The sync with QuickBooks Online with ServiceM8 is well documented here, however it is likely important to note a few things:
- The sync is generally instant with most things, but can take 20-30 minutes at times.
- Changes made within ServiceM8 to Clients and Materials should update their counterparts within QBO. If you are planning to make sweeping / bulk changes to Clients, Materials &/or Tax Rates it is recommended to make them in QBO and allow those changes to update back to ServiceM8 (whenever possible).
- While this is just a recommendation, and bulk updates to Clients and Materials can generally be made in either platform reliably, changes to the Tax Rates should be done in QBO whenever possible.
- Tax Rates can not really be removed from ServiceM8 or its Tax Rate selector for Line Items. If a rate is no longer wanted, it is generally best to simply add a prefix to the name which will identify it as no longer in use, and at the end of the alphabetical list.
- Example: Change "County Rate" to "zDNU County Rate" or "zARCHIVE County Rate"
- "z" will place it at the end of the alphabetical list.
- "DNU" or "DoNotUse". Alternatively you could use "ARCHIVE"
- While a good practice in general, but especially if you work in an area with constantly changing Tax Rates, we recommend naming naming your rates to include either the rate or year in question to ensure clarity and uniqueness.
- Example: Rather than "County Rate", use "County 7.5" or "County 2024", as it will make it much easy to delineate different versions of the Tax Rate as the change over time.
- Outside of ServiceM8 and Intuit (the parent company to QuickBooks), QBO is generally seen as being in a "perpetual beta". Meaning while most things work, things will at times randomly stop working, unannounced changes to their API cause issues with existing integrations (such as ServiceM8), and aspects of the platform can suddenly change with little to no notice.
- While QBO supports Custom Fields, and ServiceM8 has a feature within their integration to use this aspect, depending on what "level" of QBO you are using (or just bad luck) it at times does not work (possibly at all).