QuickBooks EDI integration

What QuickBooks does natively

Neither QuickBooks edition has an X12 or EDIFACT translator. What each one ships is the accounting side that an EDI flow writes to and reads from, and the two editions differ on the record an order becomes.

A supplier that trades with a US retailer still needs the 850, 855, 856 and 810 in X12, with the retailer's version, qualifiers and pack hierarchy. That part runs outside QuickBooks. This page is the QuickBooks side of our EDI integration; the system itself is covered under QuickBooks integrations.

Which QuickBooks record each document becomes

An estimate converts to an invoice and the two stay linked through LinkedTxn, with the estimate's status moving to Closed. That link is how the integration finds the invoice that answers a given PO when the 810 is due.

How an 850 becomes an estimate

PO 4500018236, the example used on our document pages, orders 24 units of item 10482 at 12.50 and 16 units of item 10499 at 8.75. Item 10499 has 12 free, so the estimate carries 24 and 12 and the 855 confirms the same:

{
  "CustomerRef": { "value": "58" },
  "TxnStatus": "Pending",
  "CustomField": [
    { "DefinitionId": "1", "Type": "StringType", "Name": "PO Number", "StringValue": "4500018236" }
  ],
  "ShipAddr": { "Line1": "HARBOR RETAIL DC 07", "Line2": "1200 DOCK STREET",
                "City": "COLUMBUS", "CountrySubDivisionCode": "OH", "PostalCode": "43215" },
  "Line": [
    { "DetailType": "SalesItemLineDetail", "Amount": 300.00,
      "SalesItemLineDetail": { "ItemRef": { "value": "31" }, "Qty": 24, "UnitPrice": 12.50 } },
    { "DetailType": "SalesItemLineDetail", "Amount": 105.00,
      "SalesItemLineDetail": { "ItemRef": { "value": "32" }, "Qty": 12, "UnitPrice": 8.75 } }
  ]
}

24 times 12.50 is 300.00 and 12 times 8.75 is 105.00, so the estimate totals 405.00, the merchandise total on the 810. When the goods ship, the invoice is created from the estimate with the ship date and tracking number, and the 810 adds freight of 18.50 and a 2% trade discount of 8.10 for a total of 415.40.

The technical reality of this pair

Request limits. The QuickBooks Online API allows 500 requests per minute per company (realm ID) and 10 requests per second per company and app. A batch request carries up to 30 operations, and batch requests are throttled at 40 per minute per company and app. Above the limit the API returns 429; Intuit asks to wait 60 seconds before retrying, and any request that runs longer than 120 seconds times out. A morning file of 120 purchase orders is 120 estimates: 4 batch requests of 30, well inside the limits. The integration waits the full 60 seconds after a 429 and holds the rest of the file in the queue.

Stock. An estimate does not reduce QtyOnHand; the invoice, or a sales receipt, does. Open EDI orders held as estimates are therefore still counted as on hand. The diagram shows item 10499.

The integration keeps the open estimates per item and subtracts them before it confirms a line in the 855 or reports a quantity in the 846. Which stock a partner sees is set per partner; see which stock counts.

Desktop. With QuickBooks Desktop, the Web Connector polls the integration's web service at an interval set in minutes and carries qbXML both ways. No firewall port is opened, and nothing reaches QuickBooks between two runs. An interval of 15 minutes means an 850 waits up to 15 minutes before it becomes a sales order, which the 855 timing has to allow for.

What QuickBooks and X12 store differently

• Item identity. The 850 sends a UPC in PO107. A QuickBooks Online item has a Name of up to 100 characters, unique and without colons, and a Sku of up to 100 characters; there is no UPC field. The integration keeps the lookup from UPC or case GTIN to the item ID.
• Units. A sales line has Qty and UnitPrice and no unit of measure. 2 CA with 12 per case is 24 on the estimate, and the 855, 856 and 810 convert back to 2 cases. See units of measure.
• Invoice number. DocNumber holds up to 21 characters and BIG02 up to 22. QuickBooks assigns the next number when custom transaction numbers are off; a duplicate DocNumber is accepted only with include=allowduplicatedocnum, which the integration never sends.
• Cartons. An invoice holds a ship date, a ship method and one tracking number. The HL loop of an 856 needs cartons, their contents and an SSCC per carton, which come from packing or the 3PL.

When it goes wrong

Every document has a status in the dashboard, with the raw file and the QuickBooks record it became or came from.

We build the integration to your QuickBooks company and your trading partners, host it and run it, for a fixed build price and a monthly fee. A new partner starts as a dry run that creates nothing in QuickBooks and sends nothing, and you approve the first documents. With a store in front of QuickBooks, see Shopify QuickBooks integration; the same model on a larger ERP is under NetSuite EDI integration. Tell us which retailer asked you for EDI.