Question

How does Smart Contractor integrate with QuickBooks?

Answer

Smart Contractor's integration with QuickBooks is done through Intuit's application programming interface (API), which means that the data communication is handled automatically by the program. That means there is no exporting or importing procedures involved. Smart Contractor has a menu option that allows you to select the location of your QuickBooks company file, the version of QuickBooks you are running, and then specify the QuickBooks accounts to be associated with all of the transactions generated by Smart Contractor: estimates, bills, purchases, invoices, time sheets, etc.

The integration setup provides two options for the "mode" of data communication: Batch Update or Real Time. In Batch Update mode, all of the data transmission between Smart Contractor and QuickBooks takes place when you select a menu option to execute the update. In Real Time mode, the data transmission takes place in real time - as you enter or create each transaction in Smart Contractor. This option can be set differently for each user, so some users can be set up to not update QuickBooks in Real Time. There are advantages to either method. Since the QuickBooks data engine is relatively slow, there is a noticeable pause each time a record is read from or written to QuickBooks, so the Smart Contractor user interface runs slower when it is connected to QuickBooks in real time. On the other hand, the real time connection keeps the data in QuickBooks synchronized in real time, so that may be an advantage if you have users working in QuickBooks and Smart Contractor at the same time.

For more information about integrating with QuickBooks, please see:http://www.smartcontractor.com/help/default.htm?turl=HTMLDocuments/QBIntegration.htm