Overview
Modern Retail's integration with Quickbooks POS allows your Shopify, Bigcommerce, WooCommerce or Magento website to synchronize data with Quickbooks POS. This article gives you an overview of how this integration works and the interaction between Quickbooks POS and your e-commerce website.
Process Flow
The following is how data flows back and forth between Quickbooks POS and your website that's been built using Shopify, Bigcommerce, WooCommerce or Magento, which we will call your "e-commerce platform."
- Modern Retail's Quickbooks POS Integrator gets installed on your host computer. This Integrator connects Quickbooks POS to Modern Retail's integration services.
- In Quickbooks POS, you can decide which products you'd like to sell online.
- Quickbooks POS sends all products that have been marked to sell online to Modern Retail using the Integrator that was installed on your computer. Quickbooks POS also sends inventory and pricing updates whenever they occur through this same Integrator.
- Modern Retail can perform some advanced data manipulation features in our Integrator. Magento customers typically need "attribute mapping" done before the data gets to Magento, and this is all done with the Integrator. For example, Modern Retail has the ability to map colors, so instead of 20 different colors of red being added in Magento for Red, Rose, Wine, etc., all you will see in Magento is one attribute called Red.
- You merchandise products in the e-commerce platform by modifying the product name, updating the description, uploading images, etc. When you are satisfied with a product, you make it visible on the website to be sold online.
- You ship your online orders in the e-commerce platform or using a 3rd party solution like ShipStation. These completed shipments are what will be sent to Quickbooks POS.
- Modern Retail's Integrator sends the order and customer information to Quickbooks POS where they are added to Quickbooks POS. Sending the orders to Quickbooks POS also decrements the inventory, which automatically triggers a product update as explained in #2 above. Similarly, online returns are also sent to Quickbooks POS so your inventory can be adjusted.
- Showing all in-store and online orders in Quickbooks POS gives you a complete view of your customers' in-store and online buying habits.
- The Quickbooks POS Integrator runs quietly in the background passing data back and forth 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- How frequently this integration runs is up to you, but most retailers find that a 30 or 60 minute interval works well. Shorter intervals are possible depending on your selected e-commerce platform.
Quickbooks "Financials" Synchronization
Occasionally people will ask us if our Integrator updates Quickbooks "financials". The answer is yes but not directly. Let me explain.
Technically there's a 7th Step to process explained above and that's Quickbooks Point of Sale synchronizing it's data with Quickbooks Financials. Modern Retail's Quickbooks Integrator really has nothing to do with the exchange of data between Quickbooks POS and Quickbooks Financial and instead is something that is done within Quickbooks software suite.
The entire flow can simplified to the following:
If you have any questions on how this Quickbooks POS integration works, please send us a Support Request, and we'd be happy to help.