Setting up Accounting Integration with QuickBooks Online

At CoConstruct, we want to make it easy to set up accounting integration between your CoConstruct account and your QuickBooks Online account. This article includes both a video walking you through the setup process, as well as step-by-step written directions to make sure everything goes smoothly.

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Setting Up QuickBooks Online Accounting Integration

This video will walk you through the main steps of the setup process. You can also review the written step-by-step directions below.

1. Link CoConstruct to QuickBooks Online
2. Configure Accounting Integration Settings
3. Link Projects

Step 1 - Link CoConstruct to QuickBooks Online

First you will link your QuickBooks account to your CoConstruct account within CoConstruct. You will need to be logged in as an admin user in CoConstruct to do this.

1. Select Accounting from the Settings menu at the top.
2. Click Connect to QuickBooks and select Online from the drop down.
3. Log in as an Admin user using your QuickBooks Online login information. 
   Note: If you find yourself logged in as the wrong user, you can click the Not You? link to log out of Intuit's system. Close the pop up window, click the button in CoConstruct again to connect to QuickBooks Online, and enter the correct login information. If you continue to have issues after logging in, we recommend that you clear your browser's cache and cookies, restart your browser, and try again.
4. Intuit will walk you through any additional options you will need to specify for your QuickBooks Online account, such as which company you want to link with CoConstruct.
5. Click Authorize to finish linking your accounts and return to CoConstruct. You should see your QuickBooks company name listed on the Accounting Integration page.

Step 2 - Configure Accounting Integration Settings

There are a handful of accounting integration settings that you should configure while you're on the Accounting Integration page in CoConstruct.

Project Defaults

1. Budget Actuals - If you're using QuickBooks Online Plus, this allows you to set your default whether or not to automatically pull job costs from QuickBooks to be displayed on the CoConstruct budget. You'll need to make sure you're tracking your actuals with your products and services within QuickBooks Online. Ensure bills, payments, and credits get entered in QuickBooks in order to pull them back into the CoConstruct budget. 
2. Purchase Orders > Bills - If you're using QuickBooks Online Plus, this setting allows you to choose whether your projects are set up to automatically generate vendor bills in QuickBooks when POs are verified in CoConstruct.  You will be able to adjust this default on individual project settings.
3. Change Orders > Invoices - Sets your default for whether change orders are set to automatically generate customer invoices in QuickBooks when change orders are approved in CoConstruct.  This setting can be changed on individual change order documents. 
4. Client Payments - This sets the default for whether new projects that you create will pull payment information from QuickBooks and put the information in the Payments Summary section on the Financials Summary page.

Configuration

1. How do you want to link projects to QuickBooks? - This option lets you specify whether your CoConstruct projects will be tied to a Customer or to a Customer:Job in QuickBooks. In general terms, Customer:Job setup lets you have multiple sub-customers or projects tied to a specific customer, while Customer setup sets each project up as an individual customer.
2. What tax rate do you use on transactions in QuickBooks? - If your QuickBooks account is set up to collect taxes, you will set the default tax rate to be applied to transactions sent from CoConstruct to QuickBooks. If you don't collect taxes, you shouldn't see this option.  If you are seeing this setting and have nothing to select, double check your QuickBooks tax settings. 
3. Select a product/service code to be used on customer invoices - This sets the item code that will show up on the invoices that CoConstruct creates for each line item. This comes from your list of products or services in QuickBooks.
4. Show budget actuals details to clients - Specify whether clients who can view the project budget will be able to access details about the bills and expenses that make up the actual costs for a line item.  You will be able to override this setting on individual projects.
5. Include labor costs in budget actuals? - This sets the default for whether new projects that you create will pull labor costs from your QuickBooks timesheets into your budget actuals on CoConstruct.  You will be able to override this setting on individual projects.
6. Include markup amounts in budget actuals? - If you're using QuickBooks function to markup billable expenses, this will select whether those markup values are pulled into the budget actuals in CoConstruct and which accounting code they fall under.  This setting only applies to Open Book structure projects.
7. Select invoice items to include in budget actuals - This setting will only apply to Open Book structure projects in CoConstruct.  Choose appropriate Product/Services to flow back into the budget. 

Step 3 - Link Projects

Now your account is fully linked, but you also need to link up individual projects to your accounting system. Note that this can only by done by admin users in CoConstruct.

1. Go to the New Project or project Setup page depending on whether you want to link a new or existing project. You'll see the option to link the project to QuickBooks under a section heading of QuickBooks Integration. Link new projects when you create them by selecting Show optional settings to view options for linking directly to QuickBooks. Or use the Accounting Settings Projects page to link any existing project OR individually link any project right from the Project Setup page.
2. Click "Link Project".
3. Enter the QuickBooks Customer Name and, if applicable, the Job Name.
   You can enter this information in CoConstruct to create the linkage either before or after setting the project up in QuickBooks. If you do it before, the customer will be created for you in QuickBooks, but you'll need to go into your accounting system to enter additional information that CoConstruct doesn't know, like the customer's billing address. If you do this after creating the project in QuickBooks, CoConstruct will link to the existing customer or job rather than creating a new one.
4. When you click to add or update the project, the linkage will be created.