Connecting to QuickBooks Online for Automatic Data Imports

About QuickBooks Online Connections

Ceterus Insights offers the ability to connect your QuickBooks Online file to automatically import your chart of accounts and financial data. Once connected to QBO, you will not need to manually submit your financial reports each period, but you will need to map any new financial accounts being used in your QBO file to your brand's chart of accounts.

Here's a quick overview of the process

Prerequisites

To connect your QBO file to Ceterus Insights, you must ensure that all QBO accounts that need to be synced have an account number configured in QBO. You can learn more about adding account numbers to your chart of accounts in this QuickBooks help article: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/help-article/chart-accounts/use-account-numbers-chart-accounts/L7lRLN0Do_US_en_US.

Account numbers are required to ensure we can easily map your individual file's accounts to your brand's chart of accounts. You may still need to follow the steps below for mapping the account to the brand's chart of accounts after it has synced into Insights.

When adding new accounts to QBO in the future, you can ensure that they will automatically be picked up by Ceterus Insights by adding an account number when you create them.

Connecting to QBO

To get started with a QBO connection, click the "Connect to QBO" page in the sidebar. You will see a list of your eligible locations with their connection statuses. Location the location you want to connect, then click the "Connect" button next to that location.

The QuickBooks login page will open in a new tab. Login to your account, then select the QuickBooks company you want to connect to this location. After you complete the setup in QuickBooks, you will be returned to Ceterus Insights, which will begin syncing your chart of accounts data.

Once this process has finished, you will see a message confirming that the connection was successful. Next, you will need to map your chart of accounts (explained below) in order to enable financial account imports.

Disconnecting from QBO

You can disconnect entirely from QBO with the "Disconnect" button on the "Connect to QBO" page. Disconnecting from QBO will require you to manually submit all future financial reports.

Mapping Your Chart of Accounts

In order to provide consistent and consolidated financial reporting, Ceterus Insights uses a mapping system to match up individual location accounts with a master chart of accounts specified by each brand. In order for Ceterus to match up your submitted financial data with the brand chart of accounts, you must perform a one-time mapping for any accounts that you are actively using.

For example, say you have an account with the account number 1000 and the description "Product Sales." Another owner within the same brand might book their product sales under an account with the number 40000 and the description "Sales." Meanwhile, the brand chart of accounts might use account number 40001 and description "Sales - Product."

In order for these disparate location accounts to be properly displayed within the brand's "Sales - Product" account, the owners would simply map their 1000 and 40000 accounts, respectively, to the brand's 40001 account.

To map your accounts to the brand accounts, simply click "Locations" under the "Chart of Accounts" section in the sidebar, then select the location you wish to map. You will see the accounts that Ceterus Insights has imported for that location. On each account, there is a dropdown menu that lets you select the corresponding brand account. When you have selected brand accounts for all of the accounts you're using (or which you've used at all during any period that needs to be submitted to your franchisor), you can click "Save Mappings" in the toolbar at the top of the page.

Handling Sync Failures

If your QBO connection fails in the future, you will see a red badge on the "Connect to QBO" item in the sidebar. You can visit the page to see the error, which should provide instructions for how to resolve the problem.

In some cases, you may need to reconnect to QBO. You can do this by clicking the "Reconnect" button on any connected location from the "Connect to QBO" page.

Updating Synced Data

Once a period has been synced from QBO, it will not be updated again automatically. If your books change after an automatic sync has pulled in the data for a period, you have two ways to update the data in Ceterus Insights.

Automatic Replacement

1. Click "Settings" in the gear menu in the top-right corner of the app
2. Select the "Reset Data" tab
3. Choose a location and period from the dropdown menus. All data starting at the selected period up to the current period will be deleted.
4. Click "Reset Data" to delete the existing data. The location will be queued to re-sync the data within the next few minutes.

Be aware that while it is possible to a period's financial data from the "Submit Financials" page, doing so will not queue your location for immediate re-syncing. Your data will be re-synced during the next overnight refresh in that case.

Manual Replacement

1. Click "Submit Financials" in the sidebar
2. Find the location and period you want to replace in the table (expand the table row if necessary to see more historical periods), or select them from the dropdown pickers at the top of the page
3. If choosing a period from the table, click the "Complete" button for that period (or the period name for historical periods in the expanded view) and choose "Update" from the menu
4. Manually upload a CSV file with the replacement financials for that period, following the manual upload instructions: https://support.ceterus.com/hc/en-us/articles/39221727521435