This article is for:
QuickBooks is a widely used, cloud-based/desktop accounting software, designed to help small and mid-sized businesses manage their financial health. It streamlines bookkeeping tasks by automating invoicing, expense tracking, bank reconciliation, tax preparation, and reporting. In this guide you will learn how to sync your customers between Timely and QuickBooks.
What information is sent to QuickBooks
Once you connect QuickBooks to Timely, you will be able to automatically sync any invoices you raise for your customers. The invoice in QuickBooks will automatically be populated with the same information as the Timely invoice. For invoices with appointments included, this will include the appointment description with the staff member, services and date/time.
Some basic customer information will also be transferred between the two systems:
- First name
- Last name
- Company name
- Postal address
- Date of Birth
- Telephone number
- SMS Number (Mobile)
The approach for syncing customers will depend on which setup you have! See the below sections for more information tailored to you, such as existing customers, or whether you are new to Timely, QuickBooks, or both.
Guidance for customers new to QuickBooks
If you're new to QuickBooks, then you won't have any existing customers recorded there, which makes it pretty simple for syncing customers from Timely! When an invoice for a customer is synced to QuickBooks, we will create a new customer record (with the above information) for them there too.
We will also remember which customer profile in QuickBooks we created and automatically assign any future invoices to that same customer. For more information on getting started with QuickBooks, see our help guide How to connect your QuickBooks Online account to Timely.
Guidance for customers new to Timely
If you're new to Timely, but have been managing your finances with QuickBooks, then you may wish to bring your customer information across to Timely. The best way to do this is via a customer import. See our help guide How to import your customers into Timely for step-by-step instructions.
To make sure the customer's history is accurately recorded across both systems you'll want to make sure that the naming conventions match in both places. Both softwares have the option to include first name, last name, and company name - so what you decide to include must exist across both Timely and QuickBooks.
Example: this could mean adding a company name to the display name as field in QuickBooks, or removing the company name in Timely (when appropriate).
Guidance for customers of both Timely and QuickBooks
If you have been using Timely and QuickBooks already, then you will likely have a number of customers that are shared between the two systems. When an invoice for a customer is synced to QuickBooks, we will first check to see if there is an existing customer record that matches that customer's name.
As mentioned above, we will send the customer's name from Timely in the following format: first name, last name, and company name. The customer's record in QuickBooks will have a first name and last name, which is combined into a display name as field. The display name in QuickBooks must match the Timely format above to be considered a match.
As in the other two scenarios, once a customer has been synced to QuickBooks once we will remember which customer profile in QuickBooks was used. Any future invoices for that customer will be synced to the same record.
Timely note:
If the customer's first name and last name in QuickBooks match to the Timely record, but the display name is different, then we will flag this customer as a duplicate and the invoice won't be synced.
To match the customer in QuickBooks and allow the invoice to be synced you can update the customer's name in either Timely, or QuickBooks, so they they are the same in both applications.