QuickBooks

The QuickBooks integration lets your consultants create invoices for placements directly in Spott and send them to QuickBooks Online. Your finance team then sends them and records payment in QuickBooks as usual, and Spott tracks each invoice’s status on the placement. With the integration you can:

• Sync your QuickBooks products and services into Spott as pay codes, so line items use the same codes and descriptions as in QuickBooks.
• Link a Spott company to its QuickBooks customer once, or create the customer from Spott, so every future invoice goes to the right billing entity.
• Create invoices from contingent, contract and retained placements, including invoices built from approved timesheets.
• See at a glance which placements are invoiced, which invoices are still open, and which are paid.

This page covers setting up the integration. Creating invoices, and following their status once they are in QuickBooks, is on Invoicing with QuickBooks. Sending and reconciling invoices happens in QuickBooks, not in Spott.

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Before you start

Check that these things are in place before your team creates its first invoice:

• A Spott admin has connected QuickBooks. It is connected once for the whole workspace, with one QuickBooks company or several.
• Your products and services are set up in QuickBooks. Spott imports them as pay codes, with their names and descriptions.
• Automatically send imported invoices is off in QuickBooks. When it is on, QuickBooks emails every invoice from Spott to the customer as soon as it arrives. You find it under Settings → Account and settings → Sales → Invoice payments in QuickBooks.

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Connect your QuickBooks companies

1. Go to Settings → Integrations and select QuickBooks.
2. Click Connect and sign in with your Intuit account.
3. Under Please select your company, choose the QuickBooks company to link, then click Connect to let Spott access it. Spott shows Successfully connected! and takes you back. The company appears as your Primary company.
4. To link another company, for example a second legal entity, click Connect another company and choose it the same way. It appears as a Connected company.

Each company has its own row, showing its name and Connected. Companies are not tied to a brand, entity or office in Spott. Each invoice goes to the QuickBooks company you choose when you create it, as described in Invoicing with QuickBooks.

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Disconnect a company

On the QuickBooks integration page, open the dropdown next to Connected on the company’s row and click Disconnect. Only that company is disconnected; any others stay connected. Its invoices, customer links and pay codes are kept, but cannot be used until you connect it again. The primary company is always the one connected first. If you disconnect it, the oldest remaining company becomes primary. If the connection is ended from QuickBooks’ side, click Reconnect on the company’s row.

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Sync pay codes from QuickBooks

Pay codes are the items you bill for, such as a permanent placement fee or an hourly development rate. They come from your QuickBooks products and services.

1. On the QuickBooks integration page, open Manage pay codes. You can also go to Settings → Templates → Rate Card Templates → Pay Codes.
2. Next to Sync pay codes: Import the latest item codes from QuickBooks, click Sync. With several companies connected, this imports from all of them at once, and the list is grouped by company.
3. Imported codes appear in the list under their QuickBooks company, alongside their description.

If Xero is connected too, the Pay Codes page has a separate Sync pay codes row for each provider. Sync again whenever your finance team adds or changes products and services in QuickBooks. Syncing is one-way: changes in QuickBooks come into Spott, but pay codes you create in Spott are not sent to QuickBooks. A code exists only once in your workspace. If two companies both have a product or service with the same code, Spott keeps one shared pay code, with one description, linked to both.

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Move a Spott pay code to QuickBooks

If you created a pay code in Spott and now want to invoice it through QuickBooks:

1. In QuickBooks, create a product or service whose name matches the Spott pay code exactly, including capitals and spaces. OT and ot are treated as different codes.
2. Back in Spott, click Sync again.

Spott links the two, and the pay code moves under its QuickBooks company. Any rate cards and timesheets already using it keep working.

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Description templates

A pay code’s description becomes the line description on the invoice. Instead of fixed text, you can write it as a template that fills in details from the placement. This works for every pay code, including ones synced from QuickBooks: open a QuickBooks pay code in Spott and add variables to its description.

1. Open a pay code and click in the Description field.
2. Type { and pick a placement variable, such as first name, last name, company or start date.

For example, Placement of { First name } { Last name } at { Company }, starting { Start date } becomes Placement of John Doe at Acme, starting 2024-02-01 on the invoice.

• Only placement variables can be used.
• A description without variables is used as written.
• If one invoice covers several placements, the variables cannot be filled in and the line reads N/A. Edit that line by hand before sending.

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Link companies to QuickBooks customers

Each Spott company is billed through a QuickBooks customer. You can link it ahead of time from the company record, or the first time you invoice that company. With several QuickBooks companies connected, a Spott company can have one QuickBooks customer in each. To link it from the company record:

1. Open the company in Spott and click External Links.
2. Click the + next to QuickBooks.
3. With several companies connected, choose the QuickBooks company. The primary one is preselected.
4. Pick the QuickBooks customer from the dropdown.

If the customer does not exist in QuickBooks yet, choose Create QuickBooks customer when you create the invoice. Once linked, every invoice to that company in that QuickBooks company goes to the same customer, and you are not asked again. Unlike Xero, the link can be undone: unlink it with the External Links button on the company page.