How to Integrate Salesforce with QuickBooks

According to Gartner, Salesforce leads the CRM market for customer relationship management software. For small to mid-sized businesses, QuickBooks is the leading accounting software. To enhance efficiencies, savvy companies look for ways to connect these systems and make them work together.

Benefits of Integrating Salesforce and QuickBooks

Integrating Salesforce with QuickBooks makes it easier to share financial data, check accounts, view customer sales and touchpoints, go over finances, and discover sales opportunities.

You'll be able to view open balances in Salesforce, even if the information was entered in QuickBooks. When someone on the sales team enters customer details in Salesforce, the accounting department can create an invoice in QuickBooks without re-entering the data.

Salesforce-QuickBooks integration provides the following benefits:

• Access data in real-time, including expenses, orders, invoices, and sales history
• View customized reports with insights for better forecasting
• Create transactions, such as estimates, invoices, and sales receipts in one system
• Implement automated workflows without writing code
• Save time and prevent errors with single entry instead of entering in both systems

You can typically bring data from the following fields in Salesforce into QuickBooks:

• Contacts
• Accounts
• Products
• Companies
• Opportunity Closed
• Payments
• Reports

And here are some fields you can sync from QuickBooks to Salesforce:

• Customers
• Vendors
• Purchase orders
• Bills
• Invoices
• Reports

When sales enters Opportunities in Salesforce, the data can appear in QuickBooks as orders, invoices, estimates, or receipts. Invoices from QuickBooks show up in Salesforce Opportunities. Entering payments into QuickBooks will update the opening balance amount in Salesforce's Opportunities.

How Are Salesforce and QuickBooks Integrated?

The two options for integrating QuickBooks and Salesforce are:

1. QuickBooks Desktop's Web Connector
2. RESTful API in QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Web Connector relies on a web service built on Java. This brings data into QuickBooks. The Java application takes care of the syncing as well as communicating and moving data between Salesforce and Web Connector.

Every time the connector schedules a job based on user input, it authenticates with the QuickBooks Java application. After this is successful, Java starts communicating and syncing the data between the two.

To use the RESTful Application Programming Interface (API) you need to have an online QuickBooks account and a Salesforce.org account. Then you can use the QuickBooks REST API with third-party technology like Java to sync the data.

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Integration?

Like with everything, each method has its advantages and disadvantages. There’s no wrong or right answer for using REST or Web Connector.

REST API Advantages

• Well-defined
• Effortless to understand
• Easy output when using JSON input

REST API Disadvantages

• Scheduling jobs is manual with CRON
• Needs added security for using services
• Requires making sure data transfers through secure layer like HTTPS

Web Connector Advantages

• Built-in component of Quickbooks
• Secure
• Schedule jobs to run at intervals, fixed times, or dates automatically

Web Connector Disadvantages

• No API to help QuickBooks understand data it gets from Salesforce
• Lack of API can cause duplicates hence verify account names are identical in both systems
• Takes longer to process data because it uses XML tree

Simply integrating two systems is an imperfect process when using an out-of-the-box solution. It's possible for developers to work with the APIs to iron out the kinks. The challenge will be thinking through all the possibilities and being prepared for any object mismatch.

After successful integrating QuickBooks and Salesforce, your organization will appreciate not having to repeatedly re-enter or copy-paste information. It'll also cut down data entry errors. Your teams will have more information about your customers, which will enhance customer service and support. Best of all, team members can spend more time on the application they know best: Salesforce for sales and QuickBooks for finance.

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Boost your chances of a successful Salesforce integration by working with an experienced Salesforce developer To discover the Salesforce integration possibilities, please contact us at customersuccess@appshark.com