SparkReceipt Help

SimplBooks integration

How to connect SparkReceipt to SimplBooks with a Company ID and API token, what is imported from SimplBooks, how Expenses publish as Purchases and Income as Invoices, payments, attachments, VAT and disconnecting

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Written by SparkReceipt TeamUpdated Oct 15, 2026

SparkReceipt connects directly to SimplBooks, the online bookkeeping software used in Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland. You connect by pasting your SimplBooks Company ID and an API token into SparkReceipt. Your SimplBooks chart of accounts, VAT types and bank and cash accounts are imported, and you can publish Expenses as Purchases and Income as Invoices, with the payment recorded and the files attached.

What the SimplBooks integration does

  • From SimplBooks to SparkReceipt:
    • Chart of accounts. Each active account becomes both an expense category and an income category, with its account code, because SimplBooks does not mark accounts as expense or income. The same accounts are listed as income accounts.
    • VAT types, as tax codes. Purchase and sales VAT types are kept apart, so a purchase type never lands on an invoice. Reverse-charge purchase types use their reverse-charge rate.
    • Bank and cash accounts, as purchase accounts that payments are recorded from.
  • From SparkReceipt to SimplBooks:
    • An Expense is published as a Purchase, one row per line item, each booked to its category's account.
    • A refund is published as a Purchase with negative amounts.
    • Income is published as an Invoice, marked as sent. Every row is booked to the document's income account or the Default income account.
    • A paid document also records a payment from the selected bank or cash account, so SimplBooks shows it as paid.
    • All the document's images and PDFs are merged into one PDF and attached.

Suppliers and customers are not imported in advance. When you publish, SparkReceipt looks the merchant or payer up in SimplBooks by name and creates the client if there is no match. SimplBooks keeps suppliers and customers in one client list, so a merchant and a payer with the same name share one client.

SparkReceipt does not create accounts in SimplBooks. Every Expense line must use a category that came from SimplBooks.

Prerequisites

  • A SimplBooks Premium plan, which includes the API, with an API user and its token. See How to get your SimplBooks Company ID and API token.
  • One accounting integration per account. If QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreeAgent, FreshBooks, Zoho Books, Sage Accounting or Procountor is connected, disconnect it first.
  • The right SparkReceipt role. Only an administrator or accountant on the account can open Integrations and connect. Once connected, every role except Contributor can publish.

Connecting

  1. Log in to the SparkReceipt web app as an administrator or accountant and open Integrations in the left-hand sidebar.
  2. In the Accounting section, click Connect to SimplBooks.
  3. Enter the Company ID and API token, and optionally a Company name. Home currency and Country are prefilled from your account settings.
  4. Click Connect. SparkReceipt checks the credentials straight away. If SimplBooks refuses them, you'll see SimplBooks rejected those credentials. Check the company ID and API token. on the form.
  5. SparkReceipt then imports your chart of accounts. A large chart can take a few minutes; the form shows Importing your chart of accounts with its progress.

Connecting and changing settings is done in the web app. Publishing works in both the web app and the mobile app. To pull in changes made in SimplBooks, click Sync now on the SimplBooks Connection Settings page.

Publishing documents

Open a document and click Publish to SimplBooks, or select several documents in the documents list and publish them together. You can also turn on Auto-publish new expenses under Preferences on the connection settings page.

  • Paid status. A receipt is always treated as paid; an invoice is treated as paid when its paid status is set in SparkReceipt. The payment is recorded from the document's account, or the Default purchase account. If no account is set, or the account's currency differs from the document's, the document is published unpaid with a warning, and you can record the payment in SimplBooks yourself.
  • Reference and due date. The reference is the document's reference number, otherwise its description, otherwise its SparkReceipt number (for example SR-42). The due date is the document's due date, or the document date when there is none.
  • Updating. After you edit a published document, Update in SimplBooks rewrites the same record. SimplBooks locks paid records, so SparkReceipt removes its payment first, updates the record, and records the payment again.
  • Removing. Remove from SimplBooks deletes the record in SimplBooks.
  • Expense claims cannot be published to SimplBooks. Export them as a report instead.

How VAT is handled

With Tax handling when publishing set to Track tax (the default), lines are sent net and SimplBooks adds VAT from each row's VAT type. A line with VAT but no matching SimplBooks VAT type stops the publish and names the line. With Do not track tax, lines are sent as tax-inclusive totals without a VAT type.

Currencies

A document is published in its own currency with its exchange rate to your home currency. To publish everything in your home currency instead, set Multi-currency behavior to Always convert to home currency under Preferences.

Attachments

All images and PDFs on a document are merged into one PDF, attached to the Purchase or as the Invoice's copy. If the merged file is larger than 10 MB, or the document has more than 50 files, the document is published without the attachment and with a warning.

Disconnecting

Open the SimplBooks Connection Settings page, click Disconnect from SimplBooks and confirm. SparkReceipt deletes its copy of the API token. The token itself stays valid in SimplBooks until you regenerate it or remove the API user, so do that in SimplBooks if you want to close access completely. Records already published stay in SimplBooks.

Limitations

  • One SimplBooks company per connection, and one accounting integration per SparkReceipt account.
  • No accounts are created in SimplBooks.
  • At most 200 lines per document.
  • Expense claims cannot be published.

If something doesn't look right, let us know through the in-app chat. When a publish fails, the reason is written on the document's SimplBooks publishing section.

SimplBooks is a trademark of its respective owner. SparkReceipt is an independent, third-party integration and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by SimplBooks.