QuickBooks Online: Integration Guide

This guide explains how to set up and use the Hostaway integration with QuickBooks Online: connecting a company, configuring what is sent, and managing the sync of invoices and bills.

Interactive Demo

Introduction

The integration creates and updates two kinds of documents in QuickBooks Online, both automatically and manually:

• Invoices for reservations. We send the most relevant reservation data: the customer (guest, owner, or other), the line items (either the same price breakdown we receive from channels, or a customizable list of line items using our formulas), the listing as a class, and other data such as messages on the invoice and custom fields.
• Bills for expenses. We send the supplier, the expense category, the amount, the dates, the listing as a class, and the receipts attached to the expense. Extras are not sent to QuickBooks Online.

If you are not already familiar with it, we strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with QuickBooks Online. It is powerful and complex, and understanding it will help you determine whether this integration can benefit your operations.

Connection

The integration works only for QuickBooks Online. It has been designed and tested for the US & CA versions, but it should be compatible with any other regional version. 

Please follow the next steps to connect to QuickBooks Online:

1. To connect to QuickBooks, go to Financial Reporting > QuickBooks and click on Connect
   
   
    
2. After confirming, you’ll be redirected to QuickBooks, where you’ll have to log in and select the company you want to use for this connection. Currently, we allow you to connect to a single account and company, and this may change in the future. Please use our Product features request board if you are interested in this option
3. Once the company has been selected, you will be returned to Hostaway, where a list of steps will be presented
   
   
    
4. After clicking on Start configuration, the initial configuration needs to be saved at least once to enable synchronization. The most important steps are to select (and optionally associate) listings and map financial fields to services

Settings

The QuickBooks settings page has three tabs: Subscribed listings, Invoices (Reservations) and Bills (Expenses). Set what data you want to automate and pass to QuickBooks Online when we generate invoices and bills there.

Subscribed listings tab

Select the listings you want to include and optionally map them to QuickBooks classes. Only reservations and expenses of subscribed listings are synced.

1. Select the listings you want to subscribe to. Use the Listings / Tags switch to subscribe all listings that share a tag, and the toggle in the column header to select all listings on the page
2. Optionally, assign a QuickBooks class to each listing. Classes help you obtain deeper insights into your sales, expenses or profitability per listing, owner or location. The class is applied to both the invoices and the bills of that listing
   • Several listings can share a class
   • Classes are only available for QuickBooks Online Plus and higher plans
   • Classes normally apply to the whole transaction but not to specific items. This setting can be changed in QuickBooks: Account and settings > Advanced > Categories > Assign classes
   • Learn to activate and manage classes by reading the QuickBooks user guides

Invoices (Reservations) tab

Set what data is sent when we generate invoices for reservations.

Syncing options. Select what you want to automate or manage manually:

• Push new reservations automatically (creation): every new reservation automatically creates an invoice in QuickBooks Online. If unselected, invoices can still be created manually
• Repush upon reservation modification (update): when a reservation changes a value relevant for the invoice, we update the invoice automatically. If unselected, invoices can still be updated manually. Cancellations push values with 0, independently of the policy

General invoice settings

• Invoice date to and invoice due date to: mandatory fields to generate invoices in QuickBooks Online
• Set the invoice customer as:
  • Guest: we send the guest's name and details
  • Owner: we send the owner's name and details. The owner is attributed to a listing in Listing settings
  • Other: either a fixed value or a dynamic field, such as channel or listing name
• Message on invoice and message on statement: optional fields, generally pre-offered by QuickBooks Online. You can use dynamic fields to enter relevant information, such as the check-in dates or specific conditions

Invoice custom fields

• Clicking on Sync invoice custom fields retrieves the first three custom fields from QuickBooks Online. This is a limitation on the QuickBooks side, so we recommend leaving those for the Hostaway integration. Names can be changed
• After the custom fields are retrieved, static or dynamic data can be pushed. This is useful to send data such as the channel or dates

Financial reporting settings

Hostaway allows you to send financial data to QuickBooks Online in a way that suits your business needs. You can either send the price breakdown as it appears to the guest, or customize the data using formulas to provide more detailed financial insights, such as rental revenue or property manager payout. Services must be set up in QuickBooks Online to use these features. You can choose to either:

1. Send a custom list of line items: we send one or more formulas of your choice
2. Send reservation line items: we send the exact reservation price breakdown

Send a custom list of line items

With this option, you send one or more line items using formulas to define the components of your financial data. For example, you can create a breakdown like "Accommodation + Fees - Commissions", or send specific items like Property Manager Payout. The total reflects the sum of these components. This is useful to report net revenue or specific owner and property manager shares instead of the raw price breakdown. Every formula needs a linked QuickBooks service. Read more

Send the reservation line items

If you prefer to send the financial data exactly as we show it in the reservation (what the guest paid), choose to send the reservation line items as they are. The breakdown reflects what the guest paid and does not include separate line items for channel or payment processor commissions. In this case, you map Hostaway's financial fields to specific services in QuickBooks Online:

• Set a default service: the default service for the mapping of financial fields. Useful if you don't need a specific service for every possible line item
• Map services individually: optionally assign specific services to income and expense accounts in QuickBooks Online, as well as to categories, to better understand your sources of income
  
  

Bills (Expenses) tab

Set up how your Hostaway expenses are synced as bills in QuickBooks Online. Only expenses are sent; extras are not.

Syncing options

• Send new expenses automatically: every new expense creates a bill in QuickBooks Online. If unselected, bills can still be created manually from the Manage sync & update page
• Resend upon expense modification: when an expense is edited, or a receipt is added or removed, the bill is updated automatically. If unselected, the bill is marked as Outdated and can be updated manually

Expenses (bills) settings

• Set expense date to: the bill date in QuickBooks Online. Choose a number of days before or after one of these events: Expense date, Check-in or Check-out. The expense date determines when the expense is realized for Profit and Loss purposes. For expenses that are not linked to a reservation, Check-in and Check-out fall back to the Expense date
• Set expense due date to: the bill due date, configured in the same way. It should correspond to the last valid date to make the payment
• Set bill supplier as: which expense field becomes the Supplier (vendor) in QuickBooks Online. Options: Paid to, Name, Category, Description or a Custom value. If a supplier with that name already exists in QuickBooks Online it is reused, otherwise it is created
• Set bill category as: which expense field becomes the expense account (category) in QuickBooks Online. Options: Category, Name, Description or a Custom value. If an expense account with that name already exists it is reused, otherwise it is created. When an expense has several categories, the first one is used
• Set bill description as: which expense field becomes the line description on the bill. Options: Description, Name, Category or a Custom value

If the selected field is empty on an expense, "N/A" is sent instead.

Synchronization

Have visibility and control over what we are pushing to QuickBooks Online. After saving the initial configuration, the section Manage sync & update shows two tabs: Invoices (Reservations) and Bills (Expenses).

Invoices (Reservations)

Each reservation has a status that corresponds to the invoice generation in QuickBooks Online:

1. Not created. The reservation has not produced an invoice in this QuickBooks company yet
   • It allows the creation of an invoice
   • There may be some limitations: reservations from before 2022, or belonging to listings not subscribed
2. Updated. The reservation generated an invoice, and it corresponds to the last version of that reservation
3. Outdated. The reservation generated an invoice, but afterwards a relevant value changed and made the invoice outdated
   • It allows to update an invoice
   • Changes that make an invoice outdated:
     • Status modification to cancellation. In this case we push values with 0
     • Guest name
     • Check-in
     • Check-out
     • When pushing price breakdowns: financial fields added, removed or modified, and anything that changes the total price
     • When pushing a custom list of formulas: any update of a formula value
4. Syncing. Temporary status. We are generating the invoice in QuickBooks Online

The master switch selects all reservations on the page to make the sync faster. The sync does not start until the Save button is clicked. If a sync attempt failed, an indicator shows the message we received from QuickBooks Online explaining the reason.

Bills (Expenses)

The Bills (Expenses) tab shows the expenses of your account, with the supplier and category that will be sent and the status of the bill in QuickBooks Online:

1. Not created. The expense has not produced a bill in this QuickBooks company yet
   • It allows the creation of a bill
   • Expenses linked to a listing that is not subscribed cannot be synced. Expenses without a listing can always be synced
   • Extras are never sent to QuickBooks Online
2. Updated. The bill exists and corresponds to the last version of the expense
3. Outdated. The bill exists, but the expense changed afterwards
   • It allows to update a bill
   • Any change on the expense makes the bill outdated: name, amount, expense date, listing, paid to, category, description, the linked reservation, and receipts added or removed
   • When an expense is deleted in Hostaway, the bill and its attachments are deleted from QuickBooks Online on the next sync
4. Syncing. Temporary status. We are creating or updating the bill in QuickBooks Online

As with invoices, the master switch selects all expenses on the page and the sync starts when you click Save. If a sync attempt fails, the error message returned by QuickBooks Online is shown next to the expense.

Invoices in QuickBooks Online

The result of this process will be an invoice in QuickBooks Online that will contain:

1. Customer:
   • Name
   • Email
   • Phone
   • Bill to (same as name)
2. Invoice date & due date
3. An optional listing associated (via class)
   
   
    
4. Line items:
   • Each financial field will be mapped to a Service in QuickBooks Online, including taxes. These services can point to different charts of accounts in QuickBooks Online
   • Each service will show a description corresponding to the Alias of that financial field
   • Quantity, rate, and amount will match the ones we have at Hostaway
   • We don’t use the Sales tax default functionality
     
     
      
5. Note to customer and memo on statement will also be pushed, and you can use dynamic data:
   
   

Bills in QuickBooks Online

The result of syncing an expense is a bill in QuickBooks Online that contains:

1. Supplier: the vendor resolved from the expense according to the Set bill supplier as setting. The mailing address shows the same name, as we don't send address details
2. Bill date and due date, calculated from the Set expense date to and Set expense due date to settings
3. One line item:
   • Category: the expense account resolved from the expense according to the Set bill category as setting
   • Description: the value of the Set bill description as setting. If the field is empty on the expense, "N/A" is sent
   • Amount: the expense amount, always sent as a positive value
   • Class: the QuickBooks class mapped to the listing of the expense, if any
4. Attachments: every receipt attached to the expense in Hostaway is uploaded to the bill. Receipts removed in Hostaway are removed from the bill on the next sync

Terms, Bill no. and custom fields are not filled by Hostaway and can be edited manually in QuickBooks Online.

User management permissions for QuickBooks access

Users without admin permissions may need to manage the QuickBooks integration. You can give them access as follows:

1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard > User Management > Users
2. Select the user you want to give access to QuickBooks
3. Go to Access Permission and check the Modify box next to QuickBooks Online
4. Save

This permission has been added to Group permissions and the Finance permission template. By default, it is set off. The same permission covers invoices and bills.