Send Invoice to QuickBooks

Available in: Enterprise, Premier, and Professional + QuickBooks Integration

Overview

Kantata's integration with QuickBooks allows you to seamlessly synchronize invoice and payment information. In addition to automatically creating QuickBooks invoices when major milestones are completed, you can track time and expenses and see what payments have been made. Bridging the gap between projects and accounting helps minimize data entry time and provides more accurate, up-to-the-minute project and budget reports.

• The QuickBooks invoice and payment sync includes support for Time & Materials and Fixed Fee projects.
• Invoices generated by Kantata OX are pushed to QuickBooks and may contain the following information:
  • Time Entries, Expenses, Fixed Fee, and Additional Items as line items.
  • Time Entries or Expenses synced as independent QuickBooks transactions are associated with corresponding invoice line items using the QuickBooks Online linked transaction feature.
• When an invoice is fully paid in QuickBooks, a payment is logged in Kantata OX.
• When an invoice is voided or deleted in QuickBooks, it is canceled Kantata OX.

How to Create an Invoice for QuickBooks

1. Once you have time entries and/or expenses that you’re ready to invoice, hover over Billing from the left navigation and select Invoices.
2. Choose to create an invoice for QuickBooks.
   Note: If the QuickBooks integration is enabled, the QuickBooks Invoice page loads by default when you hover over Billing and then select Add New (“   ”) to the right of Invoices. It also loads by default for any project that has been mapped to QuickBooks when you click the Create an Invoice button from the Payment tab of the Project Admin box.
3. Select the mapped project(s) for which you are billing. As you start typing a project name, the project field will populate with a list of projects for which you're the provider. As you create new projects, you'll see them appear in the list.
   
4. Next, set the details such as the Invoice Title, Project Code, Purchase Order, Quickbooks Tax %, Invoice Date, Payment Schedule, and any Notes that you deem necessary to apply. Kantata will automatically increment the Invoice Number, so you can start with any number and your invoices will increment from there; optionally, you can manually update the invoice number each time.
   Note: The Invoice Number is the Kantata OX invoice number. You have the option of pushing this number to QuickBooks during an invoice sync. In order to do this, you first need to disable the auto-numbering functionality in QuickBooks. Next, an Account Administrator must enable the Use Mavenlink Invoice Number as the QuickBooks Invoice Number checkbox on the Map Account Settings tab of the Intuit Settings page. If you do not wish to use the Kantata OX invoice number, QuickBooks will generate its own invoice number, which we store for future reference.
   
   The Quickbooks Invoice Number is a combination of the QuickBooks Invoice Prefix—found in the Map Account Settings tab under Quickbooks Settings—and the Kantata OX Invoice Number that is automatically generated by Kantata OX. Please note that there is an Invoice Number character limit of 21 characters for Quickbooks Online and 11 characters for Quickbooks Desktop.
   
   Note: The client email address on the QuickBooks invoice is automatically inherited from the QuickBooks customer record.
   Note: The Invoice Title, Project Code, Purchase Order number, and any Notes will appear in the Message on Invoice field on the QuickBooks invoice.
   Warning: The QuickBooks Tax % rates are supplied from the QuickBooks tax object. Companies outside the United States must select a QuickBooks tax code; the No tax (0%) option will not work outside the United States.

5. In the Expense Formatting and Time Formatting sections, you can choose the individual details to include in the line items that appear on the invoice. The ability to show or hide specific information (such as the project name) in every single line item is useful, especially since Kantata OX only generates invoices on a per project basis. The checkboxes that appear both selected and disabled are mandatory and represent the default standard invoice selections.

   Some of the optional choices that can be included on the invoice are the person, the role of the person, the project name, task name, date range, or item prefixes which are used in the invoice line item descriptions within QuickBooks (e.g., PROJECT:, TASK:, ROLE:, PERSON:, or DATE:).

   Tip: If you select a Grouped by summary-level format, some options (Roles, Person, and Notes) appear only on Kantata OX invoices and not on QuickBooks. This is because line items in Kantata OX invoices can be rolled into groups and then expanded. Because QuickBooks does not support this functionality, expanded details are not carried over. QuickBooks invoices show only top-level summary rows as line items.
6. In the Expense Formatting section, choose one of the following options to control how individual expense-based line items are displayed:
   • Detailed—Expenses appear as individual line items in your invoice (arranged by date)
   • Grouped by expense category—Expenses appear combined into a single line item (by expense category).
7. In the Time Formatting section, choose one of the following options to control how individual time-based line items are displayed:
   • Grouped by person, then task—Invoice items are grouped by person; then, all time entries for individual tasks are rolled up into a line item. This option is only available if you've selected Task Mapping as the default product/service item mapping for time activities.
   • Grouped by task—All time entries for an individual task are rolled up into a single line item. This option only appears if you've selected Task Mapping as the default product/service item mapping for time activities.
   • Grouped by role—All time entries for an individual role are rolled up into a single line item. This option only appears if you've selected Role Mapping as the default product/service item mapping for time activities.
   • Detailed—Each time entry appears as a single line item on a QuickBooks invoice.
     Note: If you select a Grouped by format in the Time Formatting section, Kantata will calculate the average of the grouped item rates and send it to QuickBooks. It will then appear as the Rate on the Quickbooks invoice.
     Note: Depending on which invoice option you select, certain invoice items will be selected by default and cannot be unselected. For example, with the Detailed invoice option, the Subtotal, Rate, Hours, and Tax fields are always included on the invoice. 
8. If the project(s) you've selected have fixed fee tasks, uninvoiced time, or expenses, then the Time Entries, Fixed Fee Items, and/or Expenses sections will be available. Check the boxes next to individual line items in these sections to add them to the invoice.
   • Items that require approval will not appear until they have been approved.
   • Non-billable expenses may not appear, depending on your project or default invoice settings.
   • Time Entries and Expenses that haven't been synced with QuickBooks will show an 'unsynced' status. If you choose to include these in a QuickBooks Online invoice, they appear as line items on the invoice and will not be linked to the corresponding time or expense activity. Since QuickBooks Desktop invoices do not support linked transactions, all Kantata OX's time and expenses will appear as line items on a QuickBooks Desktop invoice, regardless of whether they've been synced.
   • Fixed Fee tasks that have not been mapped to a QuickBooks Product/Service will appear, but cannot be selected. You must first map these tasks to services from the QuickBooks Task Configuration section in the project's QuickBooks Settings. This section can be accessed from the Actions (“   ”) drop-down menu located to the right of the project name.
   • Determine which of your line items are taxable (expenses tend not to be taxable).
9. You also have the option to Add an Additional Item (or items) that may not have been entered during the initial creation of the Kantata OX project.
   Note: If you have not defined your QuickBooks Default Product/Service Item for Invoice Additional Item in the Map Account Settings section of the Intuit Settings page, you will be unable to add Additional Items to a QuickBooks invoice.
10. Once you’ve provided all the required information and line items, click Save for QuickBooks; you will be able to review your invoice and send to QuickBooks. Time entries and expenses added to this invoice will no longer be editable.
11. After clicking Save for QuickBooks, Kantata generates a draft invoice that you can view. The layout is determined by your choice of format. If a grouped format was selected, you can expand each time and/or expense line item for additional details. However, QuickBooks does not support invoice rollups, so expanded details are not carried over. QuickBooks invoices show only top-level summary rows as line items.
    
12. Click Send to QuickBooks. You will be notified if there is an issue during the sync.
    Note: If you are using QuickBooks Desktop, the invoice enters the 'pending sync' state. You will need to run the Intuit Web Connector sync to push the invoice to QuickBooks Desktop.If there are no problems, you’ll return to the Invoices page where you can see that the invoice has been sent to (and is synced with) QuickBooks. Click on the invoice name to reopen the Kantata-generated invoice.
    

    The Status bar at the top shows the current Status of the invoice (Sent, Not Sent, Sync Failed, etc.), and will indicate that it’s been synced with QuickBooks. To open this invoice in QuickBooks, click View Invoice in QuickBooks to see how it looks.

13. After you Send an invoice to QuickBooks, a notification appears in the project’s Activity Feed. In addition, when an invoice is voided or deleted from QuickBooks, you will be notified with a Canceled status.
    Note: Once an invoice has been sent to QuickBooks, you will be unable to cancel it from Kantata OX; you must Void or Delete the invoice in QuickBooks to cancel the corresponding invoice in Kantata OX.
    
14. After the invoice has been received marked as paid in full by QuickBooks, the payment is recorded in Kantata OX automatically; the updated status will then appear in the Activity Feed and when you view the invoice in the future.
    Note: When syncing data, Kantata OX does not accept partially paid invoices from QuickBooks.
    Note: If you are using QuickBooks Desktop, you will need to run the Intuit Web Connector sync in order for Kantata OX to process paid, voided, or deleted QuickBooks Desktop invoices.

Related QuickBooks Articles

• QuickBooks Integration Overview
• Setting up the Mavenlink Integration with QuickBooks
• Using Intuit's Web Connector to Integrate QuickBooks Desktop with Mavenlink