Introduction

The goal of this document is to guide you through the onboarding process for adding the QuickBooks Online integration to a Finale Inventory account.  We will cover the basics of what the QuickBooks integration is capable of doing and if you want to configure Finale Inventory to sync sales revenue to your QuickBooks Online account.  This may require some Q&A with your bookkeeper or CPA.  It is important that you understand what Finale Inventory will and will not push to QuickBooks Online.  There are some key decisions you need to make on how you want to handle your sales revenue information syncing to your QuickBooks online account. It is very important that you read over this entire document before you dive in and activate your QuickBooks Online integration.  Be sure to take notes and formulate a plan for what information in Finale Inventory you want to sync to your QuickBooks online,  After you have your game plan and you have read this entire guide you are ready to proceed with the prerequisites checklist and begin the onboarding process to configure the integration. 

 

IMPORTANT: Please make sure you make a complete backup of your QuickBooks Online account prior to enabling the integration on your Finale Inventory account.  Once Finale Inventory begins to sync/push transactions into your QuickBooks Online account there is no undo or bulk cancellation/reversal ability.  The backup will provide you with recoverability if you make a mistake. 

 

Table of contents

Know what's possible and how to control it

Overview of the steps to integrate with QuickBooks Online

Understand what data syncs to QuickBooks today!

Be aware of changes you may need to make to your QuickBooks Online account

How to control what syncs from Finale Inventory to Quickbooks

How to control which chart of account is used when syncing information to QuickBooks Online

Be aware of the financial process flow

What are Consolidated transactions and how are they used in Finale Inventory?

• How to enable and configure Consolidations
• How does Consolidation status impact when and how data is synced with QuickBooks Online?

Does Finale Inventory support Classes and how do we map transactions to QuickBooks Online Classes?

What are inventory variances and where do they show up in my QuickBooks Online account?

Know how you want to handle your sales  information syncing to QuickBooks Online

Figure out your Sales/Revenue sync requirements

Evaluate your readiness and plan your implementation 

How do you know your Finale Inventory account is ready to sync with QuickBooks Online?

Before you begin to configure the QuickBooks Online integration

Prerequisites checklist for QuickBooks GO-LIVE

Configure the QuickBooks Online Integration

Steps to Configure Finale Inventory QuickBooks Integration

CPA/Bookkeeper Q/As

 

Overview of the steps to integrate with QuickBooks Online

• Be aware of changes that may be required to your QuickBooks Online account in order to proceed
• Ensure you have a properly configured Finale Inventory account
  • Accurate average cost
  • Accurate stock levels
  • Proper accounting practices
  • Correctly configured chart of accounts
• Add the QuickBooks Online integration to your Finale Inventory
  • Connect to your QuickBooks Online account
  • Leave the integration disabled until go-live ready
• Determine what features to enable/disable for syncing data with your QuickBooks Online
  • Enable/Disable Asset valuation/COGS Syncing
  • Enable/Disable PO/Bills/Payments
  • Enable/Disable Income/Invoices
  • Enable/Disable Additional fields to sync with QuickBooks Online For Invoices
  • Enbale/Disable Consolidations  - Summarized journal entries
  • Configure account overrides for products/sale sources/reason codes/integrations
  • Enable/Configure Class mapping
• Map your Finale Inventory General ledger accounts to your QuickBooks Online accounts
• Choose your integration start date
• Make manual journal entry for Inventory valuation in your QuickBooks
• Enable the QuickBooks Online integration in Automatic mode
• Watch for synchronization errors or warnings

back to the Table of contents

 

Understand what data syncs to QuickBooks today!

Financial data in Finale Inventory centers around the two sides of inventory flow, buying, and selling.  Thus purchase orders and sales orders are the primary transactions in Finale Inventory that contribute to the bulk of financial accounting entries to the General Ledger.

 

There are other transactions that mostly adjust stock levels like Stock Takes(Cycle counts), Stock changes, and Builds that will also affect the General Ledger.

 

Transfers normally do not affect any financial data since they just move the inventory from one location to another.

 

If we split these activities into Purchasing, Selling, and adjustments, we can explain the data that will sync to QuickBooks as follows:

 

Bills - How much you owe a supplier/vendor for inventory you purchased(Accounts Payable)

Inventory value - The value of the inventory that you received(QoH) 

Sales(Revenue) - How much you collected from your customers for inventory you sold

Cost of Goods Sold(COGS) - The cost of the inventory when you shipped what you sold

 

Currently, Finale Inventory only creates three types of transactions in QuickBooks.

Purchase orders, Bills,  and Invoices.

Coming very soon, June 2024, Finale will also be able to create Supplier Credit Memos.

 

We can push Purchase orders created in Finale into your QuickBooks Online account.  Purchase orders in Finale Inventory are the central hub for inventory asset valuation and costing. They contain all financial costs for how the inventory you buy from your suppliers will be valued.  If you allow Finale to push Purchase orders into your QuickBooks it allows you to use an alternate Bill workflow where you can create a Bill in your QuickBooks attached to the Purchase order that Finale pushed into your QuickBooks. We will import this QuickBooks-created Bill back into Finale and attach it to our Purchase order in Finale.

 

We sync Bills created in Finale into your QuickBooks Online account.  Bills represent what you owe to your vendors for the inventory you acquire using Purchase orders.  

Soon, you will also be able to create a Supplier Credit memo in Finale Inventory or QuickBooks Online and it will sync.  You will also be able to apply the Credit to a Bill in your QuickBooks online that we sync with, and it will be communicated to Finale Inventory. You may create the Credit Memo in either software, but you may only apply the credit in your QuickBooks Online.

 

We sync Invoices created in Finale into your QuickBooks Online account.  Invoices represent sales revenue you are owed by your customers when using Sales orders. 

 

We support the syncing or importing of bill payments made to Bills in QuickBooks Online back into Finale Inventory on a Bill by Bill basis, meaning a payment made in QuickBooks Online may be made against one single bill or many separate bills for the same vendor, all can be synced back to Finale from QuickBooks Online and mark the Finale Inventory Bill as paid.

Payments created in QuickBooks Online will only sync back into Finale if they were attached to a Bill that is associated with a Bill OR a PO created in Finale Inventory.

 

We create ledger entries for asset value and COGS adjustments directly to their corresponding chart of accounts in your QuickBooks Online chart of accounts.

 

We create ledger entries for all inventory variance transactions(Stock Take or Stock Change) are pushed as ledger entries as well, to the inventory variance expense account or the specific expense account configured for the reason code override.

 

We create ledger entries for all shipments in Finale on Purchase orders and Sales Orders. We use a clearing account for the purpose of understanding the difference in timing between the action of receiving inventory and paying for it(AP) and the action of shipping sales orders and getting paid(AR).

 

We have a consolidated transaction feature for the Asset/COGS and Income/Clearing ledger entries. Consolidated transactions are a great way to reduce the number of ledger entries to your QuickBooks Online account.  Current options support a daily summarized transaction per sales source(channel) that you must manually convert from a Draft stats to a Posted status in order for it to be synced to QuickBooks Online.  We also support options for weekly and monthly consolidated time periods as well as auto-posting of the transactions 24 hours past transaction time.

 

IMPORTANT: At the present moment in time, payments created/made in Finale Inventory on Bills and Invoices are recorded in Finale Inventory’s General Ledger but they should NOT be synced into your QuickBooks.  Make sure they do not add or record any payments against Bills or Invoices in Finale Inventory if they are syncing them into their QuickBooks. These payments created in Finale will cause a GL entry to possibly hit a ledger account in your QuickBooks but it will not be an official payment of the Bill or Invoice in your QuickBooks. All payments for Bills and Invoices should be made in your QuickBooks.

 

Suppliers, Customers, and Products are synced and pushed into QuickBooks when any Bill or Invoice has been posted that contains any of them.   No Product, Customer, or Supplier is pushed from Finale Inventory to Quickbooks until they have been used on a Bill or Invoice.  Supplier and customer data flows from Finale to QuickBooks.  If the user updates data in their QuickBooks for a Customer or Supplier it will not be updated in Finale Inventory.

 

Duplicate Customer or Supplier names may get created in QuickBooks from Finale Inventory.  The most common reason for duplicates is that the Supplier or Customer name in QuickBooks is not exactly the same name, spelling, or capitalization as it is in Finale Inventory. Therefore Finale creates a new entity in Quickbooks. When this happens you can use the Merge feature in Quickbooks to consolidate the two back into one.

 

IMPORTANT:  You must merge the existing Customer or Supplier into the new entity that Finale Inventory created in your Quickbooks Online account.  After it is merged you may edit the name of the entity Finale Inventory pushed into Quickbooks to match the old or preferred spelling.  

 

Finale Inventory also supports syncing some order and invoice field data into custom fields on your QuickBooks Online Invoices.  Helpful information like sales rep, fulfillment options, order source, or customer PO number.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Be aware of changes you may need to make to your QuickBooks Online account

• You do not need any of the inventory management features of QuickBooks Online. All you need is QuickBooks Online Essentials at a minimum. You may use the Plus or Advanced versions as well, but you will not need the inventory features. They will essentially be turned off.
• No Inventory items - When using Finale Inventory to sync information to your QuickBooks Online account we will sync the Product id to your QuickBooks as a Non-Inventory item. If it already exists as an Inventory item you must make it Inactive.  Finale Inventory does NOT use the SKU field in your QuickBooks. We use the Name field. When we create items in your QuickBooks Online account we will use the Product ID from Finale Inventory to be the Name field and the SKU field value. We put the description field from Finale into the sales description field in QuickBooks.  While we set the SKU field to the same value as the name field, we do not reference or use the SKU field in QuickBooks.  If you currently have inventory items in your QuickBooks you will need to make them all Inactive. When you do your QuickBooks will write down the asset value to Cost of Goods Sold. Before you go live with the Finale Inventory QuickBooks integration you will need to make a manual journal entry to put the inventory asset value back.
• No stock levels or quantity on hand - Since Finale Inventory is the master of your inventory stock levels and value we will not push or sync stock quantity to QuickBooks.  We push the stock value of all of your quantity on hand to your inventory asset account in QuickBooks.
• Manual entry must be made to sync up asset valuation - one of the last steps, before you go live with the Finale Inventory QuickBooks integration, will be to sync up your QuickBooks Online asset value with your Finale Inventory asset account valuation. Since Finale Inventory is the master of your inventory valuation you will need to make sure your QuickBooks asset valuation is exactly the same as the Finale Inventory asset valuation for the day before your desired start date.  For example, if you were going to start syncing information from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks on August 1st, 2023, this would be considered your Start date in Finale’s QuickBooks Integration settings. This also means that Finale would only send transactions with a date of 8/1/2023 and later to your QuickBooks. Finale does not push or sync an opening balance to your QuickBooks ledgers. We only sync transactions.  Therefore you need to make sure your inventory asset account balance in your QuickBooks matches Finale Inventory’s inventory asset account balance for the day before we start pushing transactions into your QuickBooks account.  To do this, you go to Finale Inventory’s inventory asset account in the general ledger and see what the ending balance was on 7/31/2023.  You take that balance and compare it to your ending balance in QuickBooks for 7/31/2023. If there is a difference, you calculate what you need to do to make it match Finale Inventory’s balance and make a manual journal entry in your QuickBooks to make it match Finale for the end of the day on 7/31/2023.
• Use of clearing accounts - Finale understands the difference in time between you ordering something and when you receive it and when you pay for it, and likewise when someone orders from you and you ship it and you get paid. Thus, Finale uses a purchase clearing account and a sales clearing account. These two accounts will be used for the two accounts on the non-inventory items we create and manage in your QuickBooks Online account. 

 

 

• Be careful of 3rd party tools that use Inventory items or non-inventory items. Finale must be the master. As seen above, if you have other software connected to your QuickBooks account they may interfere with our management of your inventory items. You need to make sure they do not change the Income/Expense accounts from what you have set the mapping to in Finale Inventory.
• Consider using A2X for eCommerce revenue - Finale Inventory can push revenue in the form of Invoices into your QuickBooks online. This means that in order to get eCommerce revenue from Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, etc from Finale Inventory into your QuickBooks you must configure the integrations in Finale Inventory that pull the sales into Finale to automatically create Invoices in Finale Inventory when you ship the orders. This means that you will have a single invoice for each and every eCommerce order being pushed into your QuickBooks.  This will work fine as long as you do not exceed about 3000 orders per month. It is a BEST PRACTICE to not do this. The best practice is to only put one transaction into your QuickBooks for each selling channel based on the payout statement from that channel.  This is what A2X is designed to do.
• Configure Finale Inventory to push/sync asset valuation, bills(accounts payable), COGS, and manual/B2B sales in the form of invoices to your QuickBooks Online.  Enter your revenue from your eCommerce sites using products like A2X, Synder, or directly from the backend of the selling channel to your QuickBooks with a connector that consolidates the sales to summarized entries that relate to your payouts from those channels.
• A2X is not required. Many companies do what A2X does themselves, manually. They simply go to the back end of the marketplace and get the details of the payout statements and enter them into their QuickBooks Online account. This takes care of the revenue/sales information from their eCommerce sites. Finale Inventory’s integration is configured to push asset valuation, bills/AP, and COGS into their QuickBooks. 

 

back to the Table of contents

 

How to control what syncs from Finale Inventory to Quickbooks

There are two basic ways to control what syncs to QuickBooks from Finale Inventory.

1. The Chart of Accounts mapping
2. Quickbooks Online Integration settings

By not mapping certain accounts on the Chart of Accounts page you will prevent any data from syncing to QuickBooks related to those accounts/transactions, even if the integration is enabled and in Automatic mode.

 

There is a difference between not mapping the account and choosing Exclude transactions for the account.   If you do not map an account at all to a QuickBooks account you will receive error messages and repeated attempts to sync the information that is using the unmapped account in Finale Inventory.  If you have a reason to not send specific information to your QuickBooks account you can choose to “Exclude the transactions for the account.”  This will prevent error messages and repeated attempts to sync information from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks account that you fully intend to avoid.

 

Remember that journal entries to ledger accounts involve two sides, a debit, and a credit. If you fail to map one account or exclude a single account, you will be preventing any transactions from syncing that involve the two accounts together.   For example, Sales shipments will make ledger entries in the asset account and COGS account. If you have not mapped one of those accounts but have mapped the other, you will not see any transactions sync to your QuickBooks for COGS, like sale shipments.

 

In the QuickBooks Online subsection on the Accounting tab in Application settings, you will see choices you can make for filtering which transactions are synced and how information is synced to Quickbooks.  Most of the default will be used in most cases.

 

 

back to the Table of contents

 

How to control which chart of account is used when syncing information to QuickBooks Online

Finale Inventory has a set of default charts of accounts that all items and transactions are configured to use when you first create your Finale Inventory account. These accounts are located in the Application settings, Accounting tab.

 

IMPORTANT: The use of the desired account for transactions must be made prior to the transaction being recorded in Finale Inventory.  If you have been using Finale Inventory and have any stock transactions already committed in your Finale Inventory account, they have already used the default settings and accounts. Adding and changing the default accounts will only affect new transactions committed after the change.

 

 

In order to configure account overrides you must first create the account in the Finale Inventory chart of accounts list using the Create new account button. Then will be able to choose this new account when making setting changes below.

 

For instance, if you wish to have Finale Inventory push Sales income into your QuickBooks Online using specific accounts per the selling channel, you would first create the new accounts, one for each sales channel, and then make the setting changes to use the new accounts you just created.  Make sure the new accounts you create are using the appropriate type for the purpose of the account. 

There are five main areas that have settings to control the accounts that Finale Inventory will use for transactions written to the General Ledger in Finale Inventory and thus, transactions that get synced into your QuickBooks online.

• Individual product id(SKU) overrides - Product tab in application settings
• Receiving/Billing transactions - Purchasing section on the Accounting tab in application settings
• Shipping/Invoice transactions - Selling section on the Accounting tab in application settings
• Purchase/Sales order adjustment overrides - Purchasing/Selling tab in application settings
• Inventory/Integration reason code overrides - Inventory tab in application settings

 

Following are details on the four areas:

1. Individual product id(SKU) overrides

Application settings, Products tab - each product id in Finale Inventory can be associated with only one chart of account for Inventory asset, Income, and COGS.  By default, all product ids will use a standard set of default accounts already created in Finale Inventory.  If you wish to have different accounts for different products like raw material type products be tracked in a Raw material asset account and finished goods inventory item be tracked in a Finished Goods asset account, you will need to enable the Use accounting fields default account overrides.

Once the Override feature is enabled you go to the product details page for each product id to set the accounts to use for Asset, Income, and COGS.

These override accounts may be imported in bulk through the product import screen. 

 

IMPORTANT: Some of these accounts can also be overridden when syncing Income/Clearing/COGS entries to QuickBooks only in the Selling section defaults, sales source overrides. See below.

 

2. Receiving/Billing transactions

Application settings, Accounting tab, Purchasing section - Purchase shipments and bills can be configured to use various default accounts

 

3. Shipping/Invoice transactions

Application settings, Accounting tab, Selling section - Sales Order shipments and invoices can be configured to use various default accounts. There are also Sales Source overrides that can be configured to be used for grouping Income/Clearing/COGS entries to your QuickBooks Online.

 

Be sure to scroll down to see the Source account overrides for Sale Sources. You can use the Option name which will be the Sale Source like “Shopify”, “Amazon”, “eBay”, etc., to configure the use of specific Income/Clearing/COGS accounts per selling channels. 

 

If you do not see the Option name for your selling channel/marketplace or sales source, it is most likely due to the sales integration not being added to Finale Inventory.  When you add selling or marketplace integration to Finale Inventory’s Integration page, the sales source will automatically be created.  If you wish to create your own sales source fields, go to application settings, selling tab, and see the source section on the left.

 

4. Purchase/Sales order adjustment overrides

Application settings, Purchasing/Selling tabs, Adjustments sections. Purchase orders and Sales orders can be configured to have “below the line” adjustments that can be discounts, fees, or taxes. If these adjustments are not allocated they may be configured to override the default adjustment account from the Application settings, Accounting tab, Purchasing/Selling section defaults. Go to Application settings, Purchase/Selling tab adjustments section, and choose the appropriate credit/debit account override for the Adjustment name. Note, adjustments that are using an allocation method cannot be overridden and will be grey with no arrows for dropdown choices.

 

5. Inventory/Integration reason code overrides

Application settings, Inventory tab, Variance reason accounts.  Whenever a change to inventory stock levels is made outside of a Purchase order or Sales order the transaction is considered to be a variance. This variance to inventory stock level will have a positive or negative impact on the asset valuation.  Finale Inventory allows you to establish reason codes for meaning changes to your inventory.  Each reason code may be assigned to a specific chart of account for a purpose of tracking the adjustment to your inventory. The Account type for this account may be one of the following types: Other expense · Other current liability · Other current asset

 

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Be aware of the financial process flow

Make sure that you and your financial people understand that Finale Inventory does not sync all actions in Finale Inventory to QuickBooks and that we use clearing accounts.

 

What is a clearing account?  A clearing account is a temporary balance sheet account that is used to hold amounts or costs for items while other events or activities take place, at which point the funds are moved to their final and permanent account.   Finale Inventory has a clearing account for Purchases and for Sales.  Finale puts funds into the clearing account when the shipment occurs and waits till someone creates a Bill or Invoice for the shipment to move the funds to the final destination account, either Accounts payable or Accounts receivable.

 

IMPORTANT: Finale Inventory allows you to configure multiple Clearing, Income, and COGS accounts for use by each sales source or selling channel you have connected to Finale Inventory.  This is not the default configuration. You must add the specific accounts for each sales source and update settings in Finale to use each account respectively and map them to your QuickBooks Online account.

 

See the pictures below that explain the key actions in Finale Inventory that lead to financial transactions in the ledger.  Notice the Credit and Debit in the clearing accounts for the time between the shipment and the Bill or Invoice.

 

Purchase order workflow

Sales Order workflow

 

Remember that Finale Inventory uses financial clearing accounts for both purchase orders and sales orders. This is different than Quickbooks’s normal chart of accounts configuration and process flow.  QuickBooks Online does not use clearing accounts. It will recognize revenue immediately when the Invoice is created because they do not know when it was shipped. So, QuickBooks Online will hit the Asset account and Accounts receivable account immediately when the Invoice is posted, not using any clearing account.  Because Finale Inventory knows when orders/items are shipped we recognize revenue when the items are shipped, thus we use a clearing account to hold the revenue between the time the order is shipped and the Invoice is created.  This allows Finale Inventory to know what back-ordered sales or deferred revenue are.   This is also true on the Purchase order side. Finale uses a separate Purchase Clearing account. This should normally be received very positively by your CPA/Bookkeeper.  

 

To explain this flow more easily,  when a sales order is created in Finale Inventory, regardless of whether it has been paid or not, there is no revenue reported to any chart of account.  Finale Inventory waits until a shipment occurs to declare revenue(Sales Income), and then later that revenue is financially reconciled with an invoice.  So, when the sales order is created and committed to in Finale Inventory, the sales revenue is not entered into Sales Income in the general ledger.  When items are shipped we increase the Sales Clearing account with a DEBIT and CREDIT the Sales Income account for the product revenue(items on the order). Later, when an invoice is posted, the revenue is moved out of the sales clearing account with a CREDIT,  and into the Accounts receivable account with a DEBIT. Finale sends the Invoice to QuickBooks Online. Later, when the bookkeeper posts a payment against the invoice in QuickBooks Online, the revenue clears the accounts payable and moves it to undeposited funds.

Contrast this with how QuickBooks Online operates without Finale Inventory. You do not have sales orders in QuickBooks Online. You only have an Invoice. When you create an invoice in QuickBooks, it recognizes income and goes straight to accounts payable in one step. No clearing account or clearing transactions are involved.

 

To show these financial steps to your bookkeeper/CPA or to see more information about general ledger transaction flows in Finale Inventory go here: Finale General Ledger transaction flow

 

back to the Table of contents

 

What are Consolidated transactions and how are they used in Finale Inventory?

Finale Inventory strongly recommends you use Consolidations if your company has eCommerce sales or has large sales orders with multiple products/SKU on them. 

 

Consolidations are summarized journal entries created by an automated process in Finale Inventory that consolidates all the COGS and Income ledger entries made in one day, one week, or one month by selling channel. They are comprised of a summarized journal entry with a list of sales order shipments that made up the consolidation.  These consolidations are not enabled by default and must be set up and configured in Application settings.  If enabled they will dramatically reduce the number of ledger entries made to the QuickBooks Online chart of accounts for COGS and Income.

 

Finale Inventory has a General ledger where we track all financial transactions that result from all stock transactions in Finale Inventory. The General Ledger has a chart of accounts that is used for all stock transactions.  Whenever a stock transaction is completed in Finale Inventory there will be ledger entries made into the appropriate accounts. Go here to see a list of journal entries for each of the corresponding stock transactions: Finale General Ledger transaction flow

 

Finale Inventory makes very detailed ledger entries. This means that there are multiple entries per order line item made to the corresponding ledgers. So one order shipment in Finale Inventory is not one ledger entry but four ledger entries per every order line item in the shipment. If you have hundreds or thousands of sales orders shipping out each day, this will lead to thousands of ledger entries made to Finale ledgers for Assets, Sales Clearing, Income, COGS, etc.   This is perfectly normal for Finale Inventory and our ledgers can handle this type of volume very easily.   Where this becomes an issue is with synchronizing our financial information with outside accounting software like QuickBooks Online.   We strongly recommend that if you are going to use Finale Inventory to push Asset, COGS, or revenue entries into your QuickBooks Online that you turn on and use Consolidated transactions in Finale Inventory.

 

Consolidated transactions in Finale Inventory are a great way to simplify ledgers. Once it is enabled and configured, Finale Inventory will automatically summarize all transactions for each sales source configured in Finale into two journal entries per day, week, or month. One for COGS and one for Income.

These consolidated transactions will have a detailed list of all the transactions that comprised the summarization for the day, week, or month for the selling channel.

 

NOTE: Even if you have configured the QuickBooks Online integration settings to not sync income into your QuickBooks Online from Finale Inventory, the Consolidations for income will still be created for all enabled sales sources and they should be posted to Finale Inventory’s general ledger. We will not push them to QuickBooks Online if you have configured to not sync that sales source or ledger account.

 

IMPORTANT: Failing to POST any consolidation transactions left in a DRAFT status will prevent you from reporting on the Income or COGS from the sales transactions in that consolidation for general ledger reports in Finale Inventory. 

 

UNDERSTAND: Consolidations are for a specific frequency: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly. If you post a draft consolidation before its frequency is complete, Finale Inventory will automatically create additional draft consolidations to consolidate the remainder of the frequency.

 

CRITICAL: Do not enable consolidation for sales sources that you will need invoices to sync from Finale to QuickBooks online.  If you consolidate a sales source that has invoices in Finale Inventory, those invoices will not be synced as invoices into your QuickBooks.  If you enabled consolidation for a source you need Invoices synced to QuickBooks Online, you must turn off the consolidation for that source and go and cancel any consolidations for that source so that the invoices will be synced.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

How to enable and configure Consolidations

To enable the Consolidation feature go to Application settings, Accounting tab, to the Consolidations section.

Notice that all existing sales sources for your Finale Inventory account will be listed with a default setting of “Do not consolidate sales.”  These sales sources come from default sources created for all Finale Inventory accounts and any Sales/Marketplace integrations you have added to your Integrations page.

Online, Phone, Email, Retailer, Other, and No sales source are default sales sources created for all Finale Inventory accounts. If you do not see the sales source for your selling channel/marketplace it is most likely due to the sales integration not being added to Finale Inventory.  When you add selling or marketplace integration to Finale Inventory’s Integration page, the sales source will automatically be created.  If you wish to create your own sales source fields, go to application settings, selling tab, and see the source section on the left. Do not add sales sources manually for any integration-based sales sources like Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shipstation, etc. These will be automatically added to the list when you have the integration added and connected on the Integration page.

 

Choose the Sales source you want to enable consolidations for and change the setting from “Do not consolidate sales” to one of the other two options:

 

• Consolidate sales
• Consolidate and post sales
• Do not consolidate sales

 

 

Choosing “Consolidate sales” or “Consolidate and post sales” will enable the feature for all sales for the given sales source you selected.  You will then see two more options be enabled for the frequency of the consolidations and the date on which they will begin.

 

 

The difference between Consolidate sales and Consolidate and post sales is how and when the consolidated transactions will be posted to Finale Inventory’s General Ledger and thus when they will show up in your QuickBooks Online account.  Choose Consolidate sales if you want to control when the consolidation transaction is POSTED. Finale will create the consolidation transaction in DRAFT status. It will stay in DRAFT status until you change it to POSTED. If you do not change it to posted it will never be recorded in the general ledger and it will never be synced to QuickBooks Online.

Choose Consolidate and post sales if you want Finale Inventory to automatically update the consolidation transactions from DRAFT to POSTED for you. It will do so 24 hours after the selected frequency.  This option gives you 24 hours after the previous day’s sales to review the DRAFT consolidation if you have chosen Daily for the frequency.  If you have chosen Weekly(Monday to Sunday) or Monthly as your frequency,  it will automatically post the consolidations 1 day after the consolidation period.

 

Once you have made all three selections, it will take 5 to 10 minutes before you will see the first Consolidation transactions show up on the Consolidation list screen.

 

Notice that this view can be searched, Filtered by status, Date, sales source, and other information.  There will be two transactions per frequency per sales source. One for COGS and one for Income.  If you click on the Consolidation ID it will take you to the journal entry details.

 

 

From this detail page, click on the Transaction list tab to see all the sales transactions make up this consolidation.

 

Click on the sale link and you will be taken to the shipment details page.

 

Note that can see that the sale shipment has been added to a consolidation transaction. You can click the link to go back to the consolidated transaction details. The first one is the COGS entry and the second one is the Income entry.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

How does the status of a Consolidation impact when and how data is synced with QuickBooks Online?

Consolidations must be POSTED to be entered into the General Ledger in Finale Inventory and thus to be synced into your QuickBooks account.  Finale Inventory integrations run on an automated 5-minute cycle.

So, if you just POSTED a Consolidation it may be about 5 to 10 minutes before you will see it show up in your QuickBooks account. You can always go to the Integrations page and use the run task now feature on the QuickBooks Online integration 

 

 

Remember if you chose the Consolidate sales feature when you enabled consolidation you will need to remember to go to the Consolidation list screen yourself and select the Consolidation transactions you wish to move from a DRAFT status to a POSTED status.  They will not post on their own or automatically.

 

 

If you choose the Consolidate and post sales feature when you enable consolidations Finale will automatically update the DRAFT status transactions to POSTED status for you, 1 day after the frequency period selected for the consolidations.

 

You may also POST the consolidation from the detail screen of the transaction.

 

If you change the status of a consolidation from DRAFT to POSTED and you change your mind, you may Cancel the POSTED consolidation.  If Finale Inventory has already synced it with your QuickBooks Online account, Canceling it in Finale Inventory will reverse it out of your QuickBooks Online account.

 

NOTE: If you change the status of a consolidation from DRAFT to POSTED prior to the end of the consolidation frequency, Finale Inventory will automatically create a new secondary consolidation transaction in DRAFT status, and continue to add new transactions to it.

 

IMPORTANT: If you consolidate a sales source that has invoices in Finale Inventory, those invoices will not be synced as invoices into your QuickBooks.  If you enabled consolidation for a source you need Invoices synced to QuickBooks Online, you must turn off the consolidation for that source and go and cancel any consolidations for that source so that the invoices will be synced.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Does Finale Inventory support Classes and how do we map transactions to QuickBooks Online Classes?

Finale Inventory will be supporting the use of various order and product fields and attributes for mapping sales transaction information into QuickBooks Online Classes.  We will be adding a Classes configuration section on the Accounting tab in Application settings.  From there you will be able to choose what method and field you want to use in Finale Inventory to map to specific Classes in your QuickBooks Online Account.  More information will be coming in the next few months.

 

Make sure you have enabled Classes in your QuickBooks Online settings.

 

 

You will choose between using one Class for one entire transaction or using many different classes per transaction where you may assign a different class to each row in a transaction. For example, if you were going to have a Class in your QuickBooks for Amazon, Shopify, and eBay, then this would most likely be one class for the entire transaction. You would not for example have two different classes for the order that came from Amazon.  Another example would be that you want to have a different class used for each product on an order, regardless of where the items were sold. Then you would select One for each row in the transaction so you would be able to map the sales/COGS for each product to a different class in your QuickBooks.

 

Once you have your Classes established in your QuickBooks Online, Finale Inventory will be able to read them after you have connected your Finale Inventory account to your QuickBooks account.

 

To configure Classes in Finale inventory, go to Application settings, Accounting tab, Classes section on the lower left.

 

Here you will choose how you will assign Classes for your sales in Finale Inventory.  Chose from one of the four options: Sales source, Product category, or from one of your custom order or product fields you have configured on your Finale Inventory account.  Below you will see an example of two order-level custom fields, Sales Person and “Your Custom Field”.

Choose a Sales source if you want to assign a Class for each selling channel or source in Finale Inventory. This would be one class per transaction.

 

 

Notice how Finale will pull the classes from your QuickBooks into the selection list. Map your Finale Inventory Class option to QuickBooks Class value.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

What are inventory variances and where do they show up in my QuickBooks Online account?

When you make a change to your inventory stock level in Finale Inventory using a Stock Change transaction or a Stock Take transaction it will cause the asset valuation to either go up or down. This is called a variance to your inventory stock level and valuation.   These additions or subtractions from inventory should have a reason code that tags the variance with a reason or purpose for making the adjustment to your inventory. The reason codes are stored in the Application Settings, Inventory tab.

 

Notice that you may add your own reason codes or edit the existing ones. You can enable them for Stock changes or Stock takes or both. 

 

By default, these inventory variances will be all reported to the inventory variance account in Finale Inventory. They will not be transmitted into your QuickBooks online into different expense accounts. They will only go into one expense account that you map Finale Inventory’s inventory variance account to on the chart of accounts page in Application settings, Accounting, Chart of accounts section.

To understand what the breakdown of the variances are for a given time period, you will need to run a custom report that shows the variances for a given time period summarized by the reason codes.

 

Finale Inventory also allows you to configure reason code overrides for the purpose of tracking variances into specific accounts per each reason code or type.

 

Go to Application settings, Inventory tab, Variance reason accounts.  Whenever a change to inventory stock levels is made outside of a Purchase order or Sales order the transaction is considered to be a variance. This variance in inventory stock level will have a positive or negative impact on the asset valuation.  Finale Inventory allows you to establish reason codes for meaningful changes to your inventory.  Each reason code may be assigned to a specific chart of account for the purpose of tracking the adjustment to your inventory. The Account type for this account may be one of the following types: Other expense · Other current liability · Other current asset

 

IMPORTANT: If you are an FBA(Fulfillment by Amazon) seller/user and you have connected Finale Inventory to your Amazon FBA account and have virtualized your FBA stock level in your Finale Inventory account using a Finale Location/Sublocation for viewing the stock level at FBA, and you have turned on the automatic, nightly feature that imports your stock levels from Amazon FBA and overwrites them in Finale Inventory, each and every day there will be variances created from this process. This will end up sending an inventory variance into your QuickBooks chart of account. If you leave the default settings in Finale Inventory which will send it all to the Inventory variance account, it will have the appearance of you finding and losing a lot of inventory. This is not recommended.  Make sure you create a specific FBA Inventory variance account and map the Integration stock change reason to use this account.

 

FBA Alterative implementation choice: If you would still like to connect Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks and keep the virtualization of FBA inventory, we could also turn off the nightly stock import feature on the Amazon FBA. You would only run it ONCE per month, manually, on the last or first day of the month. That way you only get one variance for the entire month.   In the near future, Finale Inventory will be improving the FBA stock level visibility in Finale Inventory and will have a better solution for handling the FBA stock valuation.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Know how you want to handle your sales  information syncing to QuickBooks Online

When it comes to syncing information from Finale Inventory to QuickBooks, the most important choice to make revolves around how to hand their Sales information.

• Scenario 1: You are a business that has eCommerce sales only

• Scenario 2: You are a business that has eCommerce sales and manually created B2C/B2B type sales

• Scenario 3: You are a business that does not have any eCommerce sales and only has direct B2C/B2B sales which that manually create in Finale Inventory

• Scenario 4: You are a business that wants no syncing of Sales Revenue from Finale Inventory. You only want manual summarized journal entries made to their QuickBooks from analyzing reports in Finale Inventory(Only want Bills, Assets, and COGS)

• Scenario 5: You are a business that does not use Finale Inventory to track any sales(simple accounts for In/Out inventory/stock management)

• Scenario 6: You want some other hybrid combination of the above situations or you want to customize what information you want to sync to your QuickBooks Online.

Scenario 1: eCommerce Only setting choices

Example A - Sync Bills, Assets, COGS, and No revenue data from Finale Inventory to QuickBooks

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Leave Sale source filter empty

• When mapping chart of accounts, do not map any Sales revenue related accounts:

 

Back to the Scenario list

Example B - Sync Bills, Assets, COGS, and Revenue data sent from Finale Inventory as invoices

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Set a sales source filter for any source or sources they do want to see invoices pushed for. Leave blank if they want invoices for all orders from all sources.

•  Make sure when mapping their accounts you do map all the sales revenue fields

  

 

• Make sure all sources of sales revenue that they want to sync to QuickBooks have Create invoice turned on in the integration and a Default Customer name for the Source is assigned

 

Back to the Scenario list

• Scenario 2: Finale account has eCommerce sales and manually created B2C/B2B type sales

Example A: Sync Bills, Assets, COGS, and only Manual orders sales revenue synced to QuickBooks

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Set a sales source filter to the Manual order sale source values. If you do not have a sales source called Manual order, you may add one to the list in Application settings, Selling tab, Source section.

• Make sure when mapping their accounts you do map all the sales revenue fields

  

 

•  Make sure all manual order sources of sales revenue that they want to sync to QuickBooks have a posted invoice

 

Back to the Scenario list

• Scenario 3: Finale account does not have any eCommerce sales and only have direct B2C/B2B sales which they will manually create in Finale Inventory

 

• Example A - Sync Bills, Assets, COGS, and all invoices to their QuickBooks

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Leave Sales source filer empty/blank

If you use custom fields on your QuickBooks Online Invoices you may use the section below to choose what information in Finale Inventory syncs to the custom fields on your QuickBooks Online Invoice:

You may choose to not update any fields, or choose from any Finale invoice and sales order custom fields, or any of the following Finale Invoice/Order fields: 

• Sales source
• Origin
• Order date
• Fulfillment
• Requested shipping
• Customer PO

•  Make sure when mapping their accounts you do map all the sales revenue fields

  

 

• Make sure all sources of sales revenue that they want to sync to QuickBooks they Create and post an invoice for them

 

Back to the Scenario list

• Scenario 4: Finale account wants no syncing of Sales Revenue from Finale Inventory.  They only want manual summarized journal entries made to their QuickBooks from analyzing reports in Finale Inventory

 

• Example A - Sync Bills, Assets, COGS, no sales data at all to their QuickBooks

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Leave Sale source filter empty

• When mapping chart of accounts, do not map any Sales revenue related accounts:

 

 

Back to the Scenario list

• Scenario 5: Finale account does not use Finale Inventory to track any sales

• Example A - Sync Bills, Assets, COGS only

 

• Determine and set integration filter start date
• Use defaults for Accounts payable section
• Use defaults for Import customers and suppliers
• Leave Sale source filter empty

• When mapping chart of accounts, do not map any Sales revenue related accounts:

 

Back to the Scenario list

• Scenario 6: You want some other hybrid combination of the above situations or you want to customize what information you want to sync to your QuickBooks Online.

  • If the previous scenarios did not fit your needs you may need to seek professional help from Finale Inventory or one of our Accounting service provider partners.
  • Another approach would be for you to create a new, free, trial account of QuickBooks Online that is not your real account or set of books. Then connect Finale Inventory to this trial account and test all the different options and features so you can see how they operate and how they will impact your QuickBooks account.  After you have figured out the way you would like your integration to work, simply add another new QuickBooks Online integration to your Finale Inventory account and configure it to connect to your real QuickBooks Online account.  Be sure to deactivate the previous QuickBooks Online integration on Finale’s Integration page that was connected to your trial/test account.

 

Back to the Scenario list

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Figure out your Sales/Revenue sync requirements

Each of the above scenarios has multiple options to consider and support when it comes to configuring Finale Inventory to sync sales information into QuickBooks.

Finale currently only supports syncing detailed, non-summarized invoices to QuickBooks for sales.  There are many ways to configure Finale Inventory to communicate financial data to QuickBooks. Some include sales information, and some do not. The following are four basic approaches:

 

• Sales Approach 1: You want to sync sales information from Finale Inventory - This will likely be the most common method at this time. Currently, Finale only supports syncing sales information to QuickBooks in the form of open invoices for each and every sales order or for only a subset of sales orders using the Source filter. 
• Sales Approach 2: You do not want to sync any sales information from Finale Inventory because you do not want invoices for each and every eCommerce sale.  In this configuration, Finale Inventory will be configured not to push any sales information into QuickBooks. You will then use QuickBooks built-in connectors to import sales directly from your marketplaces.
• Sales Approach 3: You want to sync a limited or filtered set of sales information from Finale Inventory via invoice using the Source filter on Finale sales orders/invoices and use some other third-party service or QuickBooks built-in connector to import the rest of your sales information into your QuickBooks.   
• Sales Approach 4: You currently use or will use a third-party software tool to retrieve sales information directly from their sales platforms, for example, services like A2X or Webgility.

 

back to the Table of contents

 

How do you know your Finale Inventory account is ready to sync with QuickBooks Online?

Before you enable the QuickBooks Online integration you must make sure your Finale Inventory account is configured correctly and you have ensured that you do not have any stock valuation issues that have not been resolved for the start date filter you have chosen.  Below is a list of items to check in your Finale Inventory account to make sure you are ready:

1. Each and every product id must have a value configured/computed for Average cost. A blank average cost is not zero and is only acceptable if you have never had any inventory on hand of that product. If any product id has quantity on hand it must have an average cost of 0.00 or higher. Use the Average cost change transaction to establish an average cost with a record date prior to any stock level being established in your inventory for that product. To do this, look at the stock history for the product id. Find the first record date where the stock level was added. Make sure there is an average cost established before that date. Use the Effective date on the Average cost change transaction to establish a cost before the first record date.
2. Make sure there are no inactive product ids with quantity on hand. Deactivated product ids carry stock quantity and thus can carry value. If you have deactivated any product ids without removing any stock quantity on hand you will have orphaned stock value.  Your stock reports will not provide you with accurate information since you have deactivated products that will be excluded from the reports. The General ledger will still hold the value and also send this value into your QuickBooks.  Run a report or use the product view to verify that all inactive product ids have no quantity on hand. If they do, you must reactivate them, then remove the stock, then deactivate them again. Remember, you must do this in time correctly. If you do it for today, but you are syncing your records with QuickBooks with a start date filter from last month, you have not corrected the problem in time correctly. Make sure when you are correcting stock issues the record date(effective date) of the change must be before your sync start date filter.  You cannot use a backdated stocktake. You must use a back-dated stock change.
3. Make sure you do not have any packed sale shipments on any sales orders in a completed state.  Any packed sales shipment should be current and still in your warehouse. If you have any completed sales orders with packed shipments they are still on your books/ledger. They must be shipped so that the value can be removed from assets and reported to COGS.  Run a report to find any packed sale shipments where the sales order has a completed status.  To correct them you must revert the sales order to the draft state, go to the shipments tab, find the shipment in a packed state, ship the shipment with a correctly backdated ship date, then put the sales order back into the Completed state.  There is no bulk solution for this, you must manually fix each one that you may have.
4. Make sure you do not have any transfers erroneously left in an In Transit state.
5. Make sure you do not have any stock item in stock with a negative quantity on hand.
6. Make sure all your average costs for each product are positive and are the value you expected. If you have any product ids with a negative average cost or have an average cost that is grossly overstated, you most likely have major stock management issues.  Things that contribute to this situation are:  Shipping items out of inventory when you do not have the quantity on hand, receiving inventory on purchase orders after you have shipped the items out of inventory, using purchase orders and not providing a price, never establishing a proper average cost for your items and running the inventory system with a negative quantity on hand, or using product ids for non-inventory items and shipping them on sales orders without configuring them properly.
7. Any location/warehouse in Finale Inventory that has quantity on hand will be pushing stock valuation into your QuickBooks inventory asset accounts if configured to do so, make sure you understand there is no filter or setting to not sync one warehouse vs another.  If you configure Finale Inventory to sync asset valuation to your QuickBooks, all asset valuation is synced regardless of what location/warehouse it is sitting in.  Asset accounts are associated with products, not warehouses.
8. If you have turned on Consolidations, make sure you have posted previous period draft consolidations.  Draft Consolidations do now show up in the General Ledger but their content/transactions do show up in inventory valuation reports.

 

Use the reports in Finale Inventory to verify your stock valuation is correct. Run the Inventory valuation audit by location, in units report from the Accounting, Audit reports section. 

 

This report will help highlight common issues and mistakes with your stock valuation.

In the report example above you can see that products are missing average cost which will impact your stock valuation. Also, you can see that there are packed inventory items that are impacting valuation.  It is normal to have packed inventory for the current day or the most recent few days, it is not normal to have packed shipments forever. Note this report gives you a total valuation. Use this total valuation and evaluate it against the Stock valuation on the Stock view screen and the General ledger inventory account balance.

 

See that the total valuation on the audit report matches the valuation at the top of the stock view. If they do not match, you could have an issue you need to resolve. Make sure you are using the correct filters for the view when evaluating the value.

 

See the General ledger, Inventory balance for the time period of the audit report. The balance in the General ledger inventory account is what will be pushed into your QuickBooks. If this balance does not match the Stock view screen valuation and the Inventory valuation audit report, investigate the difference.

Notice in the example above, the General ledger shows a $16,171.16 balance. This is $5.84 lower than the audit and stock view screen.  There could be a logical explanation for this or it could be evidence that you have other problems.

 

Check to make sure that you do not have Draft Consolidation transactions that need to be posted so that your General ledger balance will align with the stock view/reports.

 

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Before you begin to configure the QuickBooks Online integration

1. Know what you want to sync to your QuickBooks so you know how to configure the settings.  Most users are going to want to sync Bills, Inventory valuation, and COGS. The big question is how they want to handle their sales revenue.
2. Know if you are using an established QuickBooks Online account or a brand new account.
3. If you do not know what you want to sync from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks and how you want to handle revenue information from Finale, you should consult with your CPA or Bookkeeper.
4. Do you have any other software syncing information into your QuickBooks, like A2X, Connex, Webgility, or from their marketplaces or websites?  These software services can interfere with information we need to sync like Products!
5. Find out if you have a close date on your books.  If you do the integration Filter start date must be after the close date. If you want to sync records from Finale Inventory that is before the close date of QuickBooks then you must remove the close or change it to a date before the desired transactions dates and filter start date. For more information read this helpful article:

QuickBooks Close Date

 

back to the Table of contents

Prerequisites checklist for QuickBooks GO-LIVE

1. You must have Administrator access/privileges to your QuickBooks Online account in order to connect it to Finale Inventory
2. Your QuickBooks must not be using Inventory item types for tracking their POs and SOs.
   1. If you do not have any inventory items in their QuickBooks, you are good to move forward  
   2. If you have any Inventory items that match any current product ids in Finale Inventory, they MUST be deactivated. IMPORTANT: When you deactivate a QuickBooks Inventory item, QuickBooks will CREDIT their Asset account and DEBIT an expense account, thus removing asset value from their QuickBooks!  This will need to be put back with a journal entry made manually from the inventory value in Finale Inventory if you are NOT pushing from the beginning of time as the Filter start date.  If you use any value in the Filter start date field that is NOT from the beginning of when you started using Finale Inventory, you will need to make the manual journal entry to get the beginning balance of your Inventory asset account for the day before the Filter start date.
   3. Make sure no other third-party software is pushing new Products into your QuickBooks. These may cause collisions and duplicate items or warnings and prevent our data from syncing.
3. DETERMINE THE INTEGRATION Filter start date  - This will be the date Finale Inventory will be syncing all transactions from Finale to QuickBooks. 

NOTE: There will not be any account/ledger balance transaction created by Finale Inventory. Only incremental transaction entries from the as-of-date forward.  If you want the Inventory asset account balance in your QuickBooks to match what Finale Inventory’s inventory asset account balance states, you must review the Finale Inventory Asset account balance for the date before the Filter start date. The balance of the inventory asset account should be used to calculate a journal entry for your QuickBooks inventory asset account balance to make it equal to the value of Finale inventory. The journal entry in your QuickBooks should be made for the day before the Filter start date in Finale’s QuickBooks Online Integration setting.

IMPORTANT: Filter start date must be after the QuickBooks close date if their books are closed.

4. Average cost and valuation must be established for the Filter start date and forward before you activate and enable the integration to push data to your QuickBooks Online account. The average cost must be established for all items in Finale Inventory. Do you have your average cost step up correctly?
5. Make sure you do not have any negative QOH
6. If pushing revenue you must have Invoices being created for all sources that you want to sync from the Filter start date forward.  Make sure you understand if you are wanting to see sales from eCommerce sources from Finale Inventory go into your QuickBooks they will be individual invoices.  This means if you have 5000 sales orders in a month in Shopify, there will be 5000 invoices synced from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks.
7. IMPORTANT: Please make sure you make a complete backup of your QuickBooks Online account prior to enabling the integration on your Finale Inventory account.  Once Finale Inventory begins to sync/push transactions into your QuickBooks Online account there is no undo or bulk cancellation/reversal ability.  The backup will provide you with recoverability if you make a mistake. 

 

back to the Table of contents

 

Steps to Configure Finale Inventory QuickBooks Integration

 

If you are on a Finale Inventory Silver-level subscription plan or higher, you are allowed to install the QuickBooks Online integration on your Finale Inventory account.  You will be prompted to email service@finaleinventory.com  to do so when you attempt to add it to the integration page.

 

Steps to activate the QuickBooks Online Integration

1. Add the QuickBooks Online integration and leave it deactivated
2. Map your Finale Inventory chart of accounts to your QuickBooks Online chart of accounts
3. Set the integration Filter start date
4. Set transaction syncing options for Bills and accounts payables
5. Set transaction syncing options for Invoices and income and accounts receivable
6. Review the PREREQUISITES list for GO LIVE
7. Make a backup of your QuickBooks Online account for do diligence and recoverability.
8. Activate the QuickBooks Online Integration

 

Below is a detailed description of the setup and configuration process.

 

1. Add the QuickBooks Online integration

 

 

Scroll down till you find the Intuit QuickBooks integration

 

You will be taken to an email form to send to service@finaleinventory.com to add the QuickBooks Online Integration to your account. Remember that you must be a Silver level or above subscription in order to have the integration added.  Once Finale Inventory support adds the integration you will be able to set it up.

 

Click on the Setup integration button.

 

Connect to your QuickBooks Online account

 

 

Intuit will have you log in and authorize Finale Inventory to connect to your QuickBooks account.

 

 

And return you back to this page where you may test the integration to see if it is successfully connected:

 

Return to your Finale Inventory Integration page and see that the integration is Disabled and ready for you to configure your account mapping and sync settings.

 

Back to the steps to configure

2. Mapping your Chart of accounts

Finale Inventory has a general ledger that contains numerous accounts for inventory and order management.  As seen in the picture below, the accounts in the Name column are the Finale Inventory ledger account.  These must be mapped or connected to your QuickBooks chart of accounts that corresponds to the same purpose or transaction.

You must first make a connection to your QuickBooks Online account before you will be able to map them.  If you do not see the QuickBooks column on the far right of the integration for QuickBooks then your QuickBooks Online account is not connected to your Finale Inventory account.

 

Most QuickBooks companies will have most of these accounts.  

If you do not have a corresponding account in your QuickBooks, use the +Create new account feature to add an account to your QuickBooks from within Finale Inventory.  

 

 

Take the defaults in create new accounts dialog.

 

We highly suggest you edit the NAME of the account you add to your QuickBooks Online account with the prefix of “Finale”, that way you and your accountant or bookkeeper will know where it came from.   You can easily merge this new account into an existing one or rename it later.

For the example above, change the name to “ Finale Purchases clearing account”.

 

Recommendations

 

• We highly suggest creating a chart of accounts for each sales source for Income, Clearing, and COGS and using the sales source accounting overrides. These will help with any reconciliation issues, reporting, and consolidations. See here.
• If pushing any revenue to QuickBooks, you must map all sales/AR accounts:  These include Sales clearing, Income, Accounts receivable, Sales tax, and Sales adjustments should all be mapped.

 

• If you do not want any eCommerce revenue but you do need manual or B2B invoices to go, must still map all the above revenue-related accounts and be sure to add a Sales source filter in the integration setting.
• For eCommerce sales, set default customers for each sales source in the Shipstation/marketplace configuration. This takes two steps normally. First, create the default customer value for the sales source in Finale, then use this Customer value in the Integration pull sales configuration to use as the default assigned customer for the invoice.
• On any Marketplace or Shipstaton integration, the Pull sales to Finale, Edit task configuration option that enables the Create invoices feature should ONLY only be turned on if we are going to push invoices/revenue to your QuickBooks, or if you must have backorder deferred revenue journal calculation. In the latter case. invoices must be created but filtered out of the general ledger sync using the sales source filter.

IMPORTANT: If you have elected NOT to push any sales revenue information to your QuickBooks you must NOT MAP any of the following accounts. Set them to exclude transactions for account:  

 

 

IMPORTANT: Check to see if you have more than one Asset, Income or COGS account in your QuickBooks and use them for different types of products.  Most companies that manufacture or assemble items from components or raw materials have multiple asset/COGS accounts.  If you do you will need to configure Finale Inventory to use the product level override accounts in Application settings, Products tab.  You will also need to add accounts for each to Finale Inventory’s Chart of accounts list so that you can map them to your QuickBooks chart of accounts.

In order to support multiple assets, income, or COGS accounts, you must do the following:

 

• Turn on the Use accounting fields option on the Product tab of Application settings:

 

• Add the additional Finale Inventory asset, income, or COGS account to the Finale Inventory Chart of Accounts list in Application settings, Accounting tab, Chart of Accounts subsection.

 

 

• Add the new Finale Inventory account to the Product details Accounting override section on the Product id.

 

 

• Map these individual assets, income, or COGS accounts to your respective QuickBooks accounts on the chart of accounts mapping page in Application settings:

 

IMPORTANT: If you have been using Finale Inventory with only one set of accounts, and then make a change to use multiple accounts, this will NOT affect previously recorded transactions.  It will only affect new transactions from this change forward.

Back to the steps to configure

3. Set the integration Filter start date

The QuickBooks integration Filter start date is used to control from what record date in Finale Inventory the integration will sync from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks.  All transactions with a record date on the Filter start date and forward will be synced into your QuickBooks, provided that you have mapped the ledger accounts for the transactions and they are not being filtered out by the sales source filter if they are invoices.  When you choose a Filter start date, Finale pushes all transactions from that date forward. It does not push any current account balances or initial account balances in Finale Inventory’s ledger.

Consider initial balances

Have the client check their Inventory asset account balance in their QuickBooks for the date before the chosen integration Filter start date.  Notice in the pictures above the Filter start date is 6/15/2022 and comparing that to the Finale General ledger Inventory account for the date before and after.  See that the Finale Inventory asset account balance on the 14th and up until 7/12/2022 was zero.  If the QuickBooks account balance was zero then they are both the same and when Finale starts pushing all transactions on the integration Filter start date and forward, it would be adding to the zero balance in QuickBooks, just like it adds to the zero balance in Finale.  When choosing the date for the Filter start date you should know if that date in Finale Inventory has a non-zero initial balance in the Inventory asset account in the General ledger. If it does, you will need to make sure the client understands they will need to look at the date before this Filter start date in Finale’s Inventory asset account and use the ending balance for that day as a basis for creating a manual journal entry in their QuickBooks to bring its balance inline with Finale Inventory.  If Finale’s balance is not correct, then they may need to fix their average cost and transactional history in Finale or they can enter a manual journal entry to Finale Inventory’s asset account to bring it in line with what they have in their QuickBooks or what they want it to be.

Recommendation

When choosing the Filter start date, it should either be blank/empty for the beginning of time and all transactions in Finale Inventory from the start of the account will be synced into QuickBooks, or it should be the date in Finale Inventory after which you have correct stock levels and average cost(valuation) in your Finale Inventory and if you are syncing sale, that you have begun creating invoices for all relevant sales orders you plan to sync to QuickBooks.

 

Back to the steps to configure

4. Set transaction syncing options for Bills in the Accounts payable section

When Finale syncs purchasing information to QuickBooks it can be configured to sync the data as Bills only, Purchase orders and Bills, or as Journal entries or a combination.

Finale can also import Bill payments from QuickBooks and Bills created in QuickBooks against purchase orders Finale Inventory sync to QuickBooks.

 

IMPORTANT:  Make sure that the client does not create, add, or post any payments in Finale Inventory against their Bills or Invoices.  IF they do they should void them.

 

 

Configure the following options:

 

Import suppliers

When connecting your Finale Inventory account to your QuickBooks Online account you will have two options for handling Supplier/Vendor information syncing.

 

 

There are two options here:

Update existing Finale suppliers only - DEFAULT setting

 

This is the default setting. This means that Finale Inventory will only link and sync existing Finale Inventory supplier names with your QuickBooks Online account.   Finale will not import any vendors from your QuickBooks.  When using this setting, Finale Inventory will use the supplier name in Finale to find a matching vendor in your QuickBooks. Finale searches for matches in the “Display as name” of your vendor in QuickBooks. It is case, punctuation, and space sensitive. If the supplier name in Finale does not match exactly to any “Display as name” in your QuickBooks, Finale will create a new Vendor in your QuickBooks to match the exact spelling of the Supplier name in Finale.

 

When Finale finds a perfect match we will link to that vendor in your QuickBooks.

 

Recommendation

If you are just starting out with a new Finale Inventory account you can export your Vendors data from QuickBooks to an Excel file using a custom report. You can then import that data into Finale Inventory and create your Supplier names in Finale to match your entire QuickBooks Vendor list.  This will make the supplier syncing process very easy and avoid duplicates.  You can also elect to turn on the Import all suppliers into Finale feature below if your Supplier list in Finale is currently empty.

 

Import all suppliers into Finale

 

This setting option for importing suppliers will allow Finale Inventory to read your entire vendor list in your QuickBooks and it will compare it to the existing Supplier names list in Finale Inventory. It uses the “Display as name” of your vendors in QuickBooks, and it will try to match it to the Supplier name field on suppliers in Finale. If it does not find an exact match, it will import that Vendor into Finale and create a new Supplier name for you in Finale. It will update the basic address/contact information as well.

  

IMPORTANT: When using this setting going forward, Finale will only import data from your QuickBooks vendors when you create a new vendor in your QuickBooks. It will not continue to sync changes to existing vendors in your QuickBooks to the suppliers in Finale.   If you do change information about a supplier in Finale, we will push or sync it to your QuickBooks, regardless of which of the two settings above you are using.

 

How are duplicates handled and can I merge Suppliers in Finale Inventory?

 

Finale Inventory will allow you to have more than one supplier with the exact same name. This is not allowed in QuickBooks.  Finale Inventory does not have a merge feature. If you find yourself in a situation where you have transactions like purchase orders or bills using two different suppliers but are really the same supplier, you will need to edit the transactions with the wrong one and switch them to the correct one. It might be possible to do this in bulk by creating an export of data to Excel and using a bulk import to update the many transactions that need corrections.

 

What happens when there are duplicates that get created in your QuickBooks?

 

When you get vendors created in your Quickbooks from Finale Inventory that is really a duplicate because the Supplier name in Finale did not match exactly to the “display as name” of the vendor in your QuickBooks, you will need to merge them in your QuickBooks.

 

IMPORTANT:  There is a correct way and a wrong way to merge or rename vendors in your QuickBooks.  The correct way is to MERGE into the vendor that Finale Inventory is linked/syncing with, and then rename it if desired.

Follow this scenario:

 

Finale Inventory                           QuickBooks Online

Supplier name                             Vendor display as name

ABC, Inc.                                      ABC Inc. - these do not match! QuickBooks Online version missing ,(comma)

 

With the above scenario, Finale will Create a new Vendor ABC, Inc. in QuickBooks Online

 

Finale Inventory                           QuickBooks Online

Supplier name                             Vendor display as name

ABC, Inc.                                     ABC, Inc. - this is the one Finale created and is linked to!

                                                    ABC Inc. - this is the original vendor

 

How to cure the above situation:

1. Merge your QuickBooks Online original Vendor “ABC Inc.” into the new “ABC, Inc.”
2. Rename the Vendor in QuickBooks Online or Finale if desired.

 

NOTE:

If you edit the Vendor name in QuickBooks Online, nothing happens to the supplier name in Finale, they will still be linked.  If you change the name of the Supplier in Finale, the QuickBooks Online Vendor “display as name” will be updated to match the Finale supplier name.

We do push address changes to Suppliers in Finale to your QuickBooks Online vendor.

Import bill payments

Finale Inventory may be configured to import bill payments you make in your QuickBooks online against the bills Finale Inventory synced into your QuickBooks. This will mark the Bill in Finale Inventory as PAID. 

 

 

 

IMPORTANT: You do not make payments in Finale Inventory. Only make payments in your QuickBooks Online account.  This feature is not intended to push payments from Finale Inventory to your QuickBooks Online account.

 

There are two options here:

Don’t import bill payments - DEFAULT setting

Select this if you do not want Finale to be configured to import bill payments you make in your QuickBooks Online into Finale Inventory.  This means that the Bill in Finale Inventory will always be shown as Unpaid in Finale Inventory, even though you have paid the bill in your QuickBooks Online.

Import all bill payments into Finale

Select this option to allow Finale Inventory to import any bill payments you make in your QuickBooks Online account into Finale Inventory and mark the Bill in Finale Inventory as Paid.

This is the recommended setting.

 

IMPORTANT: We support the syncing or importing of bill payments made to Bills in QuickBooks Online back into Finale Inventory on a Bill by Bill basis, meaning a payment made in QuickBooks Online against one single bill can be synced back to Finale from QuickBooks Online and mark the Finale Inventory Bill as paid.

 

UNDERSTAND: If the payment made in QuickBooks Online is for multiple bills it will not sync back.  Also, payments created in QuickBooks Online will only sync back into Finale if they were attached to a Bill that is associated with a Bill OR a PO created in Finale Inventory.  Meaning if you create a PO/Bill in your QuickBooks Online and you record a payment against it in QuickBooks Online, we will not import it into Finale Inventory.  We can only sync payments against Bills that are linked to Purchase orders or Bills created in Finale Inventory first, that got synced into your QuickBooks.

Export purchase orders

Finale Inventory has the ability to sync Purchase orders created in Finale Inventory into your QuickBooks online account. This is optional and not required in order to get your accounts payable information into your QuickBooks.  

 

 

There are two options here:

Don’t export purchase orders - Default setting

Select this option if you do not wish to sync Purchase orders in Finale Inventory into your QuickBooks online account.  Finale Inventory will still sync Bills and payment information to your QuickBooks without creating any purchase orders.

Export purchase orders

Select this option if you wish to sync Finale Inventory purchase orders into your QuickBooks Online account. When choosing this option Finale will automatically create purchase orders in your QuickBooks from the purchase orders you create in Finale Inventory. 

NOTE:  If you enable this option, you will also be able to enable the Import Bills feature.  Importing Bills from your QuickBooks allows you to create a Bill in your QuickBooks that is attached to a Purchase order you created in your Finale Inventory first, and synced into your Quickbooks.

Import bills

Finale Inventory has the ability to support an alternate workflow for Bills being created for Purchase orders. The normal process is to create the purchase order in Finale Inventory, receive shipments in Finale Inventory, and then add the bill in Finale Inventory, after which we sync the Bill to your QuickBooks Online account, where you pay the bill there, and we sync the payment back into Finale Inventory, marking our Bill as paid.  This Import bills feature supports you creating a Bill in your QuickBooks Online account and having it imported into Finale Inventory and associated with a Purchase order in Finale.  In order for this feature to be used you must enable the Export purchase orders feature.  You can only import bills from your QuickBooks that are attached to a purchase order Finale Inventory pushed into your Quickbooks.

The order of events to use this feature is as follows:

1. Create Purchase order in Finale Inventory
2. Finale automatically syncs the purchase order to your QuickBooks with the Export purchase order feature.
3. You create/add a bill in your QuickBooks to the purchase order Finale pushed into your QuickBooks
4. Finale imports the bill you created in your QuickBooks and associates it to the Finale Inventory purchase order
5. Bill payment is made in your QuickBooks and is imported into Finale Inventory, marking it Paid in Finale(if you enabled this feature).

Use of wildcards

Similar to the wildcard SKU feature Finale Inventory has for its sales order integrations with outside sources, Finale Inventory as a Wildcard SKU feature that helps map unknown line items and adjustments on bills that you may have or use in your QuickBooks to product or adjustments in Finale Inventory

 

Bills pulled with unique SKUs can be mapped to a single product or adjustment preset. This feature is useful when you have existing unique SKUs for items that you would like to be treated as a single item, discount, or fee. For example, you may have numerous coupon codes and you could create a wildcard lookup to map all of those coupons to a specific item, discount, or fee, or you could set it to not import matching items.

This feature is a more advanced auto-mapping feature that allows Finale to understand items on your bills that may not exist in Finale Inventory and have a plan for dealing with them.  

Default adjustments

For expenses on QuickBooks Online bills, if the name of the expense matches the name of a purchasing adjustment configured in Finale's application settings, then the adjustment item in Finale uses that preset. To match, the preset must be active. If there is no match, then the following selection controls how the bill expenses are imported into Finale.

 

Choices for this setting will depend on the purchase order adjustments you have created on your Application settings, purchasing tab, Adjustments section.

If you have any adjustments active, you will be allowed to choose one of them to be a default adjustment for unmatched adjustments imported from the bills you created in your QuickBooks.   

Recommendation

Always associate all adjustments with a named preset. If you do not have any, create them.

Import with Finale discount & fee preset unspecified - Default setting

Use this setting if you do not want adjustments associated with a named preset adjustment in Finale. This is not recommended.

 

Some people may not wish to see any Bill or Invoice transactions in their QuickBooks but they may still want their data to show in the general ledger.  If this is the case you can change the transaction type setting to Journal entry.

 

Back to the steps to configure

5. Set transaction syncing options for Invoices in the Income and accounts receivable section

To sync income and create accounts receivables in QuickBooks Online, they must be associated with a customer name. By default, Finale customers will be updated to match QuickBooks Online customers based on their customer display name. If a customer does not exist in QuickBooks, Finale will create one.  

 

 

Configure the following options:

Default customer

 

If an invoice gets created without a customer in Finale, a default customer can be assigned here with this setting. This is useful for high-volume sales where detailed customer information is not required.  This setting will also work where consolidations may be created for invoices that have no customer. This setting will prevent invoices without customers that were consolidated from getting an error and causing the posted consolidation to not sync to QuickBooks.

 

No default customer - default setting

This is the default setting. When you sync transactions for invoices that have no customer, they will receive a warning/error message on the QuickBooks sync status view page and On the Sync status field on the Invoice View.  If you do not see the sync status field on the Invoice view, use the customize this screen feature in the action menu, and add the Sync status and Sync status details columns to your view.

Import customers

When connecting your Finale Inventory account to your QuickBooks Online account you will have two options for handling Customer information syncing.

There are two options here:

Update existing Finale customers only - default setting

 

This is the default setting. This means that Finale Inventory will only link and sync existing Finale Inventory customer names with your QuickBooks Online account.   Finale will not import any customers from your QuickBooks.  When using this setting, Finale Inventory will use the customer name in Finale to find a matching customer in your QuickBooks. Finale searches for matches in the “Display as name” of your customer in QuickBooks. It is case, punctuation, and space sensitive. If the customer name in Finale does not match exactly to any “Display as name” in your QuickBooks, Finale will create a new Customer in your QuickBooks to match the exact spelling of the Customer name in Finale.

NOTE: We do not sync or use the Contact name field in Finale Inventory’s customer record to match any customers in your QuickBooks

 

When Finale finds a perfect match we will link to that customer in your QuickBooks.

 

Recommendation

If you are just starting out with a new Finale Inventory account you can export your Customer data from QuickBooks to an Excel file using a custom report. You can then import that data into Finale Inventory and create your Customer names in Finale to match your entire QuickBooks Customer list.  This will make the customer syncing process very easy and avoid duplicates.  You can also elect to turn on the Import all customers into Finale feature below if your Customer list in Finale is currently empty.

 

Import all customers into Finale

 

This setting option for importing customers will allow Finale Inventory to read your entire customer list in your QuickBooks and it will compare it to the existing Customer names list in Finale Inventory. It uses the “Display as name” of your customer in QuickBooks, and it will try to match it to the Customer name field on customers in Finale. If it does not find an exact match, it will import that Customer into Finale and create a new Customer name for you in Finale. It will update the basic address/contact information as well.

  

IMPORTANT: When using this setting going forward, Finale will only import data from your QuickBooks customers when you create a new customer in your QuickBooks. It will not continue to sync changes to existing customers in your QuickBooks to the customers in Finale.   If you do change information about a customer in Finale, we will push or sync it to your QuickBooks, regardless of which of the two settings above you are using.

 

How are duplicates handled and can I merge Customers in Finale Inventory?

 

Finale Inventory will allow you to have more than one customer with the exact same name. This is not allowed in QuickBooks.  Finale Inventory does not have a merge feature. If you find yourself in a situation where you have transactions like sales orders or invoices using two different customers but are really the same customer, you will need to edit the transactions with the wrong one and switch them to the correct one. It might be possible to do this in bulk by creating an export of data to Excel and using a bulk import to update the many transactions that need corrections.

 

What happens when there are duplicate customers that get created in your QuickBooks?

 

When you get customers created in your Quickbooks from Finale Inventory that is really a duplicate because the Customer name in Finale did not match exactly to the “display as name” of the customer in your QuickBooks, you will need to merge them in your QuickBooks.

 

IMPORTANT:  There is a correct way and a wrong way to merge or rename customers in your QuickBooks.  The correct way is to MERGE into the customer that Finale Inventory is linked/syncing with, and then rename it if desired.

Follow this scenario:

 

Finale Inventory                           QuickBooks Online

Customer name                            Customer display as name

ABC, Inc.                                      ABC Inc. - these do not match! QuickBooks Online version missing ,(comma)

 

With the above scenario, Finale will Create a new customer ABC, Inc. in QuickBooks Online

 

Finale Inventory                           QuickBooks Online

Customer name                            Customer display as name

ABC, Inc.                                     ABC, Inc. - this is the one Finale created and is linked to!

                                                    ABC Inc. - this is the original customer

 

How to cure the above situation:

3. Merge your QuickBooks Online original Customer “ABC Inc.” into the new “ABC, Inc.”
4. Rename the Customer in QuickBooks Online or Finale if desired.

 

NOTE:

If you edit the Customer name in QuickBooks Online, nothing happens to the customer name in Finale, they will still be linked.  If you change the name of the Customer in Finale, the QuickBooks Online Customer “display as name” will be updated to match the Finale customer name.

We do push address changes to Customers in Finale to your QuickBooks Online Customers.

Sales source filter

 

If a client needs to push sales revenue to their Quickbooks for one or more than one sales source but not all sales sources, you should use the Sales source filter to control which invoices get pushed to QuickBooks.  To use a mix of the methods presented here, the sales source filter can be used to push a subset of income from Finale. The sales source filter below is a multi-select filter that allows for multiple sales sources to be pushed.

The sales source filter may have a value of a sales source or sources to only push revenue(invoices) for those sources into their QuickBooks.

IMPORTANT: Leaving the Sales source filter blank and having the sales revenue accounts mapped will push ALL sales revenue data/invoices in Finale Inventory to their QuickBooks.

Recommendation

Use this source filter for most accounts that will be doing manual sales for B2B, wholesale, or distributor-type orders in Finale.  Make sure these orders use a sales source and have it in the Sales source filter list.  This way when they create Invoices for these manual sales they will be pushed to QuickBooks and none of the eCommerce sales order data will be pushed.

 

If the Sales source filter has any source set, sales income and accounts receivable will not be pushed for the following transaction unless the source of their sales is included in the filter. This filter does not affect the COGS generated by the sale.

• Sales shipment (income)
• Invoice
• Invoice payment

 

New sales sources can be explicitly added from the Selling tab in application settings.

 

Edit the source of sale option list and add sales sources for the sales you wish to push to QuickBooksOnline.

 

 

Sync transaction memo

Invoices created in QuickBooks Online contain a note linking to the Finale invoice that created it. This record will appear on the statement if one is created in QuickBooks Online.

 

 

Choose from two options:

 

Exclude notes for invoices - default setting

Use this setting to make sure Finale Inventory does not sync a value for the originating transaction in Finale to the message on statement field of the Invoice in your QuickBooks.

 

Include notes for all transactions

Use this setting to make Finale Inventory sync a text value for the originating transaction in Finale to the message on statement field of the Invoice in your QuickBooks

If you highlight and copy the html link in the Message on statement field and paste it into a web browser it will take you to the transaction in Finale Inventory that created this invoice.

 

Recommendation

We recommend the default setting of excluding the notes. 

 

Sync additional fields to QuickBooks Online Invoice Custom fields

Invoices created in QuickBooks Online contain a note linking to the Finale invoice that created it. This record will appear on the statement if one is created in QuickBooks Online.

If you use custom fields on your QuickBooks Online Invoices you may use the section below to choose what information in Finale Inventory syncs to the custom fields on your QuickBooks Online Invoice:

You may choose to not update any fields, or choose from any Finale invoice and sales order custom fields, or any of the following Finale Invoice/Order fields: 

• Sales source
• Origin
• Order date
• Fulfillment
• Requested shipping
• Customer PO

Recommendation

We recommend you sync the Finale Inventory Customer PO field to a custom field on your QuickBooks Online Invoice.   Make sure you have enabled the custom fields option in your QuickBooks Online and added the field you wish to sync into.  See this help video for QuickBooks Online custom fields. 

 

Back to the steps to configure

6. Review the QuickBooks Online GO-LIVE checklist

Back to the steps to configure

7. Make a Backup of your QuickBooks Online account

Back to the steps to configure

8. Activate the integration by putting it into Automatic mode.

 

 

IMPORTANT:  Once the QuickBooks integration is activated it will take some time to push the information from Finale into QuickBooks.  Many customers will be confused when they do not see all the products id in Finale Inventory show up in their QuickBooks.  This is because they will not be synced into their QuickBooks until they appear on a Bill and that Bill is POSTED in Finale Inventory.

 

Back to the steps to configure

 

back to the Table of contents

 

CPA/Bookkeeper Q/As

Accounts Payable

Accounts payable, in this context, is the ability to manage bills corresponding to purchase orders in Finale. If configured, bills created in Finale push to QuickBooks, where the user can pay them.

Configuring Accounts Payable

At a minimum, the following accounts must be mapped. These are the default GL accounts for new accounts.

 

When inventory/COGS is enabled, the purchase clearing account will be cleared by receiving purchase shipments corresponding to bills debiting the AP account. When both inventory and AP are enabled, the purchase clearing account holds the liability corresponding to goods received but not invoiced.COGS

Configuring COGS/Inventory

At a minimum, the following accounts must be mapped. These are the default GL accounts for new accounts.

 

 

The expense accounts track how goods leave inventory and will affect the profit & loss statement in QuickBooks.

 

The liability accounts track how goods enter inventory and are usually cleared through an accounts payable process.

 

We also need accurate costing information in Finale. Otherwise, the provided inventory valuation will be inaccurate.

 

The user can use the master product list to ensure the products’ average cost information is accurate. Specifically, look out for cases where the average cost is negative or missing.

 

Finale will be in charge of supplying the inventory and COGS to QuickBooks for all marketplaces.  COGS will be pushed into QuickBooks Online even if there are no invoices created and even if the customer has elected not to send any revenue information into QuickBooks Online from Finale.  Each sales shipment shipped will create a journal entry that has the following effect.

 

 

For the COGS/Inventory to be accurate, the average cost for the products in Finale must be accurate.

 

If the client has multiple sales/income accounts or COGS accounts they may ask you which one to use. The answer to this question is hard for you to answer and you must push this back onto the client to understand where they are reporting their income or COGS or asset accounts.  If they are unsure, tell them to ask their bookkeeper or accountant

Income

Finale pushes sales as invoices

To push income, the sale should have a corresponding invoice. Otherwise, there will be an uncleared amount in the sales clearing account. After invoicing, the QuickBooks Online customer associated with the invoice will have an outstanding AR balance.

 

An uncleared balance in the sales clearing account must be manually accounted for all historical sales without invoices.

Recommendations

• Integrations must be configured to create invoices.
  • Otherwise, use a sales source filter, so income for this channel is not pushed.
• Integrations should be configured to assign generic Customers based on sales source.
  • This will allow for each marketplace to be managed individually in QuickBooks Online.
  • Invoices without a customer will not push to QuickBooks Online.
• Sales adjustments must be properly set up to track tax liabilities and discounts.
• The record date filter should be set to a date after these sales integrations were configured.
  • Otherwise, the sales clearing account must be manually cleared if no invoices exist.

Tradeoffs

• Simple to implement.
  • No need for multiple connections to QuickBooks Online.
• Income pulled directly from the marketplace or manually entered.
• Tax liability pulled directly from the marketplace or manually entered.

 

• Invoices will have to be marked paid in QuickBooks Online manually.
  • This can be done in a batch for each ‘Customer.’
• Finale does not pull external marketplace and payment processing fees.
  • To reconcile the payments with the bank deposits in QuickBooks Online, the user must manually enter the fees or expenses which are withheld from the marketplace and payment provider. Fees can often be found directly from the marketplace. For example, see the Shopify payout report. 
• Returns must be manually entered into Finale as a sales return to ensure inventory and income are correct.
  • Returns must also be entered into QuickBooks as a credit memo to negate the AR generated by the invoice.
• Sales are not consolidated. This level of granularity can be too much.
  • No one else has it besides A2X

 

Intuit connectors record consolidated sales

Intuit offers free integrations for some of the more popular marketplaces. These can be used to pull consolidated income into QuickBooks Online. This is only available for marketplaces with payout reports.

 

When using these Intuit connectors, many have the option of creating individual invoices and sales receipts with line item-level detail. Make sure you do not configure them to create new products in your QuickBooks Online.  

 

Below is an example of an Intuit connector configuration.

Recommendations

• The Intuit connector Integration with your QuickBooks Online must not be configured to create products.

Tradeoffs

• Payouts and fees directly imported into QuickBooks.
• Consolidated reporting makes provides a reasonable level of granularity.
• Free

 

• Income can only be differentiated by payment method.
• OneSaas connectors do not track tax liabilities or adjustment-based accounting.
  • To reconcile the income breakdown, the user must first report the tax liability or adjustment income generated in the period. This can be generated from the marketplace finance report or a Finale sales order summary report. The user must then manually enter a journal entry into QuickBooks Online that debits the income account and credits the tax liability and adjustment account. 

• There is limited marketplace support.
  • Shopify - payouts sync workflow
  • eBay - payouts creation workflow
  • Amazon Marketplace - financial event workflow
  • Square - Sales summary
• Returns must be manually entered into Finale as a sales return to ensure inventory is correct. The income is already corrected in QuickBooks as it is included in payout reports.

A2X records consolidated sales

A2X offers a paid solution for e-commerce accounting. This tends to be the highest-recommended product on the market.

 

https://www.a2xaccounting.com/blog/how-to-integrate-shopify-with-quickbooks/

 

Recommendations

• The A2X Integration to your QuickBooks Online must not be configured to create COGS entries.

Tradeoffs

• Accurately records income, fees, and tax liabilities.
• Extensive account and tax mapping management.
• Consolidated reporting makes provides a reasonable level of granularity.

 

• Has a cost that scales by the number of orders/month and sales channels.
  • 10k orders/month costs $199/month
• There is limited marketplace support.
  • Shopify
  • Amazon
  • Walmart
  • eBay
  • Etsy
• Returns must be manually entered into Finale as a sales return to ensure inventory is correct. The income is already corrected in QuickBooks.

 

 

back to the Table of contents