QuickBooks API facts that shape an MCP server
| Fact | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official connector | Intuit QuickBooks is an Anthropic-verified connector in Claude’s directory, made by Intuit QuickBooks and added in March 2026. Intuit hosts it at https://ai-inc.quickbooks.intuit.com/v1/mcp, and the listing shows 74 tools. | Claude directory: Intuit QuickBooks connector |
| What the connector covers | The 74 tools cover reports (profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, AR aging, sales by customer or product), industry benchmarks, transaction imports, invoices, estimates, recurring invoices, payment links, customers and products, payroll lookups with adding an employee or setting base pay, and QuickBooks Capital loans. None of the listed tools handles bills, vendors or journal entries. | Claude directory: Intuit QuickBooks connector |
| July 2026 update | On July 28, 2026 Intuit added sales, invoicing, payroll and lending features to its Claude connector and ChatGPT plugin, including creating, updating, sending and deleting invoices and looking up employees and payslip history. Intuit says the data stays within its systems and is never used to train foundation models. | Intuit blog: QuickBooks expands into Claude and ChatGPT (July 28, 2026) |
| Availability and confirmations | Intuit’s help says the Claude connector is currently available to US customers only and needs an active QuickBooks or Intuit Enterprise Suite subscription (without one, you can supply business details and transactions instead). Destructive actions, such as deleting an invoice or estimate, need your confirmation before QuickBooks changes anything. | QuickBooks help: Use Claude to enter transactions and get insights |
| Open-source server | Intuit’s repository intuit/quickbooks-online-mcp-server is a local server that runs as a stdio subprocess, with 145 tools to create, get, update, delete and search records across 29 entities, plus 11 reports. Settings can switch off create, update or delete tools, while read tools stay on. The package is version 0.0.1 with no tagged releases; the last commit was on September 15, 2026. | GitHub: intuit/quickbooks-online-mcp-server |
| Preview status | Intuit introduced the server on October 21, 2025 as an early preview for local experimentation and API familiarity, stating that it "can only be run in the Sandbox environment" and that capabilities may change before general availability. | Intuit Developer blog (archived): Experiment with Intuit’s local MCP Server (Early Preview) |
| Developer MCP | Intuit’s separate Developer MCP is an onboarding tool for developers: it finds or creates apps, recommends and applies scopes, guides the OAuth token exchange, creates sandbox companies and builds a first API request. Intuit says it does not process payments, reconcile books, run payroll, manage accounting workflows or generate production keys. | Intuit Developer: What Developer MCP can help you do |
| MCP Registry | On September 27, 2026 the official MCP Registry listed ten QuickBooks servers, all from third parties such as Caribooks, Devart and Pipeworx. None is published under an Intuit namespace, and Intuit’s hosted connector isn’t listed. | Official MCP Registry: search for quickbooks |
| Tokens | Access tokens last one hour. Refresh tokens are valid for 100 days on a rolling basis, their value changes every 24 hours, and each has a five-year hard limit, after which the company must authorize the app again. Refresh one at a time: a second attempt with the same token fails, and repeated attempts may invalidate it. | Intuit Developer: OAuth 2.0 FAQ |
| Rate limits | The Accounting API allows 500 requests per minute per company (realm ID) and 10 requests per second per company and app; batch requests are throttled at 40 per minute per company and app. Throttled calls get HTTP 429 and should wait 60 seconds, queries return at most 1,000 entities, and requests running over 120 seconds time out. | Intuit Developer: API call limits and throttles |
| App Partner Program | Every app is enrolled in the Intuit App Partner Program at the free Builder tier; the paid tiers are Silver, Gold and Platinum. Core calls, mostly creating and updating records, are not metered. CorePlus calls, mostly reads, queries and reports, have been metered since November 3, 2025, and Builder allows 500,000 a calendar month, blocking calls above that. | Intuit Developer: Intuit App Partner Program FAQ |
| QuickBooks Desktop | Desktop integrations go through Intuit’s Desktop SDK: a qbXML request processor installed with QuickBooks handles requests, and the QuickBooks Web Connector is a Windows application that lets a web service exchange data with QuickBooks running on Windows. | Intuit Developer: Desktop SDK components |
Every way to connect QuickBooks to AI
| Option | Type | Fits when | Limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intuit QuickBooks connector (Claude and ChatGPT) | Official | US QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite customers who want reports, receivables, invoices, estimates, payment links and payroll lookups inside Claude or ChatGPT, with nothing to host and no developer app to register. | US only, and no tools for bills, vendors or journal entries. Intuit documents it for Claude and ChatGPT only, and the tools are Intuit’s, so rules specific to your business (approval limits, posting rules) need another layer. |
| Intuit’s open-source QuickBooks Online MCP server | Official | Developers and single users who want create, read, update and delete access across 29 entities and 11 reports from Claude Code or another local client, with settings to switch off writes. Its licence file is Apache 2.0. | Intuit introduced it as a sandbox-only early preview, and it is still version 0.0.1 with no tagged releases. It runs on one machine over stdio with one company’s tokens in a local file, needs your own Intuit developer app (production sign-in needs a public HTTPS redirect), and its reads count as metered CorePlus calls. |
| Zapier MCP for QuickBooks Online | Hosted | Teams already on Zapier that want named QuickBooks Online actions, such as finding customers and invoices or creating bills, deposits and credit memos, next to other apps. | You choose from Zapier’s actions rather than the full API, each MCP tool call uses two tasks from your Zapier plan, and Zapier says its MCP doesn’t currently support the app and action restrictions of Enterprise accounts. |
| Composio QuickBooks toolkit | Hosted | Developers building agents for Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor who want 105 QuickBooks tools with managed OAuth: you sign in with your QuickBooks account through Composio’s own Intuit app, or add your own app. | The catalog includes QuickBooks Payments actions such as capturing a charge and eCheck payments, so allowlist tools before connecting an assistant. The free plan caps calls through managed apps at 20,000 a month, and data passes through Composio. |
| Custom QuickBooks MCP server | Custom | Payables, collections and month-end tools with your posting and approval rules; several QuickBooks companies, such as an accounting firm’s clients; companies outside the US; or Copilot Studio, hosted in your own cloud. | Needs an Intuit developer app, a partner tier that covers your CorePlus reads, careful token handling and upkeep as Intuit’s API changes. |
Tools a QuickBooks MCP server should expose
Start with read-only tools and add write actions once the team trusts the answers. Every write action below runs with a confirmation or approval step.
| Tool | Access | Risk | Purpose | Guard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
get_profit_and_loss | Read | Low | Profit and loss for a period, by month, class or location, with a prior-period comparison. | Read-only; long ranges are split into report requests of six months or less, as Intuit recommends. |
get_cash_position | Read | Medium | Bank and credit card balances, plus receivables and payables due in the next 30 days. | Owner or finance role only; balances and totals, never account numbers. |
list_overdue_invoices | Read | Low | Overdue invoices by customer and aging bucket, with amounts and days late. | Read-only; fixed, parameterized queries paged at Intuit’s 1,000-record limit. |
list_bills_due | Read | Low | Unpaid bills due in the next N days, by vendor and due date. | Read-only; vendor names, amounts and dates only, no vendor bank details. |
find_customer | Read | Low | Look up a customer by name, email or number, with open balance and recent invoices. | Allowlisted fields only; the model can’t send free-form queries. |
create_invoice | Write | Medium | Build an invoice from customer, items and quantities, and show lines, tax and total before saving. | Saves only after the user confirms the preview and doesn’t email it; one requestid per invoice, so a retry can’t create a duplicate. |
record_customer_payment | Write | High | Record a customer payment and apply it to one or more open invoices. | Amounts checked against open balances; approval by an accounts receivable role; unique requestid; blocked for dates in a closed period. |
create_bill | Write | High | Enter a vendor bill with account coding and due date from an approved document. | Checks for an existing bill with the same vendor and bill number first; preview and approval by accounts payable; unique requestid; blocked for dates in a closed period. |
update_customer_contact | Write | Medium | Change a customer’s billing email, phone or address. | Confirmation with before-and-after values; contact fields only. |
Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot Studio
Claude
Intuit’s connector is in Claude’s directory (Anthropic-verified, made by Intuit QuickBooks): open Connectors, find QuickBooks, select Connect and sign in with your Intuit account; Intuit limits it to US customers. A hosted or custom QuickBooks server is added as a custom connector, and on Team and Enterprise plans an Owner adds it first. Calls come from Anthropic’s cloud, so a private server must allowlist Anthropic’s IP ranges. Claude Code can also run Intuit’s open-source server locally over stdio.
ChatGPT
Intuit publishes an Intuit QuickBooks plugin: in ChatGPT select Plugins, search for Intuit QuickBooks, connect it and sign in to QuickBooks Online (US customers only). A hosted or custom server needs developer mode and then ChatGPT Plugins; on Enterprise and Edu an admin must grant developer-mode access. The server needs a public HTTPS endpoint with Streamable HTTP, or Secure MCP Tunnel if it must stay private, and Intuit tokens stay on the server.
Microsoft Copilot Studio
Intuit documents its connector for Claude and ChatGPT only, so Copilot Studio uses a hosted or custom server added through the MCP onboarding wizard on the agent’s Tools page. Copilot Studio supports Streamable HTTP only; use OAuth 2.0 so each person signs in with your company identity and the server maps them to QuickBooks permissions. Power Platform data policies govern the connection.
Claude implementation · Copilot implementation · ChatGPT implementation
Permissions, identity and audit
- Intuit’s connector uses each person’s own Intuit sign-in and reaches the QuickBooks company they connect. Decide who may use it, since its tools can send invoices and payment links and, with payroll, add employees or set base pay.
- A custom server connects to each QuickBooks company (realm ID) through OAuth with the com.intuit.quickbooks.accounting scope; add com.intuit.quickbooks.payment only if a tool needs QuickBooks Payments. Changing scopes means every company must authorize the app again.
- Intuit’s tokens are tied to the company, not a person, so the server must map each signed-in user (from Entra ID or your identity provider) to the tools and companies they may use: receivables staff to invoices and payments, payables staff to bills, owners to reports.
- Keep refresh tokens server-side in a secrets manager, refresh them one at a time and always store the newest value, which changes every 24 hours. A lost or expired token means the company must reconnect.
- Log every call with the user, tool, company and record IDs, not the data returned, and have finance review write activity. Keep card, bank and payroll details out of tool responses unless a tool truly needs them.
Hosting and network
- Intuit hosts its connector at ai-inc.quickbooks.intuit.com, so there is nothing to deploy and no Intuit developer app to register.
- Intuit’s open-source server runs on the user’s machine over stdio and keeps one company’s tokens in a .env file, or at a path set with QUICKBOOKS_TOKEN_STORE_PATH. That suits a developer or a single bookkeeper, not a shared team service.
- A custom server runs in your AWS or Azure account behind Streamable HTTP and OAuth, with the Intuit client secret and refresh tokens in a secrets manager, calling quickbooks.api.intuit.com over HTTPS. Claude and ChatGPT reach it from their own clouds, so publish it behind authentication or use ChatGPT’s Secure MCP Tunnel.
- Queue calls per company to stay under 500 a minute and 10 a second, wait 60 seconds after an HTTP 429, and page queries at 1,000 records.
- Cache reference data such as customers, items and accounts, refreshed by webhooks, with change data capture (a 30-day look-back) to catch missed events, so the agent spends fewer metered CorePlus reads.
Cost and timeline
- Intuit’s connector needs an active QuickBooks subscription and a Claude or ChatGPT account, and Intuit’s pages list no separate connector fee. Hosted platforms price on their own terms: Zapier counts each MCP tool call as two tasks, and Composio’s free plan allows up to 20,000 tool calls a month through managed apps such as QuickBooks.
- A server on your own Intuit developer app is metered by API call: most creates and updates are free Core calls, while most reads, queries and reports are CorePlus calls, capped at 500,000 a month on the free Builder tier. Beyond that you subscribe to Silver, Gold or Platinum, which add a monthly program fee and per-call fees above each tier’s credits.
- A focused read-only QuickBooks MCP server typically takes two to four weeks including security and evaluation. Write tools (invoices, payments, bills), several companies, or an ERP or CRM alongside QuickBooks take longer and are scoped after a short discovery.
QuickBooks MCP questions
Does QuickBooks have an MCP server?
Yes. Intuit hosts a QuickBooks connector for Claude and ChatGPT for US customers, and publishes an open-source QuickBooks Online MCP server on GitHub for developers. As of September 2026 neither appears in the official MCP Registry, whose QuickBooks entries all come from third parties, so look for Intuit’s connector in Claude’s directory or ChatGPT’s plugins.
Is Intuit’s open-source QuickBooks MCP server production-ready?
Not as a supported product. Intuit introduced it in October 2025 as an early preview that could only run against sandbox companies, and although the README now documents a production sign-in, the package is still version 0.0.1 with no tagged releases. It runs on one machine over stdio with one company’s tokens in a local file, so treat it as a developer tool and a reference.
Can Claude create invoices in QuickBooks?
Yes. Intuit’s connector can create, update, send, duplicate and delete invoices and estimates and create payment links; invoice writes arrived in Intuit’s July 2026 update. Intuit says destructive actions, such as deleting an invoice, need your confirmation first. The connector has no tools for bills, vendors or journal entries.
Does the QuickBooks connector work outside the US?
No, not as of September 2026. Intuit’s help says the Claude connector is available to US customers only, and the ChatGPT plugin to QuickBooks Online customers in the US. Companies in Canada, the UK, Australia or India can use a hosted platform or a custom server on the QuickBooks Online Accounting API, and Intuit offers sandbox companies for those regions to test against.
Does it work with QuickBooks Desktop?
No. Intuit’s connector works with QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite, and its open-source server calls the QuickBooks Online API. Desktop integrations use Intuit’s Desktop SDK, which exchanges qbXML messages with QuickBooks on the same machine or, in some cases, the same local network, or the Web Connector, a Windows application. An MCP server for Desktop therefore depends on a Windows machine running QuickBooks.
Will Intuit’s API fees apply?
Intuit’s own connector needs no developer app of yours, and Intuit’s pages list no separate fee for it. A server on your own Intuit developer app, including the open-source one, falls under the App Partner Program: most creates and updates (Core calls) are free, while most reads, queries and reports (CorePlus calls) are metered. The free Builder tier allows 500,000 CorePlus calls a month, about 16,000 a day, and blocks calls above that until you subscribe to a paid tier.
Does it work with Microsoft Copilot?
Intuit documents its connector for Claude and ChatGPT only. For Copilot Studio, add a hosted or custom QuickBooks MCP server as an existing MCP server over Streamable HTTP, with OAuth 2.0 so each person signs in with your company identity. The server holds the Intuit tokens, and the agent only sees tool results.
Hosted or custom?
Intuit’s connector is the quickest start for US companies that work in Claude or ChatGPT and mostly need reports, receivables and invoicing. A custom server fits when you need payables, your own posting and approval rules, several companies, a company outside the US or Copilot Studio, hosted in your own cloud. AIONDATA is an independent provider, not an Intuit partner, so we will say when Intuit’s connector or a hosted platform is enough.
