QuickBooks Web Connector for sale

[AbleMods]

My QuickBooks Web Connector module will be available in beta release on Monday June 23rd, 2008.

Here is the product URL in my store: http://www.AbleMods.com/

The product record is currently purchase-disabled. I'll unlock in the afternoon once I have the digital download zip file updated.

Documentation is a rough draft but includes enough to get everything going. For those that know me, I like to provide details so expect a far more complete manual once the product goes live. Obviously I'll be available to help with installation, testing and any troubleshooting.

[Robbie@FireFold]

Glad to see this released. Will there be a beta we can play with? Or are we required to just purchase?

Please let me know.

[AbleMods]

Initial beta release will require purchase at a discounted price. Once I take the module to final, price will increase, probably $100. Price for the source code version will remain the same, however it will not be available for purchase until the module goes final so everyone receives the release-version code.

Credit will be given for your original purchase if you choose to purchase the full source code version at a later date. Details have yet to be ironed out, but I want to be as reasonable as possible with everyone. I always liked it when I bought something and could apply that cost to the full source version at a later date.

[AbleMods]

Well, I broke my own module - release will have to be delayed for a few weeks while I sort out two new issues. Something in my processing routine is duplicating some payments while not transferring others at all. This wasn't happening over the weekend.

Sorry for the premature expectations. Is this how every new software release goes??

[AbleMods]

...and I fixed what I broke

The product is officially released into beta and available for sale. Details are on the product page in the URL at the top of this page.

[tkasey]

Question - I am using paypal to process transactions. Does this support a way of importing the paypal fees that we pay on each transaction? I know it doesn't show up on AbleCommerce so maybe not. Just thought I would ask.

Thanks,
Tara Kasey

[AbleMods]

Question - I am using paypal to process transactions. Does this support a way of importing the paypal fees that we pay on each transaction? I know it doesn't show up on AbleCommerce so maybe not. Just thought I would ask.

Thanks,
Tara Kasey

That's a great question. You are correct - since the transaction fees do not show in AC7, they do not get created in QuickBooks.

[compunerdy]

During the instructions..

Step 6 – Modify the ~/Web.config file in the root of your store. Find the <system.web>
tag and add the following immediately below it. Pay particular attention to the
upper/lower case as they are required.
<webServices>
<protocols>
<add name=”HttpGet”/>
<add name=”HttpPost”/>
</protocols>
</webServices>

DO NOT copy and paste that info into the file. The " get all messed up and make it not work. I messed around with this for a damn hour before I finally figured out what it was. Copying it out of Adobe and then pasting it into notepad did not work for me at least.

[AbleMods]

Version 1.1 will be released at the end of this week. Hopefully this will be my "Final". New features include the following:

1. Sales Receipts are now fully supported. Admins can choose whether they want Invoices/Payments or Sales Receipts created for each order to be transferred.

2. A timeout issue was occuring if the web site took longer than 2 minutes to build the list of orders to be transferred. This has been resolved by allowing the admin to limit the number of orders transferred per session. The default is 500 however the admin is free to raise or lower this value based on their own site performance.

3. Inventory Item Asset Account configuration was only populating with one of the two asset GL account types. This has been resolved.

4. A new choice has been added to the Customer Name configuration called "Single name 'Web Store'". Selecting this option will cause all orders transferred to be stored under the same single customer called "Web Store" in QB. QuickBooks as a functionality limit of 14,500 names - larger storefronts could potentially hit this limit. This feature can get around this limitation to some extent by storing all website orders under a single QuickBooks customer name.

Many thanks to everyone for their great feedback

[sacards.com]

Hi,
Does it sync two-way or only one-way ? if it's one-way , are you going to have it two-way ?

[AbleMods]

Hi,
Does it sync two-way or only one-way ? if it's one-way , are you going to have it two-way ?

The module will pull all of your QB lists (Customers, Vendors, Items etc) into AC7 to improve efficiency by eliminating duplicate requests during the AC7-to-QB transfer. It also uses these values to populate the configuration page options for you. However it does not create QB records in AC7. A full two-way sync is an enormous amount of add/edit/delete programming code and rules. You would literally have to test every single field in every single record for every table you want to sync between the two applications. The programming and bandwidth overhead would be enormous for an internet-based transfer like this.
QuickBooks does have a separate SDK for effective two-way syncing, however it requires QuickBooks to be installed on the same physical server as the web site. Most site admins either don't own their own servers or desire their business financials be loaded on their web server.

[meer2005]

How is this handling QB inventory that is in subcategories?

For example:

This is how QuickBooks treats the SKU of an item in a subcategory:
PACKAGED CANDY:P001

Packaged candy is the subcategory, and P001 is the actual SKU. From my understanding, if you don't import items into QuickBooks with the subcategory path and the SKU (PACKAGED CANDY:P001), it will just create a new item in the root of the inventory section as P001. I think in QB you can also have the same SKU number in multiple subcategories as different products.

AC 5.5 had an order import tool for QuickBooks. We used it for one of our stores, but it wouldn't recognize the item in the subcategory because the store only has the SKU number, and not the full QB subcategory/sku path. It would always import the item to the root of the inventory as new item with negative one as the on hand. We'd have to go back and merge the newly created item with the correct item in the subcategory to which the item belonged.

There is an old bug for the 5.5 client tools:
http://bugs.ablecommerce.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3623

QB Pro 2005

[AbleMods]

Categorized products are not supported in this version. Any products on an order are created as inventory items at the root level in QuickBooks using the AC7 stock quantity at the time it is created.

The problem is more of a data design issue than a programming one. In AC7, a single product can belong to multiple categories. But once a product is ordered, AC7 doesn't store which category the product was purchased from. Therefore it has no way to know which sub-category to tell QuickBooks the item should be created and sold from.

You can also have multiple products with the same SKU both in AC7 and QB. Why anyone would ever want to is a whole different topic for debate.

I don't know that it necessarily counts as a bug as it is simply a programming design choice. There are many aspects of QuickBooks that just aren't feasible to implement in a transfer from AC7 because that same aspect does not exist or is implemented differently in AC7.

[AbleMods]

Version 1.1 is released and the beta period has ended. Sales receipts are now fully supported along with many other improvements.

Next step will be getting a separate site up and peel off my custom modules onto their own web site.

[sacards.com]

I am considering QuickBooks connector very soon .. some questions :
- Does it support unicode for customer / products names ?
- what happiens if a customer registed in my website with only email (i.e no first & last name) ?
- Does it transfere all customer related information to QuickBooks ?
- Is there a mapping feature to map fileds to custom fileds in quickbooks or to override the current configration ?

Thanks ! great product actually

[AbleMods]

I am considering QuickBooks connector very soon .. some questions :
- Does it support unicode for customer / products names ?

I'm not sure what you mean. The QuickBooks SDK uses the HTTPS SOAP communication standard with a proprietary XML command set to transfer data between the remote site web service and the locally installed web connector software. I do know that the US versions of QuickBooks do not support Extended ASCII characters in any of the QuickBooks fields. Any Copyright symbols, Registered-trademark symbols etc are automatically stripped from AC7 fields before being transmitted to the QuickBooks install.
To my knowledge, Unicode is a standard for text encoding. I don't think it applies to this situation but I am by no means an authority on Unicode.

- what happiens if a customer registed in my website with only email (i.e no first & last name) ?

The system supports a variety of ways to define what the primary customer ID will be, including billing email address. Your need is supported. QuickBooks requires a unique Name value of some kind for each customer, so you will have to select the BillToEmail as your customer ID choice on the included configuration page.

- Does it transfere all customer related information to QuickBooks ?

Yes. There isn't much to transfer as AC7 only stores basic Name and Address information for each customer. All fields that have matching equivalents in QuickBooks are transferred.

- Is there a mapping feature to map fileds to custom fileds in quickbooks or to override the current configration ?

No. Only certain tables in QuickBooks support custom fields and there are differences in how many custom fields are available depending on the version of QuickBooks. This is certainly possible but would require customization to suit your specific need.

Thanks ! great product actually

Thank you. I just implemented support for QuickBooks classes with the latest release v1.3. Overall results have been very good.

You will need a decent machine with a solid, stable install of QuickBooks. A 5-year old PC with 512Mb of RAM running a 7-year old company file isn't going to work well with this module.

[compunerdy]

I have been using the module for over a month now and Joe went above and beyond in my book making changes to suit some issues I had specific to my setup. I have successfully transferred over 1500 orders and AC and QuickBooks now match down to the penny.

Thanks for such a great product and great customer support Joe.

[AbleMods]

Version 1.31 has been released. I made some really great performance and error logging improvements. Here are the release notes for those interested:

V1.31 Change Log
Several performance improvements implemented during the processing routines. The entire Send/Receive programming has been rewritten for speed optimization.

Greatly improved error reporting. AC7 Error Log will now report what order # failed or what customer name was unable to be transferred based on responses from QuickBooks. This should help users more easily identify what it was that didn't transfer and the reason for the transfer failure. More improvements to this will be included in future updates.

Debug logging moved to the ~/App_Data/Logs/App.log file so the AC7 Error Log doesn't get spammed during a debug run. Readability and transmission of error log to tech support will be much easier than copy/pasting the AC7 Error Log.

Class-related bug affecting gift certificate orders has been fixed.

Bug related to AC7 stores running on a SQL 2000 database has been resolved.

Order Exported flag is now only updated if QuickBooks responds that the order transferred successfully. Previously all orders batched for transfer were marked as such prior to the actual transfer. This resulted in the occasional situation where QuickBooks would reject an order yet the order was still marked as transferred. Now if an order fails, it remains "Unexported" so corrections in AC7 can be made. The order will be automatically included in the next transfer.

Significant performance improvements during the initial transfer steps. This should easily resolve any remaining timeout issues commonly found on QuickBooks company files with a large number of customers or inventory items.

Debug Logging checkbox changed to a dropdown with choices of "ON" or "Off" for readability purposes.

[musthavebag]

Hi there,

Great product, we intend to buy it. My question is this: We offer each product in a number of different colors. For all products, we track variants and allow backorders. I have not entered any SKU MODs in the Edit Choices field in the Options and Variants section. Will I need to enter SKU MODs if using your QB Web Connector? We are setting up Quickbooks from scratch.

[AbleMods]

I believe SKU mods will store a SKU value to the ac_OrderItems table but double-check in your database to be sure.

As long as there's a SKU, the module can transfer data to QB. QB requires a unique SKU for each product record. I transfer variants all the time but I don't use sku modifiers.

Some gotchas we've learned so far:
1. A clean QB company file is a happy QB company file. Purge ancient data so the QB file is smaller.

2. Don't create different record types with identical names ex: a customer named Smith, Joe and a vendor named Smith, Joe. The QB API doesn't like it.

3. When you're done testing order processing in AC7, delete your test orders or change their ac_orders.Exported flag to True so they do not try to transfer to QB.

4. The module only transfers orders that are Paid and Shipped. Otherwise duplication in QB will occur.

[compunerdy]

5. It works so great that you will get bored with all the free time you have not spent pulling your hair out.