Integrations
QuickBooks Desktop sync for HVAC, plumbing & electrical
Stop re-typing invoices into QuickBooks at the end of the week. Customers, invoices and payments post straight into QuickBooks Desktop over the Web Connector, in the order QuickBooks needs them, without anyone touching a spreadsheet.
How it works
A queue, not a nightly guess
Most double-entry problems come from a sync that fires blind and fails quietly. This one is ordered, inspectable, and tells you when something went wrong.
Everything queues, in dependency order
The moment a record changes, it joins an outbound queue. A customer is always created in QuickBooks before the invoice that references it, and the invoice before any payment applied to it. A job whose dependency isn't there yet waits its turn rather than failing.
The Web Connector pulls on its own schedule
QuickBooks Web Connector polls your instance and drains the queue over qbXML. Nothing has to reach into your QuickBooks machine, and no port has to be opened on it.
Failures are visible, not silent
A row that QuickBooks rejects is flagged with the exact error message QuickBooks returned, in a queue you can read in Settings. Fix the cause, press Retry, and it goes on the next pass.
Your cost basis stays out of it
Invoice lines carry item, description, quantity, rate and amount. What the job cost you never leaves PulseService, because that's where the job costing lives.
What crosses over
Three record types, deliberately
The integration covers the path money actually takes: who owes you, what for, and what they've paid.
Customers
Created and updated: name, company, contact name, phone, email and the primary service address as the billing address.
Invoices
Created with their full line items, including the invoice-level discount as its own mapped line. Voiding an invoice voids the QuickBooks transaction too.
Payments
A recorded payment is applied against the right QuickBooks invoice, deposited to the account you nominate, or to Undeposited Funds if you'd rather.
Setting it up
Four steps, once
Done by an administrator, typically during onboarding, with us on the call.
- 1
Turn the sync on in Settings and set a Web Connector username and password.
- 2
Map your line item types to the QuickBooks items they should post to. This is the step that matters: an unmapped line is the most common reason a sync fails, and nothing is mapped for you.
- 3
Download the generated .qwc connector file.
- 4
Open it once in QuickBooks Web Connector on the machine running QuickBooks Desktop.
Being straight with you
What it doesn't do
The same list we'd give you on the call, published here instead.
- It's one-way. PulseService is the system of record and pushes to QuickBooks; nothing in QuickBooks writes back. Change a customer's phone number in QuickBooks and PulseService won't know.
- Quotes, purchase orders, vendors, time entries and the items catalog stay in PulseService. Only customers, invoices and payments cross over.
- Editing an invoice's line items after it has synced updates the header in QuickBooks, not the lines. Invoices are treated as settled once they're out.
- Draft invoices are never sent. Nothing reaches your books until you've actually issued it.
- QuickBooks Online is not supported, and this is a genuine limitation rather than a preference. The integration is built on the Web Connector, which is Desktop-only.
Questions
Before you ask
- Is this a two-way sync?
- No, and we'd rather say so plainly. PulseService pushes customers, invoices and payments into QuickBooks Desktop. Nothing flows back the other way. In practice that suits most shops, because the work is booked, dispatched and invoiced in PulseService, and QuickBooks is where the accountant works. But if you need edits made in QuickBooks to appear in your field software, this isn't that.
- Do we have to leave QuickBooks Desktop?
- No. That's rather the point. The integration talks to QuickBooks Desktop through the Web Connector, so you keep the company file, the workflow and the accountant you already have. There's no forced migration to QuickBooks Online.
- What happens if the sync fails?
- The queue row is marked with an error and shows the exact message QuickBooks returned, so you're diagnosing a real cause rather than guessing. Once you've fixed it, you retry that row from Settings. Failed jobs do not silently disappear, and they do not retry themselves.
- Does QuickBooks see what our jobs cost us?
- No. Invoice lines carry the item, description, quantity, rate and amount. Material cost, labour cost at real pay rates, profit and margin all stay in PulseService, visible only to the people whose role allows it.
- Does our QuickBooks machine need to be exposed to the internet?
- No. QuickBooks Web Connector runs on your machine and reaches out to your PulseService instance on a schedule you control. The connection is outbound from your side.
The rest of the platform
The sync is one piece. What generates those invoices is a dispatch board, a technician app that works with no signal, and inventory costing that knows what the part actually cost you.
See it post a real invoice
The most convincing part of a demo is watching an invoice you just raised appear in a QuickBooks company file. Bring yours and we'll do exactly that.