Connect QuickBooks Online

Which QuickBooks Online versions PadFlow works with, and what a company file needs before you connect it.

PadFlow connects to a QuickBooks Online company file so a budget can sit beside what was actually spent. It reads the file's accounts, vendors, classes and customers, then reads the bills, purchases and vendor credits that carry costs. The one thing it writes back is a Bill per invoice on a funded draw.

One connection per company file. A deal held under its own LLC gets its own file and its own connection. Files are connected and disconnected on the workspace settings page, under QuickBooks Online.

What you need

• QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced. Those are the versions with class and project tracking, which is what tells one deal's costs from another's.
• Class tracking or projects turned on in the file, and used on the cost lines you want PadFlow to read. PadFlow reads the class and the customer or project on each line and nothing else about it, so a line that carries neither belongs to no deal.
• An admin of the company file to do the connecting. QuickBooks will not grant accounting access to anybody else, and the connection fails at Intuit rather than here.

Once the file is connected, PadFlow asks two questions on the settings row: which dimension carries the cost code, and how the file divides into deals. Those are the roles. The values themselves are placed on the mapping page.

On a version without it

PadFlow does not ask QuickBooks which version a file is on, so a Simple Start or an Essentials file will connect. What follows is the problem. Simple Start records no bills, so there is nothing for PadFlow to read. Essentials records bills but tracks no classes, so the mapping step cannot code costs by class and cannot let a class stand for a deal, and any cost line that names no mapped deal lands in no budget. Plus or Advanced is the supported version.

Checking for changes

A full pull re-reads the whole company file. A change check asks QuickBooks only what has moved since the last one, which is cheaper and is the only way PadFlow learns that something was deleted. It is the check that runs nightly, and it is also what the "Check for changes" button on the settings row does.

A change check applies an edited document exactly as a full pull would, and that includes what the document no longer has. Delete a line off a bill in QuickBooks and the next change check removes it here, so the cost stops counting toward the budget straight away. The same holds for a line taken off a purchase order or a journal entry, and for a payment moved from one bill to another: the application to the old bill goes, so that bill stops reading as paid. A document deleted outright takes its lines with it.

What the sync card says

The Sync card on a project's Actuals tab gives one line per company file: what the last read of that file found, and the day it ran. The day is the point. A count with no date beside it reads the same whether it came from last night or from the setup session months ago, and a figure that cannot say how old it is has no business sitting next to a budget.

The last read is whichever came most recently, a full pull or a change check. The two count different things and each says so in its own words: a pull reports lines and documents, a change check reports records changed and records removed. A failed nightly change check now shows on the actuals figures as well, which it did not before.

When nobody is looking

A connected file is watched whether or not anybody opens the page. More than 36 hours without a change check is raised. That clock starts when the file is connected, not when the first check runs, so a file that was connected and then never synced at all is raised rather than staying silent forever, which is what it used to do.

Disconnecting from the QuickBooks side

A company file can be disconnected from either end. Inside PadFlow it is the Disconnect action on the settings row. Inside QuickBooks it is removing PadFlow from that company's connected apps, and QuickBooks then sends whoever did it to a PadFlow page confirming the connection has ended.

That page is a plain link, and the company file id it carries is the same number that sits in your QuickBooks web address, so arriving there is not on its own proof that anything was disconnected. PadFlow checks with QuickBooks before it forgets a connection. If QuickBooks no longer honours the connection, PadFlow ends it: the grant is revoked, both stored tokens are cleared, and the settings row goes back to offering Connect. If QuickBooks says the connection is still good, nothing is ended and the file keeps syncing, so somebody following a link they were never meant to have cannot cost you a reconnection.

If PadFlow cannot reach QuickBooks to ask, nothing changes at all. The connection is left exactly as it was, rather than parked in some in-between state you would then have to clear yourself. If the file really was disconnected, the next time PadFlow reads from it QuickBooks refuses, and the settings row says so then. What was already brought over stays where it is in every case.