The Salesforce-QuickBooks Gap
Your sales team lives in Salesforce. Your finance team lives in QuickBooks. And somewhere in between, data gets lost, delayed, or duplicated.
This is one of the most common integration needs we see. Here's what you need to know.
What Needs to Sync
Customer Records
When you close a deal in Salesforce, the customer should appear in QuickBooks automatically. No re-entering contact info, billing addresses, or payment terms.
Invoices and Payments
Sales creates an opportunity. Finance creates an invoice. The customer pays. Each step should update the other system without manual intervention.
Products and Pricing
Your product catalog should match across systems. Price changes in one place should reflect everywhere.
The Off-the-Shelf Options
There are apps that connect Salesforce and QuickBooks. They work for basic scenarios:
- •Simple customer sync
- •Standard invoice workflows
- •Basic product mapping
But they break when you need:
- •Custom fields that aren't standard in either system
- •Complex approval workflows
- •Multi-currency handling
- •Historical data migration
- •Real-time sync (most apps have delays)
Building a Custom Integration
A custom QuickBooks-Salesforce integration typically involves:
- 1**Mapping your data model**: Which Salesforce objects map to which QuickBooks entities? What fields need to sync?
- 1**Defining sync triggers**: What events should trigger updates? Opportunity closed? Invoice sent? Payment received?
- 1**Handling conflicts**: What happens when data conflicts? Which system wins?
- 1**Error management**: How do you know when something fails? Who gets notified?
- 1**Historical sync**: Do you need to migrate existing data, or just sync going forward?
The Implementation Process
We typically approach this in phases:
Phase 1: Customer sync — get the foundation right Phase 2: Invoice creation and tracking Phase 3: Payment reconciliation Phase 4: Reporting and dashboards
Each phase delivers value independently, so you see results quickly.
Getting Started
The first step is understanding your current workflow in detail. A Discovery Sprint maps your quote-to-cash process and identifies exactly what needs to connect.