Connect QuickBooks Online

Connecting QuickBooks brings your QuickBooks Online vendors in as contractors, and puts each contractor's compliance status on their vendor record as a PDF attachment you can open from the vendor. The whole setup is on Settings → Integrations → QuickBooks Online.

You don't need a key or a password

There is nothing to copy out of QuickBooks and paste in here — no client ID, no secret, no API key. You sign in on Intuit's own page, and Intuit asks whether TrackMyVendor may access your company. Your QuickBooks password is never entered into TrackMyVendor and never reaches us.

The QuickBooks user you sign in as has to be allowed to connect apps to the company, which usually means an admin.

Connect and match

1. 1

   Start from Settings

   Go to Settings → Integrations and click Connect to QuickBooks in the QuickBooks Online section.

2. 2

   Approve the connection at Intuit

   You're taken to Intuit. Sign in, pick the company if you have more than one, and click Connect. Intuit sends you straight back.

3. 3

   Choose which vendors to sync

   Choose which QuickBooks vendors are your contractors: Vendors marked for 1099, All active vendors, or Only the ones I match by hand. Each choice shows what it would do — how many vendors would be linked to a contractor with the same name, and how many added as new contractors. Tick Send each new contractor a document request if you want the new ones asked for their paperwork straight away, then click Save and sync.

   Vendors that two of your contractors could be, or that your plan has no room for, aren't guessed at: they wait for you under needs you at the top of QuickBooks Matches.

4. 4

   Check the suggested matches

   You land on QuickBooks Matches: one row per active contractor. If you chose 1099 or all active vendors, the sync runs in the background and links and adds what it can — reload after a minute to see it.

   For contractors still unmatched, where the name matches a QuickBooks vendor — ignoring capitals, punctuation and endings like LLC or Inc — the vendor is filled in and highlighted as a suggestion. Suggestions are only suggestions: nothing is linked until you click Match on a row, or Accept suggested matches to take them all at once. If two vendors could be the same contractor, no suggestion is made.

5. 5

   Match the rest by hand

   For the rest, start typing in the row's box and pick the QuickBooks vendor from the list, then click Match. Added a vendor in QuickBooks since connecting? Click Refresh QuickBooks list first.

   With a long roster, click Unmatched to see only what's left, and search by contractor name. The list is paged; matching a row keeps you on the page you were on.

6. 6

   Check the result

   Each newly matched contractor gets its status file within a few minutes. Back on Settings → Integrations, the panel shows how many are matched and what the last sync did — for example "3 added, 2 linked".

Keeping your vendors in sync

Once you've chosen which vendors to sync, changes in QuickBooks follow:

• A new vendor in your choice is added as a contractor, or linked to the contractor with the same name.
• A renamed vendor keeps its contractor; the contractor's own name here never changes. The contractor's page shows the QuickBooks name when the two differ.
• New contact details fill in a contractor's email, phone or contact name only where it is empty here. What you or the contractor entered always stays.
• A vendor made inactive archives its contractor, and making it active again brings the contractor back. A contractor you archived yourself stays archived.

On Starter, these changes come in when you click Sync now on the QuickBooks panel, which also shows how many changes QuickBooks has sent since your last sync. On Pro, with QuickBooks auto-sync, they come in by themselves within minutes, everything is checked again every night, and owners get one email when a vendor needs a decision. The status PDF in QuickBooks updates by itself on both plans.

Sync log on the panel lists what the sync did in the last 30 days, with a way to undo each change. Removing a contractor that came from QuickBooks, or unmatching one, tells the sync to leave that vendor alone; Track again in the sync log changes your mind. Contractors linked to QuickBooks carry a small QuickBooks badge on the contractor list.

What you'll see in QuickBooks

Open a matched vendor in QuickBooks and look at its attachments. There is one PDF, named for the status so you can read it without opening it:

• TrackMyVendor - COMPLIANT.pdf
• TrackMyVendor - NOT COMPLIANT.pdf
• TrackMyVendor - NO DOCUMENTS ON FILE.pdf

Inside: the contractor's name, the status, the date it was checked and the next expiry date. Under Why, the reasons the contractor isn't compliant, word for word as they appear under Why? beside the contractor's badge here. Under Coming up, what expires in the next 30 days. And a link back to the contractor in TrackMyVendor. The status is the same one the contractor's badge shows here — see what the statuses mean.

Attaching W-9s for your 1099s

Tick Attach each contractor's W-9 to their vendor record on the QuickBooks panel to put each matched contractor's newest W-9 on their vendor in QuickBooks, as the file they uploaded. It's off until you turn it on. Turning it on sends the W-9s already on file within a few minutes; after that, a newer W-9 replaces the one in QuickBooks, and a contractor with no W-9 gets nothing.

When you prepare 1099s in QuickBooks, open the vendor's attachments for the W-9. QuickBooks still needs the tax ID typed into the vendor once; TrackMyVendor never fills in vendor fields. Deleting a W-9 in TrackMyVendor, or unticking the box, leaves the copies already in QuickBooks alone.

Pausing, unmatching and disconnecting

• Pause: untick Attach compliance status to vendor records. Nothing is written until you tick it again.
• Unmatch one contractor: Manage matches, then Unmatch on the row.
• Disconnect: Disconnect on the Settings panel. This withdraws our access at Intuit and removes your matches.

In all three cases the PDFs already in QuickBooks are left where they are, as a record of what was true — they just stop updating. Delete them in QuickBooks if you don't want them.

What happens next