Quickbooks Integration
Hi everyone. We are considering moving from Quickbooks Desktop to Quickbooks Online in order to have the integration with Keela. I was wondering if anyone else has gone through this process. How easily was it to integrate Quickbooks with Keela? Are there any hiccups you've experienced?
Julie
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Julie
We have similar questions from anyone who has linked the two. Thanks
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The QBO integration has been both a blessing and a struggle for us because the integration is not very flexible and really changed the way that we were tracking information in Quickbooks. Also, because the integration uses QBO Classes, you need QBO Plus or Advanced (not EasyStart or Essentials).
On the BLESSINGS side:
- it pushes the contact & transaction data over to QBO.
On the STRUGGLES side:
- if you already use classes in QBO for categorizing your receipts, then great. We ONLY used items (aka Products and Services) for categorizing everything and had to altar our practices to use Classes instead, which also meant that we had to upgrade to QBO Plus, which costs 50% more per month over Essentials.
- As I mentioned, we used to use Items for everything. But with Keela, all Donations get dumped into a single Donation Item/P&S. You then need to either edit all the new QBO receipts that were created to match with the way that *you* do things (being thankful that at least your don't need to enter the contact info for the customer...), or be willing to change the way you work, or forgo consistency in your QBO data. Basically, we said that anything that was imported from Keela requires us to go back to Keela to report on / view details, and any older transactions would have be to looked up in QBO like we used to do. The first fiscal year after implementing Keela was a mess, but now things are cleaner because this fiscal year didn't have mixed ways of doing things. (In hind site, we should have waited until the next fiscal year before starting to use the Integration).
- You can only map Keela data to QBO Classes using *either* Campaigns *or* Impact Areas (a global toggle setting for the Integration). You can't fine-filter data into QBO using both Campaigns and Impact Areas, nor can you switch back and forth between Campaign and IA without losing any previously entered mappings. We often have to edit the QBO Receipts that the integration creates because we needed more data logged in QBO than the Integration is able to pass.
- Our auditor complains that there isn't any mention of Keela's Tax Receipt number logged in QBO for Txns that have been receipted, nor does it provide or generate a Sales Receipt No on the QBO Sales Receipt (The Sales Receipt No field in QBO is just blank). Keela *does* pass the Transaction ID into QBO's Receipt Reference no field, so at least there is some form of serial number attached to the QBO Receipt in this way. I guess we could manually copy-and-paste the Txn ID into the Sales Rec. no field, but that is just more manual work... or maybe I need to learn more about building QBO extensions and write one that will automatically populate the Sales Receipt No field for us.
- If a legacy QBO customer isn't named exactly the same as the Keela contact, a new customer will be created (limitation of QBO... there is no dup matching for email address, etc. on the QBO end ).
- If a QBO Vendor has the same name as a Keela Contact, then the sync throws an error with a generic error message that doesn't give you any clue as to why the sync failed. So, if the sync fails, check your Vendor list for a matching name, and then either change the QBO Vendor name (eg. add a period to the end of the name) or the Keela contact, and rerun the sync.
- QBO also has a very different feel than QBDesktop, which took some time to get used to. Some things are better, some aren't as easy.
Oh, and always make sure that you enter your Donation data into Keela only, otherwise if you log the transaction in QBO and then also log it in Keela, you'll end up with a duplicate in QBO when the sync fires.
We've continued using the Integration despite the drawbacks and the ongoing manual receipt editing that we have to sometimes do. Another charity that we're 'friends' with found that it took them less time and made for less problems to stop using the sync and go back to manual double entry of data in both Keela and QBO so that their QBO data would always be exactly how they wanted it.
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Thank you for the detailed write-up, James. A few days ago, I "submitted an idea" with Keela on expanding the number of available Donation types, but I cannot see it listed on the product portal at https://portal.productboard.com/keela/1-product-portal/tabs/1-under-consideration. Hopefully, they will consider it as it would be a time saver. Adding even four extra fields would help map the most commonly used donation fund types, and others could be updated manually if needed.
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That sounds like a wonderful addition.
Product Portal ideas can take some time to appear as the Keela development team first reviews the suggestions then posts them for user voting once they approve the suggestion. They've told me that they do read all suggestions, even if you don't see your suggestion graduate to user voting. Keep checking the Product Portal for your suggestion (or a re-written variation of the concept), and let me know if you see it come up for voting :) I've submitted probably 30-40 suggestions, and a handful have appeared on the portal for voting.
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Thanks, James, will do! I upvoted quite a few of the suggestions already. It's good to hear that they read all submissions. Fingers crossed for this one!
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