QuickBooks sync

If your accountant lives in QuickBooks Online, connect it once in Settings, Apps, and stop double-entering.

What syncs, and when

• An invoice reaches QuickBooks once it is fully paid. Deposits and partial payments stay in CarSignal until the bill settles, so QuickBooks never shows money you have not collected.
• It posts as a QuickBooks invoice plus a payment for the amount collected. Every part, labor row and custom charge is its own line, with your discount, shop supplies, environmental fee and sales tax carried as their own lines. The QuickBooks total always equals what the customer paid.
• The customer is found or created in QuickBooks by name. The invoice and payment are dated the day the bill was issued and the day it was paid, in your shop's time zone, and the payment carries the method (cash, check, card brand) when QuickBooks has it.
• Refunds and voids follow the invoice. Each refund posts as its own refund receipt, so partial refunds show up one by one. If a customer pays again after a refund, that repayment posts as its own sales receipt, so net cash in QuickBooks always equals net cash in CarSignal.

How the books are organized

CarSignal creates its own items and accounts in QuickBooks the first time it syncs, all named with "(CarSignal)" so your accountant can find them:

Discounts use QuickBooks' own discount line and land in its Discounts given account. Sales tax is posted as the exact amount you collected, into a liability account you remit from, never as income. Your accountant can point any CarSignal item at a different account inside QuickBooks; the sync keeps using the item.

What your accountant still does

Almost nothing. Customers are matched by name and contact details, so the same person never appears twice and two people with the same name never share a statement. Invoices, payments, refunds and repayments arrive categorized and dated. The one step that stays in QuickBooks is the bank feed: payments land in Undeposited Funds, and when a deposit shows up in your bank account you match it to those payments, exactly as you would for a payment typed in by hand. Card payments through CarSignal settle to your bank in batches net of processing fees, so those deposits are matched as a group.

Syncing starts from the day you connect. Invoices paid before that stay out of QuickBooks unless you retry them from the invoice.

When QuickBooks is down

QuickBooks is bookkeeping, not the sale. A QuickBooks problem never holds up a payment, a receipt, a void or a refund. The paid invoice card shows Synced to QuickBooks when the books have it, or QuickBooks sync failed with a Retry link when they do not. CarSignal also retries everything waiting every 15 minutes on its own, and Settings, Apps has a Retry now button and shows the last error.

How the connection works

It is a per-shop QuickBooks login (OAuth). Tokens refresh themselves; if the connection ever breaks, Settings shows it and reconnecting takes a minute.