After connecting QuickBooks, there are three things to map: your locations, two products used on bills, and your accounts. 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 purchase order. Instead, each bill has two summary lines that use two "products" you set up in QuickBooks: a Generic Product for the merchandise total and a Freight Product for shipping costs. (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 two products in your Quickbooks account, a “Generic Product” and a “Freight Product”, which we’ll then map in the POS settings page. These two products are used to sync inventory asset values (purchases, COGS, etc) between POS and Quickbooks.
In Quickbooks, go to Sales→Products & Services
Then click “New Product”.
First we’ll create the Generic Product. This will be a “non-inventory” type product.
Then we’ll create the Freight Product. This will be a “Service” type product.
Once these products are created, go into POS and reload the Account Mapping page. You should now see these products as options in the dropdowns for Generic Product and Freight Product.
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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