Quickbooks Integration Development

@alec_ruizramon @cattmy @max_morais_dmm
Team has initiated the campaign of Quickbooks connector for ERPNext. Your support will be appreciated.
The development is already underway, you can have a look at the Github Repository

@kanhaiya, I sent the link to my manager! Him will make the donation on the next week.

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That’s nice. Thanks for your contribution @max_morais_dmm

Hi All,
Campaign page has been updated with all required information and current status of project. Refer “Updates” section for the same.

Feel free to share feedback and suggestions if any.

Thanks,
Kanhaiya Kale

They are completely different.
Some obvious ones would be:
Bank reconciliation- QBO connects directly to the banks, and the bank reconciliation is completely different
AP and cheque printing are completely different
Local payroll modules
Financial statements and GL reporting are completely different
Time tracking and billing are completely different
Sales tax reporting is completely different
The list goes on and on …
If you don’t want to use QBO, who is forcing you to?
I can’t understand why people would object to more choice
You can do whatever you want.

It seems that hundreds of other companies have figured out how to integrate:
https://apps.intuit.com/

I just submitted a payment on Indiegogo

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The software has to be up to providing the same level capability that the solution you are looking to integrate with before you can make that argument. ERPNext quite simply isn’t there in respect of the accounting. By your argument anyone with a website should not be using ERPNext unless it is very simple. Even Frappe recognise their website solution is only for simpler businesses yet simple businesses tend not to use ERP because they have no need for them. Do you oppose the connector for Shopify? If not why is that different from Accounting?

As regards the integration it’s quite simple you should not be trying to ensure both are exactly the same. You chose one platform as your source of truth and the other merely is a repository for the info that platform provides. If Quickbooks is fully integrated and you use quickbooks as your Accounting platform then you don’t care what ERPnext shows so long as what it records is accurate and can be transferred to Quickbooks accurately. If I want to know anything related to accounting I use Quickbooks not ERPNext. This is no different to having multiple Ecommerce platforms. You have only have one place where everything is handled and realise that on any of the other platforms you get a partial view. Accounting is no different so long as what is provided is accurate.

Can you please enlighten us where does ERPNext fall short in accounting base on QB?
"The software has to be up to providing the same level capability that the solution you are looking to integrate with before you can make that argument. “”

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Thanks @fblauer for your funding. Nice to see people coming from different geographies. Thanks to ERPNext and Team.

Regards,
Kanhaiya Kale

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@ccfiel More than features, it is often just the comfort of using a familiar system! As devs, we should be agnostic to what the user wants to build.

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Hi Fred, I am definitely not against integrations… or forcing people. I
know QB as an accounting package, but i EU (at least in NL) it by far not
as popular as in North America. I was just curious about the motivation…
Bank reconciliation- QBO connects directly to the banks That is a large
pro indeed. Pity that in ERPNEXT one cannot even important bank statements
to link to bank JV’s
rgds Robert

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@becht_robert yeah, its time we have a bank statement import. But, so few users are asking for it!

It’s not just about comfort it’s about having something that is built for your country and widely tested by Accountants throughout he country so you can have confidence in it’s ability to correctly handle your accounting needs, assuming of course you aren’t feeding it garbage to start with. Having that saves a huge amount of time in set up and tighter integration and proper reconciliation procedures for VAT having ongoing time saving benefits.

ERPNext lacks controls that normal accounting have as standard which helps to minimise time trying to track down errors.

As I’ve said before it’s not bad but just isn’t great either. It’s adequate. Nothing wrong with adequate so long as you are comfortable with the limitations and there’s nothing wrong with recognising those limitations and using something else to resolve them. I don’t accept the argument that you must go all in. If I can integrate say 6 systems down to 2 systems then I’d still consider that worthwhile endeavour. It would be great to get down to one but life isn’t always that simple.

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I agree Robert. I think it has a lot to do with where you are in the world. And also what job you perform. Even though accounting is supposed to be standardized, it isn’t. And accountants are very conservative and slow to change their ways. The accounting in ERPnext might well be adequate for companies outside of north america, or UK, austraila and New zealand. That’s why its not really productive to have a debate about which is better. Different countries, and different companies have different needs. I am hoping that this integration will increase adoption in North america, and reduce objections. I guess we’ll find out soon. My vision would be to have a reliable core accounting which accountants are already comfortable with, and adapt EN for different industries. Having said all that. most accountants around here still havn’t moved to to cloud (or mobile) so those guys will be resistant to change, in a different way. But I don’t think that it makes sense to try and integrate with old desktop software. (like QB) But that’s a whole other debate.

Hi Fred,
My account hates me. There are some 5 standard accounting packages here in
NL, and basically by selecting your account you also select the software to
use. Or the opposite, on the websites of accounting software a list of
accountants that are familiar with that package. IIndeed porting to
standard accounting packages like QB may lower that threshold. Never
thought of that.Robert

I think that would be the one reason that I would choose to use the quickbooks connector.

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Yes, here is an example of what I am talking about:

As far as the accountants are concerned they aren’t going to take the time to evaluate and test every one of the hundreds of accounting programs out there. And each one is constantly upgrading and changing. They have enough to deal with complex tax rules, and keeping up to date with that. So, if they are part of the decision making process, they are going to recommend what they know, and not take risks. I am hoping that we can have the best of both words.

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This is a great idea. I see a lot of comments of people saying “just use ERPNext for financials!”, however there are some good reasons that potential introductees to ERPNext would want this:

  1. Many companies want to have a much tighter control over centralised accounting than other systems. This leads to a situation where they will accept external hosting or a SaaS model for warehousing, order management etc. but never for core financial accounting.

  2. Companies might legitimately want to use different ERP systems for different parts of their business. The reality is that people do still buy ‘best of breed’ and integrate. If ERPNext can be a ‘best of breed’ application (as in, quick, simple, economical, business love it and it does the job) for a particular part of a business then it might be a valuable tool that would be overlooked if it didn’t have integration capabilities.

  3. Getting ERPNext into the enterprise systems marketplace is not only going to be about ‘one system for the whole business’. People might want to have the ability to try it out, introduce bits of it at a time, starting small and then working up. Integration capabilities make this possible.

So this is a great idea. The thing that would make this a hugely reusable feature would be to decouple the two logical parts of the interface. What I mean by this is that if a potential user wants to use ERPNext purely as an operational or execution system, they won’t want to fully configure the financial aspects of the system. So any financial interface will need to comprise two parts: 1. The part which contains the rules to translate operational transactions to accounting ‘speak’ and does the calculations of what amounts, cost centres, legal entities, % split between accounts, etc. to apply for any given transaction (e.g. order receipt / sale etc.). 2. The part which actual creation and management of the interface file / message / asynchronous transmission (the ‘adapter part’).

The rationale for this is as follows:

In addition to the three points above, you would be surprised how many $XXm ERP systems out there don’t logically separate these functions (or even have them in the first place), leading to enormous modification and integration costs if you need to say connect their execution system with an existing central ‘pure’ financial accounting module (such as SAP FI say in a larger company). By separating the functionality ERPNext becomes a viable execution system for many different processes, especially for larger organisations who might want to experiment and start off using say a single module of ERPNext for part of their operation (e.g. field sales) and take it from there. Imagine the buzz that’s going to happen when say a global household name large retailer or manufacturer publishes a success story about using ERPNext for part of their organisation… Some of the customers and case studies that will drive ERPNext into the future in terms of awareness and support could well be organisations who will have to implement in this step-wise manner.

Separate the functions and you also then have the ability to connect to ANY financials system; the difference is simply the formatting, interface generation, monitoring and logging, replay, protocol handling, etc.

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in order to being able to follow your train of thoughts entirely it would be incredibly helpful to know exactly what idea you are referring to here. Can you add a link or quote to the beginning of your previous post?