Example Custom Quickbooks Programming by The Computer Tailors
The following is an example of a hybrid software solution set up by The Computer Tailors, Inc. This brass fittings distribution company uses a combination of QuickBooks and custom software developed by The Computer Tailors, Inc., to perform 99% of their accounting needs. Due to this company's complexed Order Entry and Purchasing requirements, QuickBooks was not an option. Pricing for parts was based on many factors including industry rate charts and different levels of special pricing. This was an application that required custom work. However, QuickBooks was a good solution for other aspects of the company such as Account's Receivables and Account's Payable. Therefore, The Computer Tailors, Inc. only wrote what was necessary to get the job done.
In order to post invoices from the custom application over to QuickBooks, The Computer Tailors, Inc. created the form below.
As a member of Intuit's IDN (Intuit Developer Network), we were able to use QuickBooks SDKs(Software Developer Kits) to write the programs to correctly send the invoice transactions to QuickBooks.
This customized program allows orders to start out as a quote or an order. An invoice is created when items are shipped. Throughout the day, items are shipped and invoices are created and printed along with their packing slips. At the end of the day, the bookkeeper brings up a screen similar to one above. Note that we entered in sample data to protect the privacy of our clients.
The bookkeeper selects the invoices she wishes to post to QuickBooks and presses the Post button. The program first calls QuickBooks SDK to let it know that a program wants to submit data to it in the background. The QuickBooks SDK checks the credentials of the calling program in order to grant permission to it. Once the credentials are checked, the program scans through the invoices 2 times. The first scan checks to see if there are any new customers, salespersons, or terms that have to be added to QuickBooks. The second scan of the invoices creates the QuickBooks invoice records. If an invoice is sucessfully posted to QuickBooks, it is stamped with the QuickBooks ID so that it won't be posted again on the next run. If an invoice was not sucessfully posted to QuickBooks, the error message is saved and printed on the posting report. An example of an error could be that a QuickBooks would not create the invoice because the customer's credit limit has surpassed. In order to sucessfully post the invoice to QuickBooks, the company could either increase the credit limit for that customer in QuickBooks and post again, or they could make a business decision to void the order if the merchandise hasn't been shipped out yet.