quickbooks · diff
v1.0.0 to v1.0.0
9 added, 7 removed. Audit A to A.
---
name: quickbooks
description: |
QuickBooks integration via Apideck's Accounting unified API — same methods work across every connector in Accounting, switch by changing `serviceId`. Use when the user wants to read, write, or reconcile invoices, bills, payments, ledger accounts, and journal entries in QuickBooks. Routes through Apideck with serviceId "quickbooks".
license: Apache-2.0
alwaysApply: false
metadata:
author: apideck
version: "1.0.0"
serviceId: quickbooks
unifiedApis: ["accounting"]
authType: oauth2
tier: "1a"
verified: true
difficulty: moderate
partnershipRequired: true
sandboxAvailable: true
---
# QuickBooks (via Apideck)
Access QuickBooks through Apideck's **Accounting** unified API — one of 34 Accounting connectors that share the same method surface. Code you write here ports to Access Financials, Acumatica, banqUP and 30 other Accounting connectors by changing a single `serviceId` string. Apideck handles auth, pagination, rate limiting, and retries so you don't write per-tenant QuickBooks plumbing.
## Quick facts
- **Apideck serviceId:** `quickbooks`
- **Unified API:** Accounting
- **Auth type:** oauth2
- **Gotchas:** [page](https://developers.apideck.com/apis/accounting/quickbooks/gotchas)
- **QuickBooks docs:** https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs
- **Homepage:** https://quickbooks.intuit.com/
## At a glance
- **Implementation difficulty:** moderate — Self-Service Signup + App Review Required
- **Vendor partnership required:** yes ([Intuit Developer Portal](https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/homepage)) — Intuit Developer Account required (free, self-service).
- - **Apideck-managed credentials:** Available — OAuth shows "Apideck" as the requesting application.
+ - **Apideck-managed credentials:** available — OAuth shows "Apideck" as the requesting application.
- **Account type required:** QuickBooks Online (Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, or Advanced)
- **Consumer access level:** Any user with QuickBooks Online access (Admin recommended for full data access)
- **Sandbox:** available ([signup](https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs/develop/sandboxes)) — Free sandbox via Intuit Developer Portal (up to 10 companies, valid for 2 years).
- - **Costs:** Free at Builder tier (500,000 CorePlus API calls/month); paid tiers from $300/month (Silver) unlock higher volumes and Premium APIs.
- - **Rate limits:** 500 requests/minute per company, 10 concurrent maximum; batch endpoint 120 requests/minute.
- - **Authentication:** OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow.
+ - **Costs:** Reads are metered, writes are not: Builder is free with 500K CorePlus calls/month then blocks; Silver $300/month includes 1M.
+ - **Rate limits:** 500 requests/minute per company (realm) and 10 concurrent requests/second per realm and app. Enforced on every tier; upgrading does not raise them.
+ - **Authentication:** Authorization Code flow.
- **Webhooks:** Native — invoice, customer, and payment events (20+ event types)
**Important to know:**
- - Access tokens expire after 1 hour (auto-refreshed by Apideck); refresh tokens expire after 100 days of inactivity and rotate on each refresh — dormant connections must be re-authorized by the consumer.
- - App Assessment Questionnaire required before production access is granted.
- - The free Builder tier's monthly CorePlus (data retrieval) call cap is hard — calls above it are blocked, not throttled, until the next billing cycle or a tier upgrade.
+ - Only successful production calls (list/get-one, query, reports, attachment downloads) count as CorePlus; sandbox/OAuth never do. Builder's free cap blocks calls outright until reset, not throttled — a payment method moves you to Silver, which bills overage instead.
+ - Intuit's platform fees fall on whoever owns the Intuit app, not on the end QuickBooks company. Apideck-provided credentials are for evaluation and testing; a production integration uses your own Intuit app, so the tier and any fees are yours.
+ - The projects resource is served by Intuit's Projects API, which is a Premium API available only to Silver, Gold and Platinum partners. On the free Builder tier this resource is unavailable regardless of your CorePlus allowance.
+ - Intuit refresh tokens expire after 100 days of inactivity and, since a November 2025 policy change, after a hard maximum of 5 years regardless of activity. Dormant and aged-out connections need consumer re-authorization.
+ - A 400 with an Intuit `SystemFault`, or a 401 citing error code 100/140 or a "company locked out" (`LOCKED_BY_SERVER`) message, is QuickBooks' concurrent-request lockout — it happens when two requests hit the same company file at the same time, not because the credentials are invalid. Apideck treats these as transient: the connection is not invalidated and no reconnect is needed. Retry after a short backoff.
> Facts synced from Apideck's connector metadata API — `GET /connector/connectors/quickbooks` (`overview` field) is the live, authoritative version.
## When to use this skill
Activate this skill when the user explicitly wants to work with **QuickBooks** — for example, "create an invoice in QuickBooks" or "reconcile payments in QuickBooks". This skill teaches the agent:
1. Which Apideck unified API covers QuickBooks (Accounting)
2. The correct `serviceId` to pass on every call (`quickbooks`)
3. QuickBooks-specific auth and coverage caveats
For the full method surface (parameters, pagination, filtering), use your language SDK skill:
- [`apideck-node`](../../skills/apideck-node/), [`apideck-python`](../../skills/apideck-python/), [`apideck-dotnet`](../../skills/apideck-dotnet/), [`apideck-java`](../../skills/apideck-java/), [`apideck-go`](../../skills/apideck-go/), [`apideck-php`](../../skills/apideck-php/), or [`apideck-rest`](../../skills/apideck-rest/)
For the raw OpenAPI spec:
- **Accounting:** [https://specs.apideck.com/accounting.yml](https://specs.apideck.com/accounting.yml) · [API Explorer](https://developers.apideck.com/api-explorer?id=accounting)
## Minimal example (TypeScript)
```typescript
import { Apideck } from "@apideck/unify";
const apideck = new Apideck({
apiKey: process.env.APIDECK_API_KEY,
appId: process.env.APIDECK_APP_ID,
consumerId: "your-consumer-id",
});
// List invoices in QuickBooks
const { data } = await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({
serviceId: "quickbooks",
});
```
## Portable across 34 Accounting connectors
The Apideck **Accounting** unified API exposes the same methods for every connector in its catalog. Switching from QuickBooks to another Accounting connector is a one-string change — no rewrite, no new SDK.
```typescript
// Today — QuickBooks
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "quickbooks" });
// Tomorrow — same code, different connector
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "access-financials" });
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "acumatica" });
```
This is the compounding advantage of using Apideck over integrating QuickBooks directly: code against the unified Accounting API once, gain access to every connector in it. New connectors Apideck adds become available to your app without code changes.
## QuickBooks via Apideck Accounting
QuickBooks Online is the most widely used SMB accounting connector on Apideck. Coverage is near-complete for core accounting resources.
### Entity mapping
| QuickBooks entity | Apideck Accounting resource |
|---|---|
| Invoice | `invoices` |
| Bill | `bills` |
| Payment | `payments` |
| BillPayment | `bill-payments` |
| JournalEntry | `journal-entries` |
| Account | `ledger-accounts` |
| Customer | `customers` |
| Vendor | `suppliers` |
| Item | `items` |
| TaxRate, TaxCode | `tax-rates` |
| Company info | `company-info` |
| P&L, Balance Sheet reports | `profit-and-loss`, `balance-sheet` |
### Coverage highlights
- ✅ Full CRUD on invoices, bills, payments, customers, suppliers, items
- ✅ Journal entries (create/read)
- ✅ Financial reports: P&L, Balance Sheet, Aged Receivables/Payables
- ✅ Multi-currency — invoices created with `currency` field route correctly
- ✅ Attachments on invoices/bills via the `attachments` sub-resource
- ⚠️ Tax rates read-only (QuickBooks requires tax setup through its UI)
- ⚠️ Recurring invoices — not exposed; use Proxy
- ❌ Deposits — use Proxy with the `/deposit` endpoint
- ❌ Purchase orders — use Proxy
### QuickBooks-specific auth notes
- **Company/realm selection:** QuickBooks is multi-tenant via `realmId`. The user picks their company during OAuth; the connection is bound to that single realm. Multi-company = one connection per realm (distinct `consumerId`).
- **Sandbox:** QuickBooks Sandbox is a separate environment. The user toggles sandbox vs. production during Vault OAuth — connection is bound to whichever was selected.
### Common QuickBooks quirks handled by Apideck
- **Line items on invoices** — QuickBooks uses a nested `Line` array with `DetailType` discriminators. Apideck normalizes to `line_items[]` with unified fields.
- **Tax calculation** — `TotalAmt` vs. `SubTotal` split is exposed as `total_amount` and `sub_total`.
- **Customer refs** — QuickBooks uses `CustomerRef.value`; Apideck exposes as `customer.id`.
- **Soft-deleted records** — `Active: false` entries. Apideck filters these out by default; pass `filter[active]=false` to include them.
### Example: create an invoice with line items
```typescript
const { data } = await apideck.accounting.invoices.create({
serviceId: "quickbooks",
invoice: {
customer_id: "12", // QuickBooks customer ID
invoice_date: "2026-04-18",
due_date: "2026-05-18",
line_items: [
{
description: "Consulting — April 2026",
quantity: 10,
unit_price: 150.0,
item_id: "7", // QuickBooks Item ID
tax_rate: { id: "TAX" },
},
],
currency: "USD",
},
});
```
### Example: pull P&L report for a date range
P&L is exposed via `/accounting/profit-and-loss`. See [`apideck-node`](../../skills/apideck-node/) for the canonical method signature.
```typescript
const { data } = await apideck.accounting.profitAndLoss.get({
serviceId: "quickbooks",
filter: {
start_date: "2026-01-01",
end_date: "2026-03-31",
},
});
```
## Escape hatch: Proxy API
When an endpoint isn't covered by the Accounting unified API, use Apideck's Proxy to call QuickBooks directly — Apideck injects auth headers and handles token refresh. Set `x-apideck-downstream-url` to the target endpoint on QuickBooks's own API:
```bash
curl 'https://unify.apideck.com/proxy' \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ${APIDECK_API_KEY}" \
-H "x-apideck-app-id: ${APIDECK_APP_ID}" \
-H "x-apideck-consumer-id: ${CONSUMER_ID}" \
-H "x-apideck-service-id: quickbooks" \
-H "x-apideck-downstream-url: <target endpoint on QuickBooks>" \
-H "x-apideck-downstream-method: GET"
```
See [QuickBooks's API docs](https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs) for available endpoints.
## Sibling connectors
Other **Accounting** connectors that share this unified API surface (same method signatures, just change `serviceId`):
[`access-financials`](../access-financials/) *(beta)*, [`acumatica`](../acumatica/) *(beta)*, [`banqup`](../banqup/) *(beta)*, [`campfire`](../campfire/) *(beta)*, [`clearbooks-uk`](../clearbooks-uk/) *(beta)*, [`digits`](../digits/) *(beta)*, [`dualentry`](../dualentry/), [`exact-online`](../exact-online/), and 25 more.
## See also
- [Accounting OpenAPI spec](https://specs.apideck.com/accounting.yml) · [API Explorer](https://developers.apideck.com/api-explorer?id=accounting)
- [`apideck-connector-coverage`](../../skills/apideck-connector-coverage/) — programmatic coverage checks
- [`apideck-best-practices`](../../skills/apideck-best-practices/) — architecture, Vault, pagination, error handling
- [`apideck-node`](../../skills/apideck-node/) — TypeScript / Node SDK patterns
- [QuickBooks official docs](https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs)