After connecting QuickBooks, there are three things to map: your locations, one product used on bills, and your accounts. You'll also choose whether we send your vendor bills to QuickBooks. Mapping tells the integration exactly where in QuickBooks each dollar should land, so it's worth doing carefully (ideally with your bookkeeper). For what happens after mapping, see the QuickBooks Integration Overview.
Locations Mapping
Every journal entry and bill the integration creates is tagged with a store location, so QuickBooks can report per location. First, enable "Track Locations" in your QuickBooks settings (see How to Connect QuickBooks). Then, in the "Locations Mapping" section of the QuickBooks Integration page in the Web app, match each of your store locations to the corresponding location in QuickBooks.
Products
When the integration creates a bill or vendor credit in QuickBooks, it doesn't itemize every SKU on the shipment. Instead, each bill has a summary line for the merchandise total, which uses a Generic Product you set up in QuickBooks. If the shipment has a shipping cost, the bill also gets a line called Freight. Shipping is part of what your inventory cost you, so we post it to your inventory asset account (the account you mapped for Purchases). There's nothing extra to set up for it. (See How purchase orders become bills for the full picture.)
Note: the QuickBooks "Simple Start" plan doesn't allow creating products, so bills and vendor credits can't sync on that plan.
Step 1
You’ll need to first create one product in your Quickbooks account, a “Generic Product”, which we’ll then map in the POS settings page. This product is used to sync inventory asset values (purchases, COGS, etc) between POS and Quickbooks.
In Quickbooks, go to Sales→Products & Services
Then click “New Product”.
Create the Generic Product as a “non-inventory” type product.
Once the product is created, go into POS and reload the Account Mapping page. You should now see it as an option in the Generic Product dropdown.
Vendor bills
By default, each shipment you receive on a purchase order is sent to QuickBooks as a bill, and each return to a vendor as a vendor credit, in the nightly sync. If your bookkeeper prefers to enter bills from your vendors' own invoices, you can turn this off.
- Open your QuickBooks account mapping page.
- In the Vendor bills section, find Send Bills and Vendor Credits to QuickBooks and choose When stock is received or Never.
- Click Save.
Stock you add or remove with adjustments syncs either way.
Before you choose Never: we'll stop sending the stock you receive on purchase orders or return to vendors. Sales and adjustments still sync. Unless you record those purchases and returns in QuickBooks yourself, your inventory value in QuickBooks will stop matching Material. We recommend deciding this together with your bookkeeper.
Changing this setting doesn't remove bills already sent, and switching back to When stock is received doesn't send the ones skipped while it was set to Never.
Mapping of Transactions
This is the most important part of setup: it decides which QuickBooks account each type of POS activity posts to. In the "Mapping of Transactions" section, match each POS account (sales, sales tax, cost of goods sold, payment types, gift cards, and so on) to an account in your QuickBooks chart of accounts. Each dropdown only shows QuickBooks accounts of the correct type, and every POS account has a description on the right explaining what it's for.
Map every account, even ones you don't expect to use. If activity shows up for an unmapped account, it gets posted as an Over/Short adjustment instead of the right account. This is a good step to review with your bookkeeper or accountant — and you can change any mapping later if your workflow changes.
A note on payment accounts: you can map cash and credit card payments directly to a bank account, or to an Undeposited Funds account. Undeposited Funds acts as a staging area, letting your bookkeeper match daily POS totals against actual bank deposits before recording them — helpful when your card processor deducts fees before depositing.
You can add, delete, or modify accounts on QuickBooks as necessary. To do so, navigate to the "Chart of Accounts" page by hovering over the "Accounting" tab in your QuickBooks account.
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