QuickBooks Online integration services

Both, with QuickBooks Online first. Online exposes a REST API with OAuth 2.0, webhooks and change data capture, so the integration runs in the cloud with nothing installed. Desktop integrations use Intuit’s Desktop SDK: a qbXML request processor installed with QuickBooks, plus the Web Connector, a Windows application that exchanges qbXML with a web service on a schedule. Since September 30, 2024 Intuit no longer sells Pro Plus, Premier Plus or Mac Plus to new US subscribers, but existing subscribers can renew and Enterprise is still sold, so Desktop work today means Enterprise or a renewed Plus subscription.

A written mapping of which records move in which direction, the build on the Accounting API or Desktop SDK, a test plan run against an Intuit sandbox company and your data, go-live with monitoring, and a handover with runbooks. For QuickBooks Online it also includes registering the Intuit developer app, completing Intuit’s App Assessment Questionnaire so the app gets production keys, and setting webhooks and a daily change data capture check so missed events are caught.

Ask three things. Do they design for the accounting outcome, so that invoices, payments and deposits reconcile, rather than just moving fields? Do they know the API’s rules, such as the 500 requests per minute per company limit, the 1,000-record query cap and Intuit’s metered CorePlus calls? And will you own the result, with the developer app in your Intuit account, the mappings documented and the source code handed over? AIONDATA is independent and not an Intuit partner, so we will also tell you when an App Store connector is enough.

Almost everything in the ledger. The Accounting API covers lists such as Customer, Vendor, Item, Account, Class and Department, sales transactions such as Estimate, Invoice, SalesReceipt, Payment, CreditMemo and RefundReceipt, purchase transactions such as Bill, BillPayment, Purchase, PurchaseOrder and VendorCredit, plus JournalEntry, Deposit, Transfer and TimeActivity. Reports such as profit and loss or aging are read through report endpoints, and some transactions can be fetched as PDF. Intuit meters most reads and reports as CorePlus calls, so the design decides how often each is pulled.

Start with the App Store if a well-supported connector covers your flow. Intuit’s own Shopify Connector by QuickBooks, for example, imports sales, refunds, fees and payouts and, since June 2026, B2B orders as invoices. Build when the connector cannot follow your posting rules, when you run several QuickBooks companies or stores, when the other system is custom or an ERP such as Odoo, or when finance needs a reconciliation report it can sign off. Our pair pages for Shopify, Salesforce, HubSpot and Odoo with QuickBooks compare the two routes for each system.

Yes. Intuit’s US pricing page lists inventory tracking, project profitability and classes and locations from Plus, and workflow automation on Advanced, so an inventory or class-based sync needs Plus or Advanced. Simple Start allows one user and Essentials three, which matters if the integration needs its own login. Sandbox companies come only as Plus or Advanced, so we also test against a copy of your real plan before go-live. Multi-currency and custom-field needs are checked plan by plan during scoping.

The Accounting API allows 500 requests per minute per company and 10 per second per company and app; a throttled call returns HTTP 429 and should wait 60 seconds. Every developer app sits in Intuit’s App Partner Program at the free Builder tier, where creates and updates (Core calls) are unmetered and reads, queries and reports (CorePlus calls) have been metered since November 3, 2025 with 500,000 a month included, blocked above that. Most single-company integrations stay well inside that allowance; larger estates can subscribe to Silver, which Intuit’s example prices at $300 a month with one million CorePlus calls included (Intuit Developer FAQ, Sep 2026).

Every record carries both systems’ IDs, every write is idempotent and every webhook is queued, acknowledged within Intuit’s 3-second window and processed later. Intuit retries an unacknowledged event at 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, 2 hours, 4 hours and then every 6 hours, and holds later events until the first is acknowledged, so a quick acknowledgement matters. Because events can arrive out of order and can be missed, a daily change data capture call, which looks back up to 30 days, catches anything the webhooks did not, and a reconciliation report lists the records that differ.

Access is granted by a QuickBooks admin through Intuit’s OAuth 2.0 consent screen for one company (the realm ID) and a named scope, usually com.intuit.quickbooks.accounting. Access tokens last one hour; refresh tokens last 100 days on a rolling basis, change value every 24 hours and expire after five years. The company can disconnect the app in QuickBooks at any time, which invalidates both tokens, and changing the app’s scopes forces every company to authorize again. We keep secrets in a secrets manager, refresh tokens one at a time and log every call with the user, entity and record ID.

Yes. Intuit hosts a QuickBooks connector for Claude and ChatGPT, made by Intuit QuickBooks and Anthropic-verified, with 74 tools in Claude covering reports, invoices, estimates, payment links and payroll lookups; Intuit’s help says it is available to US customers with an active QuickBooks or Intuit Enterprise Suite subscription. Intuit also shares an open-source local server on GitHub that it introduced as a sandbox-only early preview. Neither covers bills, vendors or journal entries, so for payables, your own posting rules, several companies, companies outside the US or Microsoft Copilot Studio, AIONDATA builds a custom MCP server on the Accounting API. Our QuickBooks MCP server guide at /mcp-servers/quickbooks covers the options in depth.

Cost follows the number of flows and directions, the posting rules, the number of QuickBooks companies, how much history to load and how fresh data must be. Beyond our fee there is the QuickBooks plan, from about $38 a month for Simple Start to $340 for Advanced (Intuit list prices, Sep 2026), and Intuit’s metered API calls only if you leave the free Builder tier. A single-company sync with a CRM or store usually takes a few weeks including sandbox testing; several companies, an ERP on the other side or payout reconciliation typically takes two to three months.

No. AIONDATA is an independent integration provider and is not an Intuit partner, reseller or QuickBooks Solution Provider. We are led from San Ramon, California, with engineering in Noida, India, and our delivery processes are certified to ISO 9001:2015 and CMMI Level 3. We work alongside your accountant or Intuit ProAdvisor, and the developer app, tokens and code stay in your accounts.