By Ruaan de Swardt

With technology being what it is, there are always challenges that present themselves in the life of the average QuickBooks user. In this edition we’ll be looking at third party integration with QuickBooks. So, if you’re a developer, ‘listen up’.

Third Party integration with QuickBooks

There are many ways to integrate a third party app with QuickBooks. You’ll be happy to know you don’t have to be a programmer to integrate with QuickBooks either… well at least not for 2 out of the 3 method’s we’re discussing in this edition.

1. Intuit Market Place

The developers of QuickBooks spend a great deal of time testing third party applications. Included in their approved catalogue are products useful for integration – applicable to this month’s article.

Testing applications and giving them Gold, Silver & Bronze status provides the end-user certain ‘guarantees’ that the solution listed meets certain predetermined criteria.

To search for applications that will assist with integrating/syncing/importing & exporting data to QuickBooks click on the following link: http://marketplace.intuit.com/v2/f-data-synchronization/v-qb_uk_2008/software-solutions.aspx

2. IIF

Intuit Interchange Format (.IIF) files are ASCII text, CSV files that QuickBooks uses to import/export lists and to import transactions. The .IIF import and export utilities are on the QuickBooks File menu.

Importing and exporting .IIF files created by QuickBooks are fairly easy to do as QuickBooks formats the file for you. However, creating .iif files from scratch or adapting data from another programme is technically complex and may be difficult if you don’t have experience of formatting delimited text files. In that situation it may be faster and easier to enter the information directly into QuickBooks unless you have very large amounts of data to import.

3. Intuit Developer Network

If the Intuit Market Place and IIF option were dead-ends, you’ll need to sign up with the Intuit Partner Platform (previously known as Intuit Developer Network). You’ll need to have a sound understanding of the following:

• QuickBooks
• Programming language of your choice (Visual Basic .NET, C++, C#, etc.)
• Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM)

QuickBooks uses the following mechanisms to send messages to and from QuickBooks:

• Using the QBXML Request Processor API or
• Using the QuickBooks Foundation Class (QBFC) Library API

Missed last month’s technical newsletter? Summary of what was covered…

1. QuickBooks is compatible with Terminal Server
2. QuickBooks is not a flat file
3. QuickBooks Toolkit
4. Windows compatibility

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