QuickBooks Online integration | SparkReceipt Help

SparkReceipt connects directly to QuickBooks Online. You connect once in the SparkReceipt web app, your QuickBooks accounts, vendors, customers and tax codes are imported, and you can then publish expenses to QuickBooks as Purchases or Bills and income as Invoices, with the receipt file attached.

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Step 1: Connect to your QuickBooks account

Log in to the SparkReceipt web app as the owner, an admin or an Accountant. Those are the roles that see the Integrations settings.
Open Integrations from the left-hand menu and find QuickBooks under Accounting.
Click Connect to QuickBooks, sign in to QuickBooks Online and approve the connection.
SparkReceipt imports your QuickBooks data. Right after connecting, it asks whether to auto-publish new expenses (see Auto-publish).

Only one accounting integration can be connected to a SparkReceipt account at a time.

Can I connect QuickBooks from the mobile app?

No. Connecting QuickBooks Online is done in the SparkReceipt web app. Once it is connected, you can publish documents from the mobile app as well: open a document to publish it, or select several documents and publish them together.

Step 2: Review what was imported

Once connected, the QuickBooks card on the Integrations page has a Settings button. It opens QuickBooks Connection Settings, with two sections:

Preferences: the publishing settings, such as Default purchase account, Default income account, Auto-publish new expenses and Tax handling when publishing.
Imported from QuickBooks: tabs for Expense Categories, Income Categories, Merchants, Customers, Purchase Accounts, Income Accounts and Tax Codes.

Changes you make in QuickBooks reach SparkReceipt on the next sync. Click Sync now on the same page to pull them in right away.

Step 3: Publish documents to QuickBooks

Expenses are published as a Purchase or a Bill. The account you select decides which: a Bank or Credit Card account gives a Purchase, an Accounts Payable account gives a Bill. See How to publish expenses to QuickBooks Online as Bills.
Income is published as an Invoice.
The document's files are attached to the QuickBooks transaction, so the PDF or photo of the receipt travels with it. Images in formats QuickBooks doesn't accept, such as HEIC or WebP, are converted to JPG first.

Publishing is a manual step unless you turn on auto-publish. Open a document and use Publish to QuickBooks, or select several documents in the Documents view and choose Publish to accounting.

Publishing several documents at once, and "0 items can be published"

When you publish several documents, the Publish multiple documents dialog sorts them into groups:

Can be published: ready to go.
Can be published by auto-resolving warnings: they publish only when you tick Publish documents with warnings. A typical warning is Merchant will be created, which means the merchant isn't a QuickBooks vendor yet and SparkReceipt will create it.
Cannot be published due to errors: they are skipped. Open one of them to see the reason, for example Merchant is required, Category is required or a zero total.

The dialog also has Rewrite already published documents. Tick it to send documents that were already published again, for example after you edited them. Without it, already published documents are skipped.

So if the dialog shows 0 documents that Can be published, look at the other rows. If the documents are in the warnings group, tick Publish documents with warnings and publish. If they are in the errors group, fix each document first, then publish again.

Billing an expense on to a customer or project

An expense you pay for a customer can be filed under that customer in QuickBooks and marked Billable, so you can add it to their next invoice. Both are set when you publish the expense, in the publish editor on the web and in the publish sheet in the mobile app.

Under Customer / Project, pick the customer. Your QuickBooks customers are imported (see the Customers tab), and a QuickBooks project appears as one of them, because QuickBooks keeps projects as sub-customers. Choose No customer to publish the expense without one.
Tick Billable (a switch in the mobile app). It stays greyed out until a customer is picked, and choosing No customer turns it off again.
Publish. In QuickBooks, every line of the expense carries the customer and is marked billable.

To charge it, create an invoice for that customer in QuickBooks and add the expense from the Add to invoice window. See Intuit's guide Enter billable expenses.

Why don't I see the Billable option?

SparkReceipt shows Billable only when your QuickBooks company tracks billable expenses. That is a QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced feature. In QuickBooks, open Settings, Account and settings, the Expenses tab and Bills and expenses, and turn on Track expenses and items by customer and Make expenses and items billable. Then click Sync now on the QuickBooks Connection Settings page so SparkReceipt picks up the change.

Billable is never shown for income or for refunds. Refunds are always published as not billable.

Changing an expense after it's on an invoice

Once a billable expense is added to a customer invoice in QuickBooks, SparkReceipt doesn't change it again. Publishing it a second time stops with the message "This expense has already been added to a customer invoice in QuickBooks, so SparkReceipt won't change it there. Make any changes in QuickBooks instead." That keeps the expense from going back to unbilled and being invoiced twice. Make the change in QuickBooks.

Categories after you connect QuickBooks

Your QuickBooks chart of accounts becomes your Categories in SparkReceipt. Expense, cost of sales and liability accounts become expense Categories (Accounts Payable is left out, because it is used to publish Bills). Income and asset accounts become income Categories (Accounts Receivable is left out). Only active QuickBooks accounts are imported.

Can SparkReceipt suggest only my QuickBooks accounts?

When you connect, SparkReceipt hides its own Categories that no document uses. Categories that existing documents still use stay in your list, and the scan can keep picking them. To stop that:

Open Account settings and the Categories tab to see the full list. Categories that came from QuickBooks carry the integration icon and can only be changed in QuickBooks.
Use Remove on each Category that didn't come from QuickBooks. Recent documents that used it are recategorized automatically where possible. Documents in closed periods and older documents keep it.
To get rid of a QuickBooks account you don't want in SparkReceipt, make it inactive in QuickBooks and click Sync now.

You can also rescan a document to have it categorized again against the Categories you have now.

Why does the publish editor say "Required to publish" next to Subcategory?

The document's Category has to be one that came from QuickBooks. If it is one of SparkReceipt's own (for example one from before you connected), the Subcategory row in the publish editor shows Required to publish and the document can't be published, even though a Category is filled in. Change the Category to one of your QuickBooks accounts, or rescan the document, then publish.

Can Categories show my QuickBooks account numbers?

No. SparkReceipt imports the QuickBooks account names, not the account numbers. The Category code field in Categories can only be edited on Categories that didn't come from QuickBooks.

Tax codes

SparkReceipt imports your QuickBooks tax codes (see the Tax Codes tab). When you publish, each line is matched to a QuickBooks tax code with the same rate. You can see and change the match under Line tax codes in the publish editor with Select tax code. There's no separate step to make SparkReceipt's own tax rates match QuickBooks: the QuickBooks tax codes are what's sent.

I don't track tax in QuickBooks. Can the tax code always be zero?

Yes. Open Preferences and set Tax handling when publishing to Do not track tax. Expenses are then published as tax-inclusive totals with no tax code on the lines, so you don't have to pick one. Income Invoices still carry tax codes, because their tax is a liability you owe.

The default, Track tax, publishes the net amount on each line that has a tax code and lets QuickBooks add the tax from that code. A line without a tax code keeps its tax inside the line amount.

I track HST (or GST/VAT) by hand in a liability clearing account

Liability accounts in your QuickBooks chart of accounts, other than Accounts Payable, are imported as expense Categories. So a line item on a receipt can be booked to a liability account such as a clearing account you set up. QuickBooks decides whether it accepts a particular account on an expense line, and if it refuses, the reason is shown on the document.

If you keep tax out of QuickBooks' own tax tracking, Do not track tax (above) stops SparkReceipt from sending tax codes on expenses. Check the setup with your accountant before switching.

Why is one receipt line published as two lines?

Because only part of the line was taxed. A restaurant bill with a tip, or groceries mixing taxed and untaxed items, is often read as one line that carries the whole net with tax on only part of it. A net of 35.55 with 3.77 of HST is 10.6 %, while the HST code is 13 %. No tax code fits such a line, so SparkReceipt publishes it the way an accountant books it:

the taxed part: the line's tax divided by the code's rate (3.77 ÷ 13 % = 29.00), on that tax code, with all of the line's tax;
the rest (6.55) on a 0 % tax code, with no tax.

The total and the tax in QuickBooks are the same as on the receipt. The expense in SparkReceipt keeps its one line: only what is sent to QuickBooks has two.

SparkReceipt splits a line only when it can tell which rate taxed it:

The document is an expense, Tax handling when publishing is Track tax, your QuickBooks company is outside the US, and the expense isn't converted to your home currency when published.
The receipt is from your own country.
The rate comes from the line's own tax code, or from the rate read from the receipt or your region's single tax rate when exactly one of your tax codes has that rate.
The line's tax doesn't fit another rate as a whole. A 5 % GST-only receipt in Ontario is not split at 13 %.
Your region taxes at no other rate the line could partly be at, such as the UK's 20 % and 5 % or Finland's 25.5 % and 14 %. Where SparkReceipt has no tax rates on file for your region, it doesn't split the line.

When SparkReceipt can't split a line, or your company has no 0 % tax code, the publish usually stops with the message that part of the line looks untaxed or taxed at a reduced rate. Split the line into a taxed part and an untaxed part in SparkReceipt, or assign a code for the reduced rate, then publish again.

On an expense claim, receipt lines split the same way. A taxed line on a receipt from your own country that has no tax code and isn't split is still refused.

Can SparkReceipt publish automatically?

Yes. Under Preferences, set Auto-publish new expenses to On, and each new expense is published as soon as it is scanned. An expense that fails the publish checks, for example one with no Merchant, no Category or a zero total, is not published and waits for you.

Documents whose amounts look wrong wait for a review

Hold flagged documents for review, also under Preferences, is On for new accounts unless you turn it off. An account that was already auto-publishing when the hold arrived keeps publishing straight away until it turns the hold on. While it is on, a document is not auto-published when the scan flags its amounts: the line items don't add up to the total, a line's tax looks wrong, nothing could be read, your own business was read as the Merchant, a gift card purchase claims VAT, the document was too long to read to the end, the document prints more items than were read, a line's quantity times unit price doesn't give its amount, the printed subtotal and tax miss the total by one misread digit, the file seems to hold several separate documents, or an Expense was switched to Income because the document names your business as the seller. The document gets a comment saying why. It is published as soon as someone sets its Review status, unless an automation held it and you changed its type to one that automation doesn't cover. Publish that document yourself. Documents without such a flag are published straight away.

A document switched to Income is never published by Auto-publish new expenses, even after its review, because that setting publishes expenses only. Publish it yourself once you've checked the Payer. If it was a purchase, change it back to Expense and publish it yourself: Auto-publish new expenses doesn't pick it up again.

The setting covers Auto-publish new expenses and every automation that publishes. Turn it off if you only want your receipts moved to QuickBooks and check the figures there. Turning it off doesn't publish documents that are already waiting; set their review status to publish them.

Keeping a human check on every document

Two ways:

Leave auto-publish off and publish reviewed documents in bulk. In the Documents view, filter by Review status set to Reviewed, select the documents and choose Publish to accounting.
Auto-publish only trusted merchants. In the web app, create an auto-assign automation for a merchant you trust and tick Publish matching documents automatically under Publish to accounting integration. Everything else waits for you to publish it. See How to set up automations in SparkReceipt.

Common publishing questions

Are income amounts published to QuickBooks as tax-inclusive?

No. Income documents are published to QuickBooks Online as Invoices, and those invoices are always tax-exclusive. Each invoice line carries the net (pre-tax) amount, and QuickBooks adds the tax on top from the tax code. There is no option to publish income as a single tax-inclusive gross amount.

Can a receipt be published to QuickBooks as a single line?

Not with a setting. SparkReceipt publishes one QuickBooks line per line item on the document, and each line carries its own Category. There is no toggle that collapses a multi-line receipt into a single line. The one exception is a partly taxed line, which is published as two lines (see Why is one receipt line published as two lines?).

If you want a single line in QuickBooks, edit the expense in SparkReceipt so it has just one line item before you publish it. A receipt that has a single line item is published as a single line, unless only part of that line was taxed.

On the Elite plan you can have new scans do this for you with a custom AI instruction, for example: "Always extract exactly one line item. If there are multiple, combine them: merge the names together, sum the totals, and sum the taxes." See How to set up automations in SparkReceipt.

Can an expense be published with an empty Vendor, or a default vendor?

No. Publishing an expense to QuickBooks Online requires a merchant. SparkReceipt maps the expense's Merchant to the QuickBooks vendor (on a Bill) or payee (on a Purchase). If the document has no merchant, it can't be published.

There is no setting for a default vendor. Set a Merchant on the expense before publishing. If you don't want to track suppliers in QuickBooks, use one generic name (for example Miscellaneous): SparkReceipt creates that vendor in QuickBooks once and reuses it.

To put every new expense under that one name automatically, create an auto-assign automation with Match type set to Wildcard and a single * as the name, so it matches every expense, and set the Merchant to your generic name. The supplier name read from the receipt is then replaced, also in SparkReceipt, so keep this only if you really don't need supplier names.

Where do I see why a publish failed?

When a publish to QuickBooks fails, SparkReceipt writes the reason onto the document. Open the document in the SparkReceipt web app and look at its QuickBooks publishing section: the error message there is the actual response from QuickBooks, or the specific check that stopped the publish. It tells you what to fix, for example that a line's tax does not match its tax code, or that the document's line amounts do not add up. Correct the document, then publish it again.

Why does publishing say QuickBooks already has an account with that name?

When a line is on one of SparkReceipt's built-in Categories, publishing books it to the QuickBooks account with the same name. SparkReceipt stops the publish when that account can't take the line:

The account is a category with subcategories in SparkReceipt. Move those lines to one of its subcategories, or rename the category in SparkReceipt, then publish again.
The account is on the other side of the ledger, an income account for an expense category or an expense account for an income category. Rename the category in SparkReceipt or the account in QuickBooks, then publish again.

Expense claims

An approved expense claim can be published to QuickBooks Online. Open the claim and click Publish to QuickBooks Online. The claim goes to QuickBooks Online as one unpaid bill, payable to the claimant as a vendor. The receipts are attached. Trips are booked to the Mileage expense category and per diem to the Per diem expense category you choose in the QuickBooks Online settings. Marking the claim as paid in SparkReceipt doesn't record a payment in QuickBooks Online. See How do I publish an expense claim to my accounting software?.

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