Overview
There are not many settings attached to QuickBooks Online; however, we receive many questions about it. It is incredibly important to set up your QBO sync to serviceminder in the right way for your business and your accounting. It will save you a lot of time and possible headaches in the future.
Consult your accountant, bookkeeper or FBC/FBA before making any significant changes. Your brand may even have an SOP for you to follow when setting up your connection.
What follows is our suggestion for what has worked best for a majority of organizations.
About QBO Syncing
The connection between SM and QBO is essentially one way. Data flows from SM to QBO. Customer information, proposals/invoices, and payments are sent to your QBO account from SM during the automatic synching process. There is an optional setting to send payments recorded in QBO over to serviceminder, but that is the ONLY data which flows from QBO to serviceminder. This is your accounting/financial data, and no one at serviceminder has access to your QBO account. The integration process is straightforward.
To start the sync, your Control Panel>Integrations, choose Accounting. You’ll be able to connect to your QBO account, then sync to QBO. Moving forward, any new data (customers, invoices, payments, refunds) will sync.
If you want to push existing data from QBO to SM, please enter a support ticket with our team (support@serviceminder.com). This is a one-time push of your existing QBO data to your SM account.
This can be tricky, and for existing brands that have been operating within SM, we do not recommend moving the data from QBO to SM.
However, if you do make a one-time import, we recommend turning off the check box Add Contact ID To Name. If you leave that on during the import, you will create duplicates of Contacts.
You can find this setting in Control Panel > Integrations > Accounting > Add Contact Id to Name.
If you are “transitioning” from QBO to serviceminder, we recommend recording payments for existing open invoices within QBO, gradually shifting to record all payments in SM as your new invoices are created. Eventually, you will be solely operating out of SM and only needing to occasionally audit QBO.
If you want to learn more about common problems, please read QuickBooks Online Common Errors.
When Data Pushes to QBO
Contacts
The SM and QBO sync is looking for a name match if the customer exists in QBO but hasn't been synced before. If the name differs then serviceminder will create a new customer within QBO. However, if they have already been synced from SM to QBO, a name change in SM should result in that locked-in customer's name also changing on the QBO side.
Customers Only
There is the option, when setting up the sync, to only pull in "customers" from SM to QBO. This is most frequently used since most do not want a record of every lead/prospect in their bookkeeping side. Within serviceminder, the contact becomes a customer automatically by default when an invoice is generated for them. 
Settings can change when/if the invoice is automatically generated for them, and this process differs by brand. But by default, when a contact becomes a customer it syncs to QBO (with that setting on), all info related to that customer will show up on the QBO side.
If the "Push Customers Only" checkbox is OFF (unselected), then any contact created in serviceminder will sync over to QBO regardless if there is an invoice created for them or not. It is all or nothing, meaning you should not turn this on/off if you want it to affect only some contacts. Most companies have this setting turned on because they don't want the full contact list in QuickBooks.
Deposits
A deposit on a proposal will go into Undeposited Funds within QBO. This is normal and intended behavior on the part of QBO. Once the Invoice is created, Contact information and the deposit will automatically be connected to the correct invoice without you having to do anything manually.
This should be an instantaneous move between the invoice showing up in QBO and the deposit moving out of Undeposited Funds.
Invoice Numbering
Take a moment to understand the importance of Invoice Numbering in regards to SM and QBO!
The Invoice Number field starts the numbering over again at that number. If you have invoices that existed in your QuickBooks account before you started syncing them from serviceminder and you try to push Invoices over that have duplicate numbers to those pre-existing ones, it may result in the old invoice being overridden in QuickBooks.
List of Recommendations
These suggestions are not a replacement for the advice of your financial professional. You should always consult with your accountant, bookkeeper, or other counsel before making changes that could affect your business.
Here are some general recommendations that may or may not be suitable for all brands or users.
Do not select “Import QuickBooks Payments” unless you are using QB payment processing (in which case, your incoming dollars are automatically recorded in QBO.)
Think carefully before asking the SM Support team to push over data from QBO to SM. In many cases, this creates confusion and complications.
Keep your eye on QBO errors. Here are common errors that you may get. It’s easy to see QBO errors in the left navigation pane of serviceminder.
Don’t be impatient! The serviceminder to QBO sync is NOT in real time. It may take several minutes (or longer, depending on the amount of users syncing with QBO).
Make sure your income accounts are set up properly in QBO, and then link your serviceminder Services to those income accounts. This way, you won’t see revenue showing up in odd places in QBO.
Sending QBO Payments to serviceminder
You may wish to continue receiving payments through QBO until you close out the open invoices there, then transition to only using serviceminder to receive payments.
You may wish to continue receiving payments through QBO until you close out the open invoices there, then transition to only using serviceminder to receive payments.
If you determine that it is the most functional for you to sync payments made in QBO to serviceminder, you would do the following:
Go to Control Panel > Integrations > Accounting tab.
And turn on this feature.
Then click Save.
You may want to go and turn this off when the timing is right.
Warning
Our biggest warning from our team to yours would be that franchisees need to commit to using serviceminder moving forward (unless they have an open invoice in QBO that you are finishing up). The biggest issues we see are when someone is using both programs and not fully committing one way or the other.
We highly recommend committing to using SM as the main program for creating invoices, receiving payments, etc., and just letting QBO run in the background as a holding closet for your Accounting Data. Think of SM as your main software for running your business. QBO can be used for reconciling accounts, general reporting for accounting, taxes, payroll, etc.
To ease this transition, consider making a hard cut-off date.
A great report to suggest when the transitioning should be is our Payment Reconciliation report to make comparisons.
