PCHelper.com - Technology Resources

PCHelper.com · Joined: 02 Mar 2007 Posts: 36

Importing information into QuickBooks

turn123 is the Page Editor for Applications, Productivity Applications, CRM and ERP. He loves to tinker with stuff.

In the past several weeks I've noticed an increase in the number of questions regarding how to import data into QuickBooks. Since it appears that the EE membership would benefit this article is about the different options for importing bills into QuickBooks that I am aware of.

The first option (and the one that I use) is the QuickBooks SDK. It's free which is a major strength in my book and every commercial App that I am aware of that interfaces with QuickBooks uses it. The documentation is excellent and the support forums are active with most questions asked receiving a reply. You can download the documentation from http://www.developer.intuit.com/ and as long as you use a version of QuickBooks that supports the SDK you can give the App to your client and expect it to work as soon as they grant permission to access the company file to your app while logged in as the Administrator.

The second option that is also free and used a lot due to its apparent ease of use is the IIF method. This is not recommended and Intuit has stated that they expect to drop the IIF from future versions of QuickBooks so don't expect your App to keep working for too much longer if you use this method. If you still need to go this route read http://developer.intuit.com/Support/FAQs/?id=144#faq_qbsdk_q4 then if you still feel that this is the route you need to follow there is a fairly complete list of sample files at http://www.quickbooks.com/support/faqs/docs/w_iiffiles2.html. This is the method I used when I first started to play with when integrating with QuickBooks and I didn't have a large number of issues with data not coming in as expected but constant checking of the data coming in is recommended.

There are two commercial options that I am aware of but haven't used myself.

I personally used the software put out by Acctsync Technologies Inc. before /n acquired them and found their support and documentation to be excellent (before and during the transition) and the software did what it said although it was one version behind the QuickBooks SDK. I eventually stopped using the software for this reason as I needed a feature that the SDK had and this software didn't. I have also heard that this works well for some people on Experts-Exchange who have tried it. You can find it at http://www.nsoftware.com/ibiz/quickbooks/.

I've heard many good things about QOBDC and on Experts-Exchange and off but was never able to get it to work for me due to an extremely large company file. I left it overnight once and it was still going the next morning.

Join Experts-Exchange for more info tips, tricks and techncial support at http://www.experts-exchange.com !