Automating Quickbooks from the Cloud

For all the benefits working in the cloud provides, sometimes migrating every aspect of your business operations to cloud services is not an option.  What do you do when your CRM and Project Management are cloud based, but you need to move data back to Quickbooks on the desktop?

One answer: get in touch with Interlock IT.

Our client had already switched their Contact and Project management to Norada's Solve CRM when they did just that:

I would like to integrate the Solve CRM API with Quickbooks to automate our workflow bidirectionally between Solve CRM and Quickbooks. We use Quickbooks Enterprise Construction Edition.

Our first response was to rule out other options, couldn't we move accounting into the Cloud? Specific features of the Quickbooks Contractor edition were mission critical; there was no direct cloud replacement. Xero, Quickbooks Online, and Freshbooks would not meet their needs at this time.

Enter the Quickbooks Web Connector, a legacy application released by Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks, designed to allow desktop editions of Quickbooks to communicate with web-applications, also known as the Cloud!

Armed with a method of communicating with Quickbooks on the desktop, we dug into the clients specific needs and developed the solution below.

Setting a Revenue Opportunity to "Won" in Solve CRM kicks off the process.

When a revenue opportunity is marked Won in Solve CRM, the following occurs automatically:

• Instantly create a Customer and Job in Quickbooks with details from the Solve CRM Company record.
• Add an Estimate to the Job and convert it to a Sales Order, using details from the revenue opportunity.

Details from Company record and Opportunity are synced into Quickbooks.

Now the accounts team can take over and work with the project in Quickbooks, tracking progress and financial details on the automatically created job in Quickbooks.

Finally, our system syncs financial report figures back into Solve CRM, allowing for reports on project finances to be generated entirely from data in the Cloud, avoiding a time consuming manual process of matching Quickbooks reports with Solve CRM Opportunities.

Later, Quickbooks report values are synced back into Solve CRM automatically, simplifying project based reporting.

The technology stack used to implement this solution consists of Google Apps Script and Python on the Google App Engine.  Webhooks triggered from within Solve CRM call out to a Google Apps Script living on Google Drive.  The Apps Script processes the Webhook and determines the required action. If Quickbooks related actions are required, the Apps Script passes the request onto the Google App Engine application, which handles SOAP based communication with Quickbooks, using QBXML.

The Quickbooks Web Connector polls the App Engine application and consumes any new actions that have been passed from Apps Script, returning results to the App Engine. The App Engine then feeds data back into Solve when necessary.

The end result is an integrated solution that saves time, reduces errors, and provides staff access to important financial data direct from Quickbooks!

Try Solve CRM for Free.

Updated guide to embedding an image in your Google Apps for Work signature

Earlier this year we posted a guide for using Google Drive to host images embedded in your email signature and it's been one of our most popular articles. However, Google recently changed the behaviour of Drive's image viewer, so this method no longer works. Instead, you now need to use Google+ Photos (formerly Picasa) to upload images and link to them directly. Here's how.

First, if you don't have one already, create a Google+ account with your Google Apps for Work email address by visiting http://plus.google.com. (You'll need to make sure your domain administrator has enabled Google+ for this to work.)

Next, either head directly to Google+ Photos or hover over the Home icon in the top-left corner of the page and click Photos, then click the Upload photos link along the top of the page. Upload the image you'd like to use as your signature, and click Done.

In the Share album dialogue box that appears, type "Public" in the To: box and click Share.

The image should now open in an album view; click the image to open it on its own. Right-click on the image and select Copy image URL (assuming you're using Google Chrome; in Firefox this is "Copy Image Location"). The resulting URL will look something like this when you paste it:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LDvF-aANinE/VCMjrpWet7I/AAAAAAAAA0U/eE1oYgtVrKo/w150-h70-no/Interlockit_Logo%2B150x70.png

Copy this entire URL into the Add an image dialogue box of the signature editor, and you should see a preview of the image you're about to insert.

If you see the preview correctly, click OK and you're all done! The image you uploaded will now be linked in (rather than attached to) your signature, won't make your messages larger than they need to be, and shouldn't trigger spam filters.

If you're a regular Google+ user, then uploading the image(s) you use in your signature will show up in your Google+ stream and other users will be able to see the posts. If you'd rather not have the uploads clog up your stream, head over to your profile, hover over the photo you want to remove from your stream, click the down arrow in the top-right corner and click Delete post. This will not remove the photo attached to the post, but will stop the upload from showing up in your own or others' streams.

Chromebooks and centralized management of devices

We've mentioned in past blog posts that we're well-equipped to tackle anything we might need with nothing more than a web browser and a laptop. So why bother spending hundreds or thousands of dollars outfitting the team with laptops that will only run a web browser? Why not invest in smaller, cheaper, faster laptops that are designed around a suite of web-based applications? That's where Chromebooks come in.

Google's Chromebook Pixel

Chromebooks can boot to the desktop in less than 10 seconds, automatically update on their own, include built-in virus protection, and integrate very tightly with the Google Apps suite. If you're already using Google Apps, it's the perfect laptop for your sales team that uses email, calendar, contacts, Solve360 CRM, Google Drive, and more. Chromebooks can even edit Excel and Word files for no additional cost.

If you still need to run Windows-exclusive software, install one of many RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) clients from the Chrome Web Store and connect to a Windows Terminal Server or Windows desktop computer.

Add in the Chromebook Management Console and you can manage thousands of Chromebooks from your Google Apps admin control panel to make your life even easier. You can configure wireless networks so users are up and running as soon as they log in, allow or block guest access to the machines, and much more. By design Chromebooks are encrypted and highly secure, and since all your data is stored in the cloud, users can pick up any available Chromebook and be productive in seconds.

A Chromebook even works great offline for drafting emails, managing appointments, and editing documents.

The best part is, as always with Google, the price. Chromebooks start from as low as $249 CAD and a one-time license for the management console costs just $161 CAD for businesses or $32 CAD for education users, available from us here at InterlockIT.com.