PDA

View Full Version : Is there a good way to integrate any payment system with Quickbook



nealrm
09-08-2012, 12:32 AM
Is there any payment system out there that will work well with both custom generated invoices and Quickbooks. I can use paypal to add a payment button to my invoices. That allows for easy customer payment, but the information has to be manually transfer from paypal to quicken. I can use Intuit's payment network to add a payment link to a Quickbooks invoice. The payments would track easily into Quickbooks. But would have to use the junk invoices in Quickbooks instead of my nice customer ones. (The "custom" one in QB are still junk, they just have a colored background). Also to add a payment link on my site I would have to go to the Intuit site, create a button and copy the HTML code to my site. So basically I would be changing my site daily. Not a good option.

So any suggestions.

Harold Mansfield
09-08-2012, 10:13 AM
Nope. I've never seen one. Because Pay Pal doesn't integrate into Quick Books the same way that you used to be able to do with Microsoft Money. They are a 3rd party processors. All they are doing is providing the processing service.

I think in order for you to do what you want, you'd have to use an all in one solution that is accounting, banking AND payment processing.

You can however download your Pay Pal transactions into quick books, I've never tried it because it doesn't work for me because I use Pay Pal for more than just client invoices, but here a tutorial that talks about it:
QuickBooks Support - Import PayPal transactions into QuickBooks (http://support.quickbooks.intuit.com/support/Articles/HOW12746)

I may be missing something though, because I've seen a lot of articles that go back a few years that seem to want to answer that question, but they all seem to go back to downloading transactions.

You know who would be a good person to ask? Jamesray50. She's a Certified QuickBooks Adviser.

Brian Altenhofel
09-15-2012, 10:43 PM
Am I correct in assuming that you -

1) Have an eCommerce website
2) that uses PayPal for processing payments
3) and you need transactions to also appear directly in QuickBooks?

QuickBooks does have an API for the online version that allows your website or application to interface with it and create, retrieve, update, and delete data - including payments. The API for the Windows version also appears to have this ability.

What you would do here is have an action that sends the necessary data to QuickBooks and is triggered by the transaction being completed on your site.

Freelancier
09-16-2012, 11:38 AM
Believe that Intuit offers merchant services and it should integrate with QB, although it might only be QB online... there might be a QB export available for offline QB.

But you'll pay for the convenience, because Intuit charges more than many merchant processors.

billbenson
09-16-2012, 10:00 PM
Neal, I maintain a propriety db (php / mysql). It contains all the info I need to move from eCommerce site to another eCommerce site as well as to output reports that could easily be used by proprietary programs such as quickbooks.

Other competent people here have criticized that approach. Two time consuming when there are canned solutions available. Also, multiple databases with the same info is not really a good design practice. However, when you have several proprietary databses that you use, and should one such as quick books barf, You don't loose data.

So that's how I approach it, other than I don't store the CC info other than the biling address. If I have a second order my gateway stores the CC number etc. If its a virtual termanal order, I write it down and put it in the shredder once processed.

I feel that if you can program databases, its best to have you master db (a few tabes). That gives you the maximum trans-portability between propriatary db's such as Peachtree v.s. Quickbooks or eCommerce sites.

Brian Altenhofel
09-17-2012, 12:38 AM
Believe that Intuit offers merchant services and it should integrate with QB, although it might only be QB online... there might be a QB export available for offline QB.

But you'll pay for the convenience, because Intuit charges more than many merchant processors.

What I'm referring to is separate from their merchant services. It would allow the OP to continue to use Paypal (or any other provider such as Authorize.net) as their payment processor.

An example of how the process would work in Drupal is that a customer would pay the invoice via the website. A rule would fire and send the payment information to their payment processor. When the payment processor responds with a successful payment, another rule would fire sending the information to QuickBooks. If the customer did not already exist, it would be created in QuickBooks.

I'm not sure of other systems' ability to use actions and triggers and the like, though. I just know the implementation of the process is quite easy in Drupal - its the API integration for QuickBooks that would be time-consuming.

billbenson
09-17-2012, 08:07 PM
That's very interesting Brian. I think most small businesses do this process manually.

I've written a php script that does all of the above using only a php / mysql db with the exception of the pdf confirmation receipt and order to the manufacturer.

Freelancier
09-17-2012, 09:20 PM
When the payment processor responds with a successful payment, another rule would fire sending the information to QuickBooks. If the customer did not already exist, it would be created in QuickBooks.

Unless it's a well-known e-commerce package, there's probably not going to be a piece to directly talk with QB (especially with the terrible flaws with trying to have programs talk with QB 2012 on a server without the user being logged in... Intuit really screwed up this year's release and it's driving one of my clients nuts). Closest that might be reliable would be a nightly export file that can be imported into QB.

Brian Altenhofel
09-17-2012, 09:43 PM
Unless it's a well-known e-commerce package, there's probably not going to be a piece to directly talk with QB (especially with the terrible flaws with trying to have programs talk with QB 2012 on a server without the user being logged in... Intuit really screwed up this year's release and it's driving one of my clients nuts). Closest that might be reliable would be a nightly export file that can be imported into QB.

I don't know the ins-and-outs of how the desktop version's API works, but I know that the online version's API is pretty stable on reading data and creating customers (the furthest I've taken it because that's all I've needed so far). Probably when I get the high-availability hosting side of my business fully launched, I'll probably finish out the custom Drupal module for that and abstract it out so that I can contribute back. I think the issue in the past is that it appears QB's API has either been non-existent, cryptic, or a moving target. But since their API is RESTful, integration is mostly a matter of ensuring that data gets mapped correctly between the source and destination.

The process that I described is similar to other processes that I've used in Drupal Commerce - its simply multiple actions fired by a trigger, with the result of some actions triggering more actions. To me, the more that can be automated in life, the better, and that's the approach I take.

jamesray50
10-26-2012, 07:57 PM
Hi Nealrm - I don't know how I missed this topic and sorry I'm late in answering it. If you are accepting payment with PayPal, you can download the history into your QuickBooks file. The problem with the direct import is that you can only import into 3 accounts, the bank account, an income account and an expense account. Then you would have to go into your QuickBooks file and reclassify your other fees from the expense account to the appropriate accounts. Same thing with income if you use more than one income account. Big Red Consulting offers a PayPal to QuickBooks link for $79 (one time fee) where you specify all the accounts you want to use. QuickBooks does support some shopping carts, which means the info should import into QuickBooks. If you are using one that is not supported, then you would need a 3rd party add-on to do the import, but may be worth the money.

PayPal does not support a link on a QuickBooks invoice. There is the PayPal wizard that will allow you to create a PayPal invoice from QuickBooks, but it's too much trouble to use, you have to do one at a time, enter the invoice number and address on the PayPal invoice. Not a real good option. What I have done to allow PayPal payments was to add the PayPal Pay Now button to my website. In the body of my email with the attached invoice is a link to the page on my website where the Pay Now button is. I formatted the invoice in my preferences in QuickBooks.

Another option for payment is the Intuit Payment Network. You don't need a merchant account to use this and the only fee is .50 per payment received. That is a lot less than PayPal or credit card fees. After you sign up and are approved for this you can mark to include the link directly on the invoice. You do this on a custom invoice.

BTW - I wrote a blog about PayPal and QuickBooks which can be found on my website if you need more information.