How many OR users are integrated with QuickBooks?

I feel like the lone requester of features related to QB. Surely other users are running into some of the same issues as I am... I *think* the OR team is working on this integration but it is frustrating to see features and updates being rolled out regularly in other parts of the system while the QB integration gets none, and is an extra cost each month. I'm considering dumping the integration because it creates as many problem s as it solves, but I keep thinking the fixes will come out as soon as I disable it. I'd love to hear an update on the QB roadmap and how that's progressing. Thanks!

I agree 100%. I use the integration. It needs more work.

Thanks for the direct and honest feedback, Dori123. You're not alone. Many many OR users have asked about the QuickBooks integration. We have planned and designed but had to sit on them over time as other things have gotten in the way.

There are basically two types of QB updates:

1) A big overhaul that needs to be done that will change the entire process for how OwnerRez bookings/payments go to QuickBooks. Instead of invoices and payments, money will be held in liability and then realized through sales receipts at the time of booking. Several accountants have worked with us to form a better process around this and cover more bases. It's a much better method, but requires a lot of work that we simply have never started. No ETA on this.

2) A lot of small tweaks that could make the current "classic" sync method work better. We do roll out tweaks now and then, but you're right that it could be a lot better.

One of the problems that delays QuickBooks updates is that we see other accounting things that need to be changed first. For instance, to fully handle QuickBooks "to the penny" reconciliation, we need to add the concept of "Deposits" to OwnerRez so that you can trace payments that come in bundled together and have fees take out. Then those Deposits would get pushed to QuickBook as deposits on that side and your bank transactions would match to the penny. But we haven't built the Deposit concept in OwnerRez yet, so obviously we can't do the QuickBooks portion.

We are tracking a number of tweaks to the classic sync method (#2 above) and look forward to getting more out before end of Q3.

If you could boil down your issues to the main ones, what would help you right now overcome your QuickBooks problems?

Thanks for the candid response, Paul.

The issues that this integration creates rather than solves for me are:

1. OR sends taxes through as a line item rather than a tax. This is problematic because I use QB -- not OR -- to track the taxes I need to pay. So I have to back out each of the tax line items on every invoice and enter them into QB correctly, as taxes. I think most small business owners use QB as the "final word" on finances, not OR.

I know you guys suggest a work-around for this, but I don't want to change the way I log taxes in QB to accommodate OR in the short term, especially if OR has a goal of overhauling to plug into QB tax functionality on down the line.

2. When I have a refund, OR zeros out or changes the line items in the original invoice. This doesn't work because it does not allow me to track the money I receive and the money I refund. In other words, I end up with an invoice in QB that says "Rent $0.00," but what I need is an invoice that says "Rent $1,000," which matches to a $1,0000 deposit, then a separate Refund for $1,000 that matches to a withdrawl of $1,000. These are a pain to fix; sounds like you are aware of this from your reply.

I don't like that OR auto-updates invoices after they were created, without a warning or any message notifying the user of the change. Any time OR attempts to change a historical record, there needs to be a warning of what is changing and an option to leave it be.

3. I get orphaned customer names. Each time a reservation is created, I get an customer created in QB as "first name." Once I run the Channel Bridge, a separate customer is created for "first name, last name." So I have to go through and merge all of the "first name" customers with their matching "first name, last name" customers.

4. Each time OR updates the customer record in QB, it wipes away the changes I have made to that customer in QB. Again, this happens without warning and without notification. For example, when a customer record is created in QB (for an invoice, for example), I update the "sub-customer" type so that I can run reports by property. Once the payment is recorded, OR updates QB again and erases the sub-type that I changed. So I have to go in and do it again. This is true not just for customer sub-types, but for all data on the customer record. Any changes you make on the QB side -- even in those fields that do not exist on the OR side -- will get updated back to the original OR record or to the QB default, which may be null.

I agree that a huge overhaul of the integration is needed and I'm glad it's on the radar. Of course, I'd like to see it become more of a priority, especially because I am paying extra for this integration (in my case, the QB integration costs about 50% of the monthly OR system charge).

I am particularly frustrated because I changed my accounting over to QB Online specifically for this integration. So I went from paying $0/month for my QB desktop to $40/month for the QB Online package, plus an additional $15/month to OR. So I am now paying $55/month instead of $0/month and getting functionality that takes as much time to clean up as it did to manually input the data to my QB desktop version.

Given the current state of things, is it possible to include the QB integration for free, since it is admittedly not a robust integration yet? Or at the very minimum, lower the QB pricing?

Seems to me this would be a win for you guys, as you'd get more people to use it and therefore would get a lot more feedback on how to design the future integration. It would also encourage those of us who are early adopters to stick with it.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Happy Fourth of July -
I am going to restate Dori123
"it is frustrating to see features and updates being rolled out regularly in other parts of the system while the QB integration gets none, and is an extra cost each month"
I signed up for OR thinking that the QB integration would work. It was disappointing to find out, after the fact, how unfinished the product was.
In your reply to Dori123 you admit that the entire financial structure of OR needs to be redone. I am not sure if that is 100% true and as big an obstacle as you say. You just need to relabel all funds that OR receives, prior to the tenant departure date, as a Tenant Deposit - Current Liability. You then add code to create an exportable journal entry that moves the Deposit into the appropriate revenue and expense accounts. That's the way accountants would do this. You don't actually earn the revenue until you deliver the property and complete the lease.
The crux of the issue is paying for an integration that does not actually work properly and causes issues on the reconciliation end. I have had to hire an expensive accountant (Ximplifi) to deal with this as it is too difficult and time-consuming for me given my other responsibilities.
My suggestion to you:
Reduce the charge for this incomplete feature until you can complete the required work and offer true integration. Then raise the price back up to compensate OR for the work you have done.
I hope these thoughts help.

Thanks for the detailed follow-up. Much appreciated.

A quick note on this part:

This is unique to Vrbo and using calendar import (iCal) to bring in bookings. If you connected the Vrbo channel integration, this would stop happening as all new bookings would come in with the guest's full name in addition to many other great things.

But you're right in general about it creating new customer names. That's something that needs to be fixed.

Not the entire financial structure of OwnerRez, but of how our financial structure is synced to QB. The financial structure on our side is pretty solid and we don't have any plans to redo it (other than some things like security deposits which are actively in development). The issue is what is synced to QB and in what order and what all needs to be built around it.

I'm glad I haven't activated the QuickBooks integration yet after reading this. I think I'll hold off until some of these problems are addressed.

So...7 months later--how are we looking? I'm working with a professional bookkeeper now (doing books myself was too overwhelming!) and we'd like to explore the ability to sync OR (so she doesn't have to bill me as much for data entry!). Are we making progress towards addressing these issues and perhaps even going live with the overhaul that was mentioned as being in the works last year?

None of the issues I reported have been resolved. I remain frustrated with the integration, but I simply don't have the time to disentangle it. I do wish OR would lower the price given a) all the issues, b) the lack of fixes and improvements and c) the price of the QB integration is still nearly half the cost of the OR system (which in comparison is so much more robust than the QB piece). I wish I could recommend this to others, but I just can't. 

PS: I want to add that ironically, much of my frustration stems from how excellent the OR system is and how responsive the OR team is to issues and bugs within their flagship product. I do think OR is top-notch. I just wish the team had the same commitment to this QB integration as they do to improving the OR system itself. 

Dori, Chris...  Thanks for your candor!  I appreciate your frustration, believe me, and 2022 was supposed to be "the year of accounting" over here.  We've had a lot of meetings about it and tasked out a lot of stuff.  Frankly, we continue growing on many fronts and have had to tackle some major PM and Channel work along with some dev-ops and sys-ops stuff to handle the growth.  We pride ourselves on having solid features that work well and save our users' time, but the QB feature is (and has been) lacking and does not meet that standard.  I don't want to promise any ETA on new work, but we are aware of how far behind it is and plan to address it in 2022.  One of the big first steps to that is a feature we call "Deposits" that will complete the loop on linking payments with actual bank deposits so that you reconciliation can be to the penny.  That is very close now to be scheduled.

Hey Dori123! Is this problem still an issue or has it been resolved?

Hi everyone,

I am trying to create urgency with addressing Quickbooks Integration / Accounting issues in OR by having all key stakeholders join together to create a louder voice. To do so I have tried to summarize all the open issues in this theme and have created one master feature request that I am asking everyone that would like to see this addressed cast a vote for so we concentrate our voting and allow OR to see the magnitude of the need. I do have some ideas for a rapid resolution but at this time want to focus on identifying and prioritizing the issues/problems and have OR engage in prioritizing this fix.

The comprehensive thread is that this Feature request (full link below). If you feel this is a need PLEASE VOTE. If you have any additions, corrections, or comments please reply and I will try to keep the top post updated.

https://www.ownerrez.com/forums/go/70573

Thank you for your support and lets get a roadmap for this once and for all!!

Manel