Ignition and QuickBooks

Learn how the Ignition and QuickBooks integration works.

Ella Buan avatar
Written by Ella Buan
Updated over a week ago

Why connect to QuickBooks?

QuickBooks automates time-consuming accounting tasks so that you have more time to grow your business. Create estimates, invoices, bills and more. In just one click you can create balance sheets, cash flow statements and over 60 other reports.

Connecting QuickBooks to your Ignition account allows you to automatically generate invoices in QuickBooks when your proposal is accepted by your client.

How does Ignition create new (or identify existing) clients in QuickBooks?

Ignition uses the Client Name to determine if a new client should be created in QuickBooks. The following illustration breaks down exactly how this works.

If the Client Name exactly matches a Client Name in QuickBooks, then Ignition will assign all invoices to that existing client. 

In Ignition, you can manually map an Ignition client record to a QuickBooks client record. For example, if your client has two entities:  Entity A and Entity B. You want the Ignition proposal to address Entity A, but the invoices to be allocated to Entity B in QuickBooks, you will manually map them via Ignition.

To do this, simply click into Clients → Select the Client → Edit Client → Apps tab → use the search/dropdown to select the QuickBooks client you want to map to.

If there is no Client Name that exactly matches in QuickBooks, and you have not performed mapping then Ignition will create a new client.

The client's entity name, address, postal address and phone numbers will be pushed across to QuickBooks. If a new entity is created, their details are not pushed across to QuickBooks until a proposal for that entity has been accepted through Ignition.

How does Ignition create invoices in QuickBooks?

Ignition does a one-way push of invoices to QuickBooks.

Invoices will only start sending to QuickBooks after a proposal is accepted. Ignition uses the default invoice functionality to create invoices in QuickBooks. The invoice will include the customer details (name, email address), the billing address, invoice number and due dates. The services included in your proposal become line items in the invoice. Read on below the screenshots to learn more about how frequently invoices are sent. 

Internal view:

Client view:

When will Ignition create invoices for each client?

  • For On Acceptance services, an invoice will be immediately generated in QuickBooks once the proposal is accepted. If you have more than one "On Acceptance" services, they become individual line items on the same invoice.

  • For Recurring services, invoices will be generated in QuickBooks depending on the cadence you choose in your Service Type.

  • For Deposit services, the first invoice (Deposit) will be immediately generated in in Quickbooks once the proposal is accepted. Then, the second invoice (Balance) will need to be raised manually on or before your specified date.

Classic Proposals

For classic proposals, the number and frequency of invoices is dependent on the billing types you've included in your proposal:

  • If you have "weekly recurring" services in your proposal, Ignition will generate a new invoice once a week, on the day you specified in the Weekly Recurring Invoice Day  settings, found in your account's Global Settings. If you choose "Continue Recurring Billing", a new invoice will be created weekly until you complete the proposal. If you choose "Stop Recurring Billing", a new invoice will be created weekly until the proposal end date has passed.

  • If you have "monthly recurring services" in your proposal, ignition will generate a new invoice once a month, on the day you specified in your General Proposal Settings. The recurring billing rules can be applied just as it is stated above, to determine when invoices will stop being created. 

  • If you have "On completion" or "Estimate" services, you will complete the steps laid out in this article to generate an invoice in QuickBooks.  

Data transfer between Ignition and QuickBooks

We refresh the data points once an hour from QuickBooks to Ignition but this can also be pushed manually across by going into the 'Apps' section, then by clicking the ‘Sync’ button next to QuickBooks.

Got questions? Get in touch with us at support@ignitionapp.com

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