Note: If you are using QuickBooks Desktop as your accounting software, please check our article QuickBooks Desktop Sync Preferences.
This document will walk through the preferences for synchronization with QuickBooks Online. Most users will never need to change these settings, unless they require specific preferences.
Note: Administrator permissions are required to access the QuickBooks Preferences.
Navigating to QuickBooks Online Sync Preferences
Click the Profile icon in the upper right and click Integrations.
Select QuickBooks Sync.
This will take you to the QuickBooks sync page:
QuickBooks Sync Details
The first two tiles gives you information on your sync with QuickBooks online.
Connection Details: Date and time your connection with QuickBooks Online was established.
Disconnect Sync: Disconnects the sync. This means no information will sync between Method and QuickBooks until the sync is re-established.
Sync: The last time Method performed a sync. To initiate a sync, click the Changes only sync button.
If your sync is disconnected, you will get the option to Connect to QuickBooks, where you can reestablish the sync.
QuickBooks Sync - Advanced Settings
Clicking the Advanced settings link under Settings will take you to this page:
QuickBooks organization name: The name of your Method account.
QuickBooks online company ID: The number ssigned to your account by QuickBooks Online.
Transaction preferences: Set Method to automatically assign a transaction number when saving, instead of waiting on QuickBooks to assign and send it back to Method.
When checked, the transaction number will start +1 after the highest transaction number in Method, whether it was archived or not.
When unchecked, the number will start +1 after the last transaction number in QuickBooks.
NOTE: When using this feature we strongly suggest creating transactions in Method or QuickBooks but not both. Doing so may result in transactions with the same number.
Auto sync frequency: This section describes how often a sync occurs between QuickBooks and Method.
If any record is added or updated in Method, this immediately gets synced to QuickBooks.
If a record is added or updated in QuickBooks, it will automatically sync to Method within 10 minutes.
Every hour, any record that has been changed within QuickBooks will sync over to Method.
NOTE: When Method does a real-time sync to QuickBooks Online, there is a concurrency limit: QuickBooks only allows 10 calls being sent at the same time. Calls after this will time out and not be processed.
This is mostly a problem when doing large batch processing for transactions using a custom screen or Method's API.
Tax Preferences
If you are using a QuickBooks US account, then you will see this option to toggle between using QuickBooks Automatic Sales Tax or not.
Estimate taxes in Method but finalize taxes after QuickBooks sync
Method will estimate the taxes for any transaction before syncing to QuickBooks.Tax estimated by Method might change after syncing to QuickBooks.
Tax in Method will get overwritten with Method estimated tax every time a user clicks on the Save button, even after the transaction has synced to QuickBooks. Tax will always be updated from QuickBooks after sync.
Do not Estimate taxes in Method and calculate taxes after QuickBooks sync
QuickBooks has complete control over tax amount calculation. Method will not be estimating/calculating any tax amount and the transaction will be updated with tax amount after syncing to QuickBooks.Tax amount will be 0.00 in Method until the transaction successfully syncs to QuickBooks
If a transaction is updated in Method after it has already synced, taxes will reflect the old tax amount from the first sync. New taxes will be updated in Method after subsequent successful syncs.
Calculate taxes in Method using tax rates from QuickBooks
Prior to Automated Sales Tax (AST), QuickBooks allowed users to create tax percentages which was used to calculate taxes for transactions. The taxes will still be finalized by QuickBooks upon the sync.
QuickBooks Sync Conflicts
A sync conflict happens when QuickBooks is unable to complete a request by Method to add, modify or delete a record.
Clicking View conflicts brings you to the Sync conflicts page:
You can filter which conflicts show up in the grid with the filter view above the grid.
General Conflicts: All the conflicts where records attempting to sync are not accepted by Quickbooks.
Table conflicts: There will also be views to further filter by table if there are conflicts for those tables. In the above example, there is also an option to filter the grid for only the Invoice table sync conflicts.
Beneath the grid are the following buttons:
Retry Sync: Retry syncing selected records to QuickBooks.
Delete from Method: Delete selected records from Method.
Refetch from QuickBooks: Restore selected records from QuickBooks.
Clear / Clear all: Clear the sync conflict grid, however, the conflicts themselves will not be resolved and may come back on the next sync.
NOTE: Retry sync and Restore in QuickBooks button will be disabled if the sync is disable.
For a list of common sync conflicts, see QuickBooks Online Sync Conflicts for details.