

What it will not do

Worth stating plainly, because each of these is a reasonable thing to expect.

• It is not bookkeeping. ModusBill does not post to a general ledger, run a trial balance or prepare returns. QuickBooks stays your accounting system; this connects billing to it.
• A posted invoice is not kept in step. It is posted once. Keeping both copies of an invoice in step after it has gone out would mean deciding, every time, which edit wins, and there is no good answer to that.
• Foreign currency invoices are left out. ModusBill records one currency per firm, so an invoice in anything but your company's home currency is skipped with a note rather than imported as a figure that cannot be compared with the rest.
• Imported invoices are not attached to a matter or an engagement. QuickBooks has no equivalent, and inventing one would file every imported invoice under something nobody opened.
• Deleting is never mirrored. An invoice from QuickBooks that is deleted or voided there is voided here and kept, along with its history. A customer removed there is deactivated here, not erased.

If something does not work

• Two clients share a name. ModusBill will not guess which one a QuickBooks customer is, because merging two clients' receivables cannot be undone. It stops and asks; choose the right one on the QuickBooks screen, or create a new client. The same goes the other way: two clients of one name are never posted to one QuickBooks customer, so rename one of them.
• A customer cannot be created in QuickBooks. QuickBooks shares names between customers, suppliers and employees, inactive ones included. If one of those already has your client's name, rename one of them and try again.
• An invoice number is already in use. Your own invoice 1037 and QuickBooks' invoice 1037 can both exist. The imported one is suffixed so the original stays readable, and your numbering sequence is left alone.
• Nothing is arriving. Press Sync now. If it reports nothing waiting, QuickBooks has not told us about the change; the history import will fetch it.
• The screen asks you to reconnect. QuickBooks asks for consent again roughly every hundred days, and a firm nobody signs into for that long comes back disconnected. Reconnecting restores it, and nothing already imported is lost.
• Something could not be synced. Failures in either direction are listed on the QuickBooks screen with the reason, and QuickBooks' own reference when it gave one. Fix the cause and press Try again, or press Dismiss for one that should not be sent at all. Nothing retries silently, so anything on that list is waiting for a person.

Disconnecting

Disconnecting stops the flow and keeps everything already brought across. Each imported client, invoice and payment keeps a note of where it came from, so reconnecting the same company later recognizes them instead of importing a second copy of everything. If you were posting invoices, that setting is kept too: invoices you send while disconnected are posted once you reconnect the same company.