Current behavior:
Payment transactions can be exported in Excel (XML Spreadsheet format)

Desired behavior:
Integration with Quickbooks.

Notes:
1) The key here is to define what exactly is meant by 'integration with Quickbooks'. Our best understanding is that people need the ability to export monetary transactions from Wild Apricot and import them into Quickbooks. Next question: what particular transactions and in what format?
2) Our research indicates that Quickbooks preferred approach is by using so-called Web Connector. More detailed research is needed.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Dmitry,

Have you had any success with integrating with Quickbooks?  It would be very helpful to have this feature.

Thanks,

 Joe

As you can see, we have not received any input to this thread. Thus, we still need to figure out answer to this question:

...The key here is to define what exactly is meant by 'integration with Quickbooks'. Our best understanding is that people need the ability to export monetary transactions from Wild Apricot and import them into Quickbooks. Next question: what particular transactions and in what format? ...

Also, we are planning to overhaul our financial management capabilities within 2009 and I think that then we will be able to implement Quickbooks integration properly. (in other words, our current financial management setup is somewhat convoluted and we are unsure how to map it to Quickbooks. Once we overhaul it, mapping should become straightforward.)

Anyway, any input/details would be highly apreciated.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

If you are using PayPal as your merchant provider, you can export transactions from paypal in QuickBooks compatible format.  I did have to modify the export a little bit to have it hit the correct accounts (dues and fees) and "classes" in our QuickBooks file because Paypal doesn't support the "class" field, but it was pretty easy to do.  One item to note, if the "name" you are exporting from PayPal doesn't exist in QuickBooks, it will add it as an "other name" so you would have to go back an manually convert it to a customer list name within Quickbooks after the import occurred.  It isn't perfect, but it is workable.

While the export payments feature seems as if it will help in creating reports to import into our financial system (we use quickbooks) it would be nice to include additional information above just a LAST NAME, FIRST NAME option to help identify payments if an issue ever arrises.  Perhaps the export option can be amended to include either a username, the mem. ID, email or some unique identifier that will help us link back to the original user (other than just the inoice number)?

Just a suggestion! :)

 

We do not have a concept of username now - but ability to include MemberID, email and full name should be not a big deal.

Anybody else thinks this would be a useful addition?

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

We'd love this feature. We use QB's and it gets complicated trying to make sure we have everything correct from the site, paypal, and our books.

FYI- If customer is using PayPal to process transactions, then they can easily be "integrated with QB".  QB offers this solution.

I think would be a good addition to the financial managent piece as well.

Wondering if you are thinking that the import/export function would go both ways? i.e. our bookkeeper receives a check and notes in QB that John Doe has paid for XYZ event. However they still show pending payment in WA until I go in manually and update it based on our bookeeper's export from Quickbooks...

It would be nice not to have to do so much back and forth.

 

1) The key here is to define what exactly is meant by 'integration with Quickbooks'.

 There is an option in QuickBooks that allows other applications to access QuickBooks. I'm not exactly sure how this works. But if you have a copy of QuickBooks to look at, it's done through Edit > Preferences > Integrated Applications.

Our best understanding is that people need the ability to export monetary transactions from Wild Apricot and import them into Quickbooks. Next question: what particular transactions and in what format?

Format depends upon what method you use to pull transactions into QuickBooks. This can be done via IIF or Web Connect files. Unfortunately, you cannot import accounting transactions into QuickBooks via Excel, CSV, or text files. I'm not sure what the "file type" would be for the "Integrated Applications" approach.  As for the types of transactions  - all AR transactions that are and can be recorded in Wild Apricot.  But I would also add that it would be useful to be able to export member lists from WA to QuickBooks, at least the name and mailing address.

I hope this has been helpful.   I'd also like to add that, as a bookkeeper, the ability to have financial data flow directly into my accounting software (or at least import it) would be a huge and welcome improvement over the need to key data.  I hope this is something that Wild Apricot will be putting serious effort into soon. Thanks!

 

Jennifer Walker

Thanks Jennifer, appreciate your input.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Direct Integration into Quickbooks is going to be a bit tricky because you would need to either:
a) develop "account maps" between whatever account names you are placing transactions in and where the user wants those items placed within their chart of accounts; or
b).  mandate account names. 

Option "b" could get very tricky if you want to serve all users because, for example, a non-profit is going to have very different account names from a for-profit. So are you going to assume all your customers are non-profits? Alternatively, only have the Quickbooks integration functionality available for non-profits (if that is the majority of your customer base) using the Quickbooks for Non-Profits Standard Chart of Accounts?

I'm very encouraged to see a focus on financial reporting taking place at WA. But for my two cents, I'd rather see you first develop some more robust reporting for financial professionals within the existing system.  That is something that would give you a bigger bang for your buck as it could be developed much more quickly - I would think - since all you are doing is enhancing reporting of existing data in your system.  Something as simple as an open Accounts Receivable in WA and/or being able to select a date filter for the transaction list (with more detail on the transaction list) would be a tremendous aid.

Providing some reports to allow us to reconcile more easily would save someone like me numerous hours a month.  And this would help ALL users, not just Quickbooks users.

You are making a very good point. We are actually now working on a redesign of our financial management architecture - which is the key prerequisite to implement QuickBooks integration, AR report and many other things. Current architecture is very complex and inflexible.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

We are currently working to redesign our underlying architecture for financial management and once this is done, it will allow for more robust reporting, QuickBooks integration and many other enhancements.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

This is one of the items that we have listed on our Top 50 for the year. Our plan it to launch this feature in 2010.

Keep checking this forum for updates on how we plan to implement this, or if you have any suggestions or ideas on how you would like this to work.

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Giuliano Valentino, Useful Apricot

I'm new to this, but planning to adopt a system for small non-profit in the next month.  The discussion on this thread seems to focus on exporting data to Quickbooks.  Do any MMS systems automatically synchronize with Quickbooks?  Is that on the table?

@BAJacobson - I have not encountered this myself and I doubt that this is possible at the moment. 

If anyone has information to the contrary, I would appreciate hearing from you.  

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Chief_Apricot, how is this coming?  I've just exported the "TRANSACTION LIST" and have some input on how integration with quickbooks would/could/might work...

First, the transaction export is missing some information.  I imagine most members could pay by credit card (paypal in my case) or by mailing a check.  The transaction export should have some way of identifying this.  I don't believe it currently does.  Perhaps you could add a payment type column and if payment was made by the user, it could say "User generated Paypal transaction" versus "administrator generated payment" or something like that. 

Second, as I'm sure this is true with all member lists, there are duplicate names.  If an organization has 5 john smith's and 3 renew at the same time, only Smith, John would appear on the export.  If the export could include a member number or email address that would make troubleshooting much, much easier if any payment problems were to arise requiring research. 

I would only need this type of information in an export b/c then I can use other excel sheets or Microsoft access tables to link all the tables together and import them into quickbooks.  But it's best to have member specific information to help with troubleshooting, therefore an email or member id on the transaction export is essential, along with some type of payment type column so you'll know what bank account to use when importing into quickbooks. 

This may sound silly but I'd be happy to share my files with you to give you an idea how I set up my Quickbooks imports if you think that would be of help, just drop me a line!

 

@beaks2lee - thanks for this input, it is very helpful! Basically right now we are working full speed to redesign our financial management architecture- due for release in version 3.5 in early August. This redesign totally changes the underlying data. In release 3.5 we will most likely try to do as little as possible regarding export of transactions (just maintain backwards compatibility) - so I do not expect us to be able to address much of what you described. However, the whole point of this redesign is to enable Quickbooks integration and many other pending improvements so we plan to follow-up in 3.6 or 3.7 with related changes. So I would love to get hold of your files and find out how you setup import right now. Please send to support AT wildapricot.com and mention this thread. 

BTW, if you are interested to be included in beta-testing of new financial management, let us know. 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

@beaks2lee one more comment - in release 3.5 we plan to add Contact ID to payment and invoice lists exports and some other improvements along the way (because payment transactions list will be replaced by two separate lists - invoices/payments and each one will have more details). 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot