Connector for Quickbooks

Integration
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1

Hi,

I wish to integration ERPNext with Quickbooks. Is there any connector available in ERPNext for QuickBooks ?

Please guide. Thanks

2

I’m curious about your intent. I’m trying to get businesses to ditch QB in favor of ERPNext.

Would you mind explaining your use case and reasoning for using both?

3

There is no official connector available. I’ve never heard of an unofficial connector that was created and shared.

@volkswagner I cannot speak for the OP. But I’ve had many clients and prospects ask me about this. My current company would certainly benefit.

Use Cases I can think of:

  1. Existing Integrations: When considering ERPNext, you remembered that your QuickBooks already integrated with your payroll, HR, bank accounts, PayPal, etc. ERPNext didn’t have those built-in. You weighed the costs of customizing ERPNext, and decided it was cheaper and easier to just stick with QB for a while.

  2. You just like QuickBooks better for accounting. :person_shrugging: Having personally used both, I can understand why people might feel that way. At least for finance, QB is pretty solid and intuitive. ERPNext doesn’t do a better job, imo. At least not out-of-the-box.

  3. The leadership team said “nope”, because they weren’t willing to risk messing with the accountant’s tools. Have you ever met a stubborn CFO who didn’t like Change? If they already love QuickBooks, they might just put their foot down and say “nope”. They’re willing to implement ERPNext for everything…except accounting. So you just continue using QB.

  4. I’ve worked with small businesses that don’t do their own accounting. For them, the cost and risk of maintaining a Full-Time employee is not worth it. So they outsource all their accounting work.

    In the USA, if you choose ERPNext for Accounting, you probably need to train every new consultant/contractor you meet. Because it’s highly unlikely you’ll meet an accountant with prior ERPNext experience. You probably have better odds at winning the lottery.

    Yet finding a QuickBooks consultant here is trivial. The software is so widespread and entrenched in our business ecosystem. I just quickly did a search, and found 83 contractors within 10 miles of my house. If I looked harder, there are probably 3x that many.

    So for small companies without their own accountants, they may deliberately choose to stick with QB just so it’s easier to find/hire support.

  5. Your company has multiple subsidiaries and brands. Some run on ERPNext, some on QB. Your CEO and CFO want unified accounting data + reports for the entire, global company. You could:

    • Force half your company to switch accounting software (potentially a costly endeavor).
    • Build a data warehouse.
    • Look for something that integrates QB and ERPNext.

  6. During your ERPNext implementation, everyone wanted to implement ERPNext accounting. But as the project happened, you eventually ran out of time or budget. Things had to be cut out of the plan. Everyone decided that Accounting could continue happening in QB for a while longer. That would happen someday later, after the launch.

    Launch happened, priorities shifted, and “someday” never actually arrived. You’ve now been running ERPNext for years, but the accounting still happens in QB. Sometimes you talk about going back, and switching to ERPNext. But everyone agree “it’s fine right now”, and there are more important things to spend time + budget on.

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4

Thanks for your response @volkswagner — and I completely agree with you. I’m actually a firm believer in ERPNext, and I’m confident it offers far more value than QuickBooks in nearly every aspect.

To clarify the intent behind my question: this query is for a client who is currently using QuickBooks primarily for making vendor payments against bills. My goal is to explore whether ERPNext can fully take over that functionality of online payments, including the payment processing side, so they can gradually phase out QuickBooks altogether.

If ERPNext already supports that or if there’s a recommended way to handle vendor payments natively (possibly via bank integrations or other apps or online payments), I’d be very grateful for your guidance.

5

Thank you, @brian_pond , for the detailed and well-thought-out reply. It was very informative and much appreciated.

6

@shazadnazir I’m not sure if there are any solutions already. Receiving payments can be done with the Stripe Integration.

I’m also looking into solutions for making payments. I’m already using Plaid to connect my bank accounts (including credit cards) to download transactions. The Plaid integration doesn’t create records, but it allows for easy creation or reconciling of transactions.

Here’s some interesting information about using Plaid for both incoming and outgoing payments.