First Look Friday: Connex for QuickBooks Online

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Connex is a Saas integration tool designed to provide connectivity between your accounting solution like QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, and your eCommerce platforms and related 3rd-party products. While there are a lot of similarities between Connex for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, there are a lot of differences as well. Rather than attempt to cover the ‘this is the same’ and ‘this is different’ in one article I have chosen to actually write two First Look features that will examine each one of the products individually. We will look at examples of different eCommerce platforms and 3rd-party integrations in each so as to give you a variety of options even when both products have similar capabilities.

Connex for QuickBooks Online frees you from manual data entry of your eCommerce orders into QuickBooks by syncing order information and inventory between your eCommerce channels and QBO.

It’s fully compatible with QuickBooks Online Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced, as well as most country versions including United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South America, Australia, and Global. Connex automatically sync sales, inventory, customers, sales tax, and fees from over 30 eCommerce platforms and other integrations, all with 100% US-based support so you needn’t worry about who you are talking to. It also offers auto deposit matching for Amazon, PayPal, Shopify, Square, Stripe.

This is one of the quickest and most simplistic setups of any of these types of eCommerce multi-connectors helped in part by their built-in integration wizard as well as the fact that the Connex team will provide 60-minutes of complimentary on-boarding for new customers to set-up the software.   Nevertheless, I thought it would be helpful to step you through the easy process.

Step 1 – Make sure you are ready to connect Connex to QuickBooks Online

Before you get ready to use Connex for QuickBooks Online there are a number of things that you need to make certain are properly configured in QBO, this is really of critical importance. First, your Chart of Accounts must have an Accounts receivable account, and Item asset account, and Item income account, a Cost-of-goods-sold account, a Discount/refunds account, and an Undeposited-funds account. Connex will ‘sync’ with all of these accounts when exchanging data between your eCommerce platform(s) and QBO.

Second, your Items and Products will need to have ‘matching’ characteristics. The items in QuickBooks Online must match your product catalog within your eCommerce solution before you connect either QBO or your eCommerce platform to Connex.  Specifically, each of your products/items just have their own unique identification.

The field used to identify products/items between QBO, and your eCommerce solution is the SKU field.  This unique identifier must match perfectly (the fields are case sensitive). On-going, Connect lets you map, sync, and edit your products between QBO and your eCommerce channels.

Third, Customer records must also match-up. Connex relies on the QuickBooks ‘Customer Name’ field as the customer matching basis for customer records from your eCommerce solution (regardless of the specific eCommerce integration).

Fourth, if you intend to use QuickBooks for Sales Tax tracking, all Sales Tax codes must exist within QBO prior to connecting it to Connex

Fifth, Connex relies upon the QuickBooks Online Master Admin ‘Account/Password’ for administrative access, the Connex Administrator will be required to have these credentials along with Admin access to each eCommerce platform intended for integration with Connex.

Step 2 – Get started with Connex for QuickBooks Online by Registering for a Trial Account

Your first step to eliminating the manual task of keying in orders from your eCommerce platform(s) into QuickBooks Online is to register for a Connex for QuickBooks Online ‘Trial Account’.  You can have a 14-day free trial without even having to give-up your credit card information.

Once you’ve created you Connex account, you'll be prompted to pair Connex with QuickBooks Online. 

Step 3 – Connect to QuickBooks Online

From the prompt, Sign-in to your QuickBooks Online account, making certain to use the Master Admin credentials. This follows the standard QuickBooks OAuth2 App authorization process used by Intuit to verify the credentials and authorize apps to connect to your QuickBooks data.

When prompted you will need to select the QBO Company file and click the green ‘Connect’ button (as shown in the example below) which authorizes the connection of Connex with QuickBooks Online.

At this point you are ready to begin the addition of your first eCommerce integration.

Step 4 – Add your first eCommerce integration via the Connex Wizard

On the Connex Dashboard, select the option to Add a New Connection. You will see expectations to prepare you for what’s next, click the blue ‘Next’ button to proceed.  Select the ‘Solution Name’ field and choose from the list of integration products you wish to set-up. Upon selection a set of instructions will appear on-screen with integration specific information.

Click ‘read instructions’ to open the integration specific information providing details on how to sync data between your chosen solution and QuickBooks Online. Once you have read the instructions, click back to Connex, fill in the form, and click the blue ‘Submit Form’ button which will launch the ‘Installation Wizard’ that will take you through the steps explained in the instructions that are specific to your eCommerce solution.  Once you are complete you will be able to ‘sync’ an order manually for a test between your eCommerce solution and QuickBooks Online via Connex.

Step 5 – Manually test your eCommerce solution

At the Connex Dashboard, select the ‘Manual Sync’ button (highlighted in yellow below) for the selling channel you wish to sync (the one shown here is for Amazon).

When the Manual Sync window opens, select either a date range or enter a comma separated list of specific order numbers to sync. Then click the ‘Sync Now’ button.

You will then be able to view a log of the activity in your Dashboard Orders and Errors window as soon as they sync concludes.

And now that Connex for QBO is set up, it will automatically sync sales and inventory in intervals as short as every 15 minutes (you get to set your sync interval). Of course, you always have the option to manually sync orders in the same way we just did in Step 5 above.

In the long run, you will improve your bottom line by producing more accurate financial reports since you will have common shared-data that’s dynamically mapped between QuickBooks and all of your eCommerce selling channels.

Wrap-up

As I said, Connex is a pretty simple, easy to set-up multi-eCommerce platform connector that syncs to QuickBooks Online (or QuickBooks Desktop which we will look at next time). Depending on your exact requirements, they have a variety of pricing alternatives (these are for the QBO plan).  If you want more information you can head over to their website, or schedule a 30-minute 'discover call' which is essentially a free tour. Of course if you think you already know everything you need to and you are ready to give in a try, then go ahead and sign-up for that 14-day "Free 'No Credit-card Needed' Trial Account".

First Look Friday articles are editorial features, they are NOT sponsored content. While they may (or may not) contain references or 'inserts' that refer to sponsored content, or sponsored webinars, the actual feature is intended as an informational resource for our readers.