How Items Sync Between Jobber and QuickBooks Online – NEW QuickBooks Integration Updated August 21, 2024 22:55

Overview

Our sync works behind the scenes to make sure your accounting needs are covered, while you use Jobber to power your day-to-day operations.

Home service pros know all about using the right tool for the job. Jobber was built for running your business—and QuickBooks Online was built for your accounting needs. The two pair perfectly together to keep your customer, invoice, and payment information accurate without any double-entry.

Connect Jobber and QuickBooks Online

To connect Jobber and QuickBooks, check out our article on setting up the QuickBooks integration.

How the sync works

The sync is one-way with your clients, products and services, invoices, and payments syncing from Jobber to QuickBooks. The sync is ongoing and automatic, so items will sync to QuickBooks right away according to your sync settings.

For clients, products and services, and invoices there are two settings options for when the item syncs:

• Once it appears on an invoice
  • Note: for invoices, this is when the invoice is sent (or marked as sent), OR
• As soon as the item is created or updated

For payments (including payments, refunds, tips, and Jobber Payments payouts reconciliation) you have the option to sync when they are collected or to not sync these items at all. 

Past invoices, payments, payouts, and timesheets can be brought into QuickBooks from Jobber. The sync for these items is back dated based on either their creation date or after a select date. From your Sync Settings, select Sync older items to QuickBooks then select which item types you'd like to sync as well as the created on or after date. To see previously backdated syncs, click View previous syncs to open a list of past syncs including the date, status, and items synced. 

For items that have synced to QuickBooks (whether successfully or with a warning), clicking the item from the QuickBooks dashboard will open that item and show the details, including links to that item in Jobber and QuickBooks for quick access.

In Jobber, if there is any sync activity that requires your attention you'll see an alert in your top navigation. Click the alert to view the sync activity dashboard. 

From the sync activity dashboard, any errors or warnings will be listed. Click each item to view steps on how to resolve the issue. 

Initial import

Since you likely have your client list as well as your products and services in your QuickBooks account, there is an optional step after connecting your Jobber and QuickBooks account to import your active clients and products and services from QuickBooks into Jobber. This import happens one-time and is one-way, from QuickBooks into Jobber. 

Learn more about the import

How clients are mapped to Jobber is as follows:

Names

• If the customer in QuickBooks is a company, they are mapped to Jobber as a company (using the company name as the primary name in Jobber).
  • If there are no existing matches in Jobber, a new client is created.
  • If there is a match, the client in Jobber is updated.
  • If there is more than one match, you'll go through the duplicate resolution flow.
• If the customer in QuickBooks isn't a company, it will map to Jobber using the client's first and last name. 
  • If there are no existing matches in Jobber, a new client is created.
  • If there is a match, Jobber checks to see if the email address matches
    • If the email address matches, the existing client is updated
    • If the email address does not match, a new client is created
  • If there is more than one match, you'll go through the duplicate resolution flow.

Properties

• Customers
  • If the customer has a shipping address in QuickBooks, it’s used to create the property
  • If the customer only has a billing address in QuickBooks, it’s used to create the property instead
•  Sub-customers
  • • If the sub-customer has a shipping address in QuickBooks, it’s used to create the property
    • If the sub-customer only has a billing address in QuickBooks, it’s used to create the property instead

Products and services are mapped as follows:

• If the product doesn’t exist in Jobber, it’s created (including the unit cost)
• If the product exists in Jobber, it’s skipped and is not updated in QuickBooks in any way (i.e. costs are not imported)

Duplicate resolution

During the import if client duplicates are detected you will have the option of selecting the client in Jobber that the client in QuickBooks will be mapped to. 

The name, email address, and date of the last client activity will show along with the matching client(s) in Jobber. From the list of the duplicate client(s) in Jobber, select the one you want to map the client in QuickBooks to, then click Retry.

Afterwards you may wish to delete or archive the additional matching client(s) in Jobber to clean up any other duplicates. 

If you do not wish to import the client flagged as a duplicate, select Don't Import.

Clients

Clients are set to sync to QuickBooks when:

• A client appears on an invoice, OR
• As soon as they are created or updated (including edits) in Jobber

To match a client in Jobber with an existing client in QuickBooks, Jobber looks to map the client's name in Jobber to the client's display name in QuickBooks. 

In Jobber if an update is made to a client that is inactive in QuickBooks, it will be reactivated in QuickBooks.

Properties

If a property is set as a client's billing address in Jobber, the client will sync to QuickBooks even if that client does not have an invoice associated with them yet.

Products and services

Products and services are set to sync to QuickBooks when:

• They appear on an invoice, OR
• As soon as they are created or updated (including edits)

How items from Jobber are created in QuickBooks:

• Services from Jobber are created as "Services" in QuickBooks
• Products from Jobber are created as "Non-inventory Products" in QuickBooks
  • In QuickBooks, this can be edited to "Inventory" if it's something that you sell or would like to include as an inventory item.
  • Once synced, products can be edited to be sub-products in QuickBooks
• Costs sync from Jobber to QuickBooks

Note: In Jobber, products and services can be edited to switch the category type (for example, switching a product to a service) and the change is reflected in QuickBooks. 

QuickBooks does not support custom line items added in Jobber. Custom line items are line items that are added to a quote, job, or invoice as "one-offs", but don't appear in your default products and services list in your settings. If you have an invoice with a custom line item, it will sync to QuickBooks with the name "Custom Service" and the line item name from Jobber will be added into the item description. 

An "Income account" can be set for products and services in QuickBooks.

Invoices

Invoices from Jobber sync to QuickBooks when:

• They are sent, OR
• As soon as they are created or updated (including edits)

If you have an invoice in Jobber that has not yet synced to QuickBooks or was deleted from QuickBooks, making an edit to the invoice in Jobber will make it sync to QuickBooks.

Note: "Paid" status no longer syncs from QuickBooks to Jobber. The sync is now one-way. 

How fields from Jobber appear on the invoice:

• The property address from Jobber is populated in QuickBooks as the shipping address.
• Email is populated with the client's primary email address

AST

Automatic Sales Tax (AST) is a feature QuickBooks offers in the United States that removes the need to manually add tax rates into QuickBooks and suggests correct tax rates based on your client’s location.

The AST is calculated based on the location of the "Ship From" address on invoices in QuickBooks.

AST suggestions are flagged in the QuickBooks sync as a warning. This warning is a suggestion of the tax rates and groups that QuickBooks thinks should be created in Jobber based on the invoice. 

To automatically add the suggested tax rates to Jobber, select Add tax rates to Jobber. These tax rates will be added to in your tax settings in Jobber.

Payments, tips, and refunds

Payments, refunds, tips, and Jobber Payments payouts reconciliation can be set to sync when:

• They are collected, OR
• To not sync at all

If you are not using Jobber Payments, any payments (including both quote deposits and invoice payments) recorded where the payment method was:

• cash
• check
• credit card (Note: this is the "credit card" option under the "payment records" heading when collecting a payment. This payment method is for recording credit card transactions from a POS machine or payments taken outside of Jobber. This is a different payment method than Jobber Payments)
• bank transfer
• money order
• other

will sync to QuickBooks and appear in your Unapplied funds or Undeposited funds. These payments will need to be reconciled to your correct chart of accounts within QuickBooks.

Learn more about reconciling
Jobber Payments with QuickBooks

Jobber Payments payouts and fees

Jobber Payments payouts reconciliation can be set to sync when:

• They are collected, OR
• To not sync at all

As part of the onboarding process you can set up account mapping for your Jobber Payments payouts, tips, and fees so these map to the correct account in QuickBooks. 

How Jobber Payments payouts
and fees sync to QuickBooks

In order to sync Jobber Payments payouts and fees, you'll need to have a checking account created in your Chart of Accounts in QuickBooks. If you don't already have an existing checking account, you will need to create one. To create a new account for "checking", navigate to your Chart of Accounts from the sidebar by clicking Accounting > Chart of Accounts. From this Chart of Accounts page, click New to create a new account. 

This account must be set up as a bank account (from the Account Type drop-down) and a checking account (from the Detail Name drop-down) in order for the integration to properly sync fees and payment records to QuickBooks. However, the name and the description fields are up to you! 

In Jobber the new account will become an option in your QuickBooks settings as the bank account (in QuickBooks) to sync payment records to. 
Note: This does not change the bank account that your Jobber Payments payouts are sent to. To manage your bank account for payouts, check out Jobber Payments Management and Settings.

Timesheets

Timesheets from Jobber can be set to sync to QuickBooks when:

• They are approved in Jobber, OR
• To not sync at all

To sync timesheets successfully, employee names in Jobber and QuickBooks must match each other. Small discrepancies like using a nickname instead of a first name can cause issues with timesheet syncing.

In order to match team members between Jobber and QuickBooks so that timesheet entries sync to the correct person, the employee's full name in Jobber is mapped to the employee's first name/middle initial/last name in QuickBooks. 

Once timesheets have synced to QuickBooks, they are found from Reports > Time Activities by Employee Detail. When viewing the Time Activities by Employee Detail report, additional columns can be added into the report. By default, the description and duration of each time entry from Jobber will show, however, Start time and End time can be added by clicking the Gear Icon in the top right corner of the report and adding additional columns.

Notes left on timesheets in Jobber will sync to QuickBooks in the memo/description field.

QuickBooks does not support timesheet entries that span overnight or across different days. Any overnight hours will need to be edited and split between two days, for example, if an employee works from 10:00pm until 3:00am, the time should be edited for one time entry of 10:00pm -11:59pm and another time entry of 12:00am - 3:00am.

Learn more about time tracking in QuickBooks Online.