QuickBooks - Common Issues & Questions

If you use QuickBooks Online to manage your accounting, you'll be happy to know that OwnerRez integrates with QuickBooks. Read about how it all works in our QuickBooks Integration Overview article.

While not comprehensive, this article provides a list of questions not found elsewhere.

QuickBooks Accounts
Settings
Syncing
Specific Error Messages

QuickBooks Accounts

What versions of QuickBooks does OwnerRez integrate with?

OwnerRez is able to integrate with all versions of QuickBooks Online. However, OwnerRez does not integrate with desktop versions of QuickBooks.

Note that there are different versions and features of QuickBooks Online. OwnerRez can integrate with all of them. However, you must have an advanced version of QuickBooks to take advantage of "class" tracking.

I just got a QuickBooks Online account. Where do I start?

Not with OwnerRez! QuickBooks Online is a very powerful and complex program in its own right, and OwnerRez is not an accounting program itself. It is generally best to get your company books set up and working in QuickBooks first, and only then to start working on integrating OwnerRez into them.

Generally speaking, you should:

Get a basic chart of accounts together (QuickBooks Online may have preloaded one for you already)
Configure a set of classes (if you're using class tracking), and
Configure Product or Service items for things like rent and taxes.

You may need to spend some time figuring how to use QuickBooks itself before integrating OwnerRez. The parts OwnerRez pushes into QuickBooks Online are relatively small, so it's often more orderly to get your bank accounts and everything else up and running first.

If you're not comfortable setting it all up yourself, talk to your accountant or some other knowledgeable professional who can advise you as to accounting best practices. OwnerRez does not offer accounting consultation services, but we would be glad to answer your accountant's questions.

I have multiple QuickBooks Online accounts, can I work with both/all of them?

Yes! Go to Settings > QuickBooks and add each account individually. Then make sure you link the correct properties to each one. There is no additional charge for interfacing with multiple accounts.

Settings

Booking taxes are not going into the tax fields on the QuickBooks invoice

We do not support the built-in "sales tax" wizard in QuickBooks nor the tax fields on invoices. However, you can still file and record taxes.

To do this, create liability accounts in your chart of accounts for each type of tax you collect. For instance, if you have a state and county tax, you might create two liability accounts called:

Sales Tax Payable (current liability type)
County Tax Payable (current liability type)

You would then create two Product or Service items that map to these accounts. Feel free to use the same names on the Product or Service items as the accounts above.

Then in OwnerRez, edit your QuickBooks mappings so that each of your taxes maps to the correct Product or Service item that you just created. If the items were just created, you may need to do "Refresh References" in OwnerRez so that our system has an updated list of accounts and items on file.

Make sure to Save. If you have invoices that are already synced to QuickBooks, you may need to sync them again to correct the line items on the QuickBooks invoice.

I'm not seeing all my income/expense accounts when setting rent and surcharge mappings.

This is probably because you are misunderstanding what items QuickBooks uses for invoice line items. There is a list of items called Product or Service Items in QuickBooks that you need to add items to - this is what invoices link to. Please read our support article about Product or Service Items.

Reconciling deposits that contain multiple payments

There is a common use case where partial payments for different bookings end up in the same deposit that your credit card processor deposits to your bank account. For instance, a guest may book a $200 reservation and put down 50% ($100) as a payment. Then there are other transactions on that same day which are batched together in a single deposit and sent to the bank, so you end up with a single deposit of $500 but have no way of knowing that the $100 payment is part of that.

Deposits are not supported by our QuickBooks sync process. For this situation, we recommend making payments go to "Undeposited Funds" instead of a bank account in QuickBooks and then when deposits come in, you can match them against the list of undeposited payments. If fees are removed from each deposit, you would have to record those fees on the deposit as well which we talk about here.

I created a new product or class in QuickBooks, but it didn't appear in OwnerRez.

Did you refresh the references on the OwnerRez side after making those changes? There's a "Refresh References" button on several of the QuickBooks Online settings pages. You have to click that any time you make settings changes on the QuickBooks Online side so that OwnerRez can download the latest copy of your reference tables.

This also applies to locations and sub-locations in QuickBooks - all can be visible and used in OwnerRez, but if you make changes to them in QuickBooks, you must "Refresh References" in OwnerRez to get them to appear.

My bookings are paid by multiple payments, but I'm only getting one big invoice appearing in QuickBooks.

Unfortunately, that's how it works at present. Our current data model only creates one invoice for the entire booking, and updates that invoice when the booking changes.

We are considering a separate model where multiple invoices or sales receipts are created in QuickBooks instead for each payment, as many users have requested this.

I updated my tax mappings in Quickbooks. Will that retroactively update old bookings?

No. Any tax mapping settings you change in Quickbooks will not make old bookings re-sync or re-update automatically. Users have to either:

Go to each individual old booking and do a Sync Now.
Use the Batch Update tool in the QuickBooks Online settings area to find a range of bookings and nudge them to sync again.

I receive payments at various times. However, I only want to recognize the revenue once a guest has arrived. How do I do that?

QuickBooks uses the Invoice Date as the date it recognizes the income in reports. So even if you were paid in January for a booking, if the dates of stay aren't until December, you probably shouldn't recognize the income in most cases until December. So we recommend you configure your QuickBooks Settings to set the Invoice Date to the Booking Arrival Date.

Set QuickBooks General Settings > Set Invoice Date to > Booking Arrival Date.

Syncing

Seeing error messages when a sync occurs

Try though we might, our system sometimes runs into QuickBooks errors when a sync happens. We attempt to detect and code around errors and validation issues that come back from QuickBooks but sometimes the nature of the booking or payment makes it impossible to push across. Here are some common ones and an explanation for what is going on.

QuickBooks error: "This transaction has been deposited. If you want to change or delete it, you must edit the deposit it appears on and remove it first."

When payments are pushed across to QuickBooks, we push them across as undeposited. Later, you then create a bank deposit in QuickBooks for this payment (or multiple payments) so that you can properly reconcile your bank transactions. Once you do that - including a payment in a deposit - the payment can no longer be changed or removed from QuickBooks. You have to first remove the deposit before you can change or remove the payment.

When a sync runs in OwnerRez, the system may attempt to change or remove the payment depending on what occurred in OwnerRez. But if the payment was part of a deposit, this causes QuickBooks to throw this error message up.

In order to fix it, find the deposit in QuickBooks and delete it. Then come back to OwnerRez and run the "Sync Now" on the booking. Once it works, you can then go back to QuickBooks and create the deposit again.

My old bookings aren't syncing!

True. When you first turn on QuickBooks integration, it will apply your sync settings to new bookings, but not to old ones.

You can manually turn on the sync for each old booking, but if you have a lot of them, use the Batch Update Bookings for QuickBooks Sync Tool.

For more information, see the Batch Update Bookings support article.

When we import Channel Bridge for bookings, does that trigger a fresh sync in Quickbooks?

Yes, if any financial-related field on the booking changes. There are many financial-related fields including charges, payments, refunds, fees, expenses and numerous stats. If any of them change, the QuickBooks Online sync is re-triggered - assuming that the booking has the sync setting, of course.

One of my properties isn't syncing with QuickBooks.

Each property's syncing is controlled independently. Go to Settings > Financial > QuickBooks > click on the entry for your QuickBooks Online connection > Property Settings tab > check the list of properties there, and make sure all the ones you expect to be Active actually are.

Syncing payments to different bank accounts in QuickBooks

You can configure payments to sync to different bank accounts on the QuickBooks side but it depends on the payment type (check, cash, credit card). In the QuickBooks connection mappings in OwnerRez, click the Payments tab and specify that you want to use different bank accounts for different payment types and then configure the bank account to use for each one. You can use "Undeposited Funds" for any payment types that you're not sure of.

In general, "Undeposited Funds" should be used as the bank accounts for all payments unless you know what you're doing. When a payment goes to Undeposited Funds, QuickBooks will show that payment to you when matching up bank transactions on the bank register. Undeposited payments can also be selected when creating Bank Deposit records in QuickBooks.

Syncing payments based on booking channel (Vrbo versus Airbnb payments)

You cannot configure payments to use different bank accounts based on anything other than payment type, as mentioned above. If you want your payments to go to different bank accounts based on channel (Vrbo payments versus Airbnb payments) you need to map all payments to use "Undeposited Funds" when OwnerRez pushes them across and then create Bank Deposit transactions on the QuickBooks side to pick and choose which payments should be deposited to which bank accounts based on what your bank statements show when doing reconciliation. QuickBooks might do that for you actually when it sees that there's a Received Payment that is currently undeposited and is the same amount (and date) of a deposit in one of the bank accounts. It will sometimes make suggestions to match when it sees that. Other than that, there's no way currently for OwnerRez to use an exact bank account based on the listing site/channel of the booking.

Can I set only bookings from certain channels (Airbnb, etc.) to sync with QuickBooks Online?

No, users cannot set or skip certain bookings based on channel (Airbnb, etc.) criteria.

Specific Error Messages

Account assigned to this transaction has been deleted.

The error message looks like this:

Account assigned to this transaction has been deleted. Before you can modify this transaction, you must restore Rent Received: Florida Taxes (deleted).

In this example, it's the Rent Received: Florida Taxes item, but your account will differ. The solution is the same...

This happens because your Product or Service Items list (or classes) changed on the QuickBooks Online side after the invoice was created. Now, OwnerRez is trying to modify the old invoice (because the booking changed) but the settings are wrong in OwnerRez. You need to refresh the References on the QuickBooks Online settings in OwnerRez and ensure that what you selected is still a real item on the QuickBooks Online side.

To see what I mean, go to Settings > QuickBooks and drill into your connected account. From there, click the Change button at the top. You'll see a Refresh References button at the top. Click that. After it updates, OwnerRez will have a fresh set of references to use on our side when creating/modifying invoices. The Rent Mapping drop-down below that may updates to a new list.

Then click back out to the general QuickBooks Online settings and look at the various tabs for Property Settings, Surcharge Settings, Deposit Settings, and Tax Settings. Notice that your setting was mapped to the missing item on the QuickBooks Online side. Does that "Alabama tax" (or whatever your item was named) still exist on the QuickBooks Online side? Set that to what it should be now and save.

Then sync the bookings that failed again.

The account period has closed and the account books cannot be updated.

The error message looks like this:

The account period has closed and the account books cannot be updated through the QuickBooks Online Services API. Please use the QuickBooks Online website to make these changes.

This is happening because you or your accountant has closed the accounting period for that booking, but OwnerRez saw a change and was attempting to update QuickBooks. Once an accounting period has been closed on the QuickBooks side, OwnerRez is no longer able to update the invoice via API.

If the accounting period is purposefully closed and you don't want to update QuickBooks at all, then you can ignore this error.

If you do want to make the update, then first go to QuickBooks and open the accounting period covering that booking.

Then go to OwnerRez and sync the bookings that failed again.

Finally, after the sync is complete you can close the accounting period in QuickBooks again.

The transaction has been deposited.

The error message looks like this:

This transaction has been deposited. If you want to change or delete it, you must edit the deposit it appears on and remove it first.

This is happening because you or your accountant has deposited the payment for that booking in QuickBooks, but OwnerRez saw a change and was attempting to update QuickBooks. Once a transaction has been deposited on the QuickBooks side, OwnerRez is no longer able to update the payment via API.

If the payment is deposited correctly and you don't want to update QuickBooks at all, then you can ignore this error.

If you do want to make the update, then first go to QuickBooks, edit the deposit, and remove the payment from that deposit.

Then go to OwnerRez and sync the bookings that failed again.

Finally, after the sync is complete you can re-link the payments to the deposit in QuickBooks again.

QuickBooks encountered an error while calculating tax.

The error message looks like this:

Were sorry, QuickBooks encountered an error while calculating tax. Try reselecting the tax rate or reentering the product/service item and saving the form again.

This is most likely happening because you have your invoices or Product or Service Items in QuickBooks configured to use the built in sales-tax wizard that QuickBooks offers with invoicing. As mentioned in this same FAQ, OwnerRez does not support the built-in "sales tax" wizard in QuickBooks nor the tax fields on invoices. If you attempt to use that, QuickBooks might show errors like this one from time to time when it goes to recalculate the invoice after OwnerRez has synced a certain type of booking and the tax rate can't be found on the QuickBooks side. Instead, use your own liability accounts, mapped to Product or Service Items, to hold the tax money in liability as it syncs across from OwnerRez to QuickBooks.

The name supplied already exists. : null.

The error message looks like this:

The name supplied already exists. : null

This error message is a bit misleading. It appears to say that the customer name is already in QuickBooks and OwnerRez is attempting to create the same name, but that's not exactly true. The "null" part at the end of the message is the name that QuickBooks is saying already exists which isn't the actual customer's name, so... what gives?

Unfortunately, Quickbooks does not like some characters in guest names... For any bookings that get this error, try removing the single quote (or other apostrophe's or similar characters) from the guest name and then re-sync again. That should fix the issue. If it continues to happen, then there is something else about the customer name (ie. guest name) that QuickBooks doesn't like.

This transaction is matched to a downloaded transaction.

The error message looks like this:

Business Validation Error: This transaction is matched to a downloaded transaction. If you want to change the account, you need to unmatch the transaction first.

This means that OwnerRez is trying to change a payment on the QuickBooks side, but the QuickBooks payment is already matched to a bank transaction in QuickBooks. At some point, you "matched" or added a bank transaction in the QuickBooks bank register and associated it with this payment, so QuickBooks is not allowing us to change the payment. You'll have to find the payment in QuickBooks, click from there to the matching bank transaction and remove or disassociate the bank transaction. Once you do that, you can then force a re-sync on the booking in OwnerRez, and it should work.