QuickBooks Online Sync Requirements and Details

Streamlining your data between Dispatch and QuickBooks Online can help save time and energy from duplicating efforts.

There are a few pieces of data you can sync between QuickBooks and your Dispatch account; customers, billing documents and line items. You can Manually Sync your data at any time but your data will automatically sync every 15-30 minutes. As shown below, you can toggle whether you wish to Sync Estimates and Invoices automatically. By default, your Customers will sync between the platforms the "QuickBooks Enabled" status appearing.

Customers

Enabling Dispatch to sync your Customer data will import all of your existing customer base from Quickbooks into Dispatch. Customer profiles that currently exist within Dispatch already but do not exist in your Quickbooks records will create a new customer profile in QuickBooks as well.

Fields that Sync

• First Name
• Last Name
• Company
• Email
• Phone Number (only primary, number set as "Send Notifications")
• Home Address
• Billing Address
• Customer Notes

Field Requirements 

• Customers linked as a sub-customer in QBO will not be listed as a sub-customer in Dispatch; you can mark a customer as a sub-customer in QBO at any time.
• First & Last Name: The combination must be unique with QBO; no exact same-names can be synced due to a limitation by QBO. These must be filled out in QBO in order for the customer to get created in Dispatch.
• Customers must have a First Name in QBO in order to sync to Dispatch.
• Only a single email address per customer can be synced between platforms. If you have more than one email address for a customer in the "Email" field within QuickBooks, the customer sync will fail. You can add email addresses to the 'Notes' field under the customer within QBO as an alternative.
• A single "primary" phone number (labeled with "Send Notifications") in Dispatch will sync to the "Mobile" field in QuickBooks. Changing the Mobile phone number listed in QBO for the customer will add a new phone number to the customer, not overwrite. Additionally, Dispatch will not overwrite phone numbers in the other phone number fields for the customer.
• Deleting and Merging customers in QBO, if that customer has already synced to Dispatch, is not recommended. Once a customer is synced in Dispatch, we assign the customer ID that QBO provides. If the Customer ID that is synced then is deleted or merged to a different customer in QBO, the customer will fail to sync in the future, including any Estimates and Invoices associated to the customer.
• The State field in QBO must be in a two-letter abbreviation. For instance, "FL" instead of "Florida". Anything other than the 2-letter abbreviation will cause that customer to fail in the attempt to create the customer in Dispatch.

Billing Items

You may use a list of preferred, stored billing items that are commonly used with your Estimates and Invoices. These items can be stored in Dispatch and QuickBooks Online, providing an accessible list of preferred items for all users across your Organization. 

Dispatch Fields that Sync

• Title
• Description
• Price/Amount

Field Requirements

• Titles must be unique

New Items Created in Dispatch

In order for Dispatch to sync a new item to QBO, you must have a specific account type in your QBO account. By default, we sync any new items to this particular account type. If you wish not to have items under this 'Income' account type, you can ONLY create items in QBO first...then allowing the item to automatically create in Dispatch through the sync. 

Under the 'Chart of Accounts', if you do not have an account named " Sales" under the "Income" type, you'll need to create one. The following shows you exactly what must be selected/used when creating the new account for a successful sync from Dispatch to QuickBooks Online:

Billing Documents

Estimates and Invoices created in Dispatch will sync to QuickBooks Online at certain stages whether created from the web or mobile app. When viewing the list of Invoices or Estimates under the Billing section, you'll see a QuickBooks icon appear when a document has successful synced to a document with QuickBooks Online. You can then click on the Icon to open the exact document in QuickBooks online. When the icon is not showing, it means the document has not synced. 

Documents that Sync

• Estimate that is "Sent", "Lost", "Won/Approved"
• Invoice that is "Sent", "Balance Due", "Paid"

Document Requirements

• Document must not be in "Draft" status; we do not sync draft Estimates and Invoices
• Document must be created in Dispatch; we do not sync documents created or modified in QuickBooks Online to Dispatch
• Customer must be synced to QuickBooks Online for document to sync
• Line items must be synced to QuickBooks Online for document to sync

Payments

Taking payments from customers on any Invoice in Dispatch will sync to QuickBooks Online, attached to the invoice in which you applied the payment.

Payments that Sync

• Cash
• Check
• Credit Card
• Offline Card

Limitations

• Check Numbers to not sync
• Card Type (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) will not appear in QBO

We're unable to pass the payment type to QBO but we do pass the date and amount that is captured on any given Invoice.

Data Field Mapping

It's important to understand which fields sync to one another between both platforms. The table below explains where each field connects - this are default fields only, as we do not sync with custom fields.

Customer Records

Billing Items

Billing Documents

Disconnecting

To limit issues between your Dispatch account and QuickBooks Online account, you're unable to disconnect the accounts without technical assistance. 

Reasons to Disconnect

• Your company is no longer using Dispatch
• Your company needs to connect a different QBO account

How to Disconnect

Simply send an email to support@dispatch.me and mention you need to disconnect your QuickBooks Online account. If you wish to Reconnect a QuickBooks Online account, it would be helpful for us to know in advance.

Fixing Errors

You may encounter errors when syncing data between Dispatch and QBO. We've outlined the most common issues followed by how to go about resolving each.

1. "No Income Account"

Errors like the following mean you do not have a 'Chart of Account' properly setup as outlined in the ' Billing Items' section of this article. Once you have the proper Income account created, you can re-sync your Invoice/Estimate in Dispatch if it failed to sync for this particular reason.

You may already have a "Sales of Product Income" account created. If you do and the name is anything other than "Sales", you can also modify the "Name" to be "Sales" - the following animation shows you how to create a new account with the proper name.

2. "Failed to Create QBO customer"

There are several requirements that your customer records in QBO must meet in order for us to automatically create the customer inside of your Dispatch account. One of the most common errors is when the 'First Name' field is blank. While you may have thousands of customers with a First Name field being blank, this does mean you'll need to modify the customer in QBO to add a a First Name.

When you see the above error, it gives you a QBO customer ID, in the above example being ID 3703. You can then find this exact customer in your QBO account by using the following URL structure. 

Exact customer: https://qbo.intuit.com/app/customerdetail?nameId=3703 (where "3703" is the ID in QBO that is failing). You can find the exact customer simply by changing the ID at the end of the URL in correlation with the error we show in your Integration Logs at https://work.dispatch.me/billing/integration-logs

3. "Failed to get Line items for Invoice"

The below error can mean a few different thing. First, Invoices and Estimates in Dispatch can ONLY sync (create) in QBO as long as you have not deleted the item in Dispatch and each item on the Invoice/Estimate has synced to QBO. If the item is in Dispatch and has been made inactive in QBO, the invoice will not sync over. Additionally, if there are duplicates of the line item in Dispatch, the invoice will not sync over. You can check for duplicates by going to the billing item list and typing in the item in question. For example, if you search "Labor" and there are multiple "Labor" items, the invoice will not sync. To update, edit the name of each "Labor" item to be unique, ex "Labor_1", "Labor_2". Return to the invoice and manually sync this invoice over and you will be all set.

4. "Failed to get Customer Ref"

Sometimes a Customer in QBO that has been synced to Dispatch is made "Inactive" in QBO. This becomes an issue as we're unable to sync any further Invoices/Estimates for the customer. 

In the above error when viewing an Invoice/Estimate inside of Dispatch, the customer it's related to has synced to QBO but that particular QBO customer was made Inactive. To resolve this on your own, you will need to make this particular customer 'Active' again, otherwise we are unable to create the Invoice/Estimate automatically.

The customer that was made 'Inactive' is that which is 'linked' under the customer card. By clicking the green QBO icon, you'll be taken to the specific customer in QBO...however, it may load a blank page. 

Common Questions