Sending Customer Invoices to QuickBooks?

[Bruce Herbach]

This is actually two related questions. 

First,  I want to pull the list of Sales tax item from QuickBooks so that I can send the appropriate tax ListID when I send an invoice.  In QuickBooks if I open the "Lists" menu and select "item List" then enter "tax" in the "look For" field I get a list that includes the Sales Tax Items.   The display has a "Type" field that show "Sales Tax Item".  When looking at the "ItemNonInventoryQuery" in the QuickBooks SDK I don't see any way to filter or select by type. 

Is there a way to pull these records with out pulling the entire list? 

Second questions:  When an Customer Invoice is created in QuickBooks,  we have a "Project" field displayed.  When looking at the QuickBooks SDK I don't see any fields that correspond to this field.   What should/can I use to populate this field?

 

Thanks for your help

Bruce Herbach

 

[Geoffrey Gerhard]

You may be conflating two different things in your first question. Invoices have an ItemSalesTaxRef that identifies the rate that will apply to the taxable items on an Invoice. The sales tax rate can be identified at the Invoice level if you want QB to calculate the sales tax amount, or you can add a SalesTaxItem (specifying the amount) as an InvoiceLine. Invoices also have a CustomerSalesTaxCodeRef, which indicates whether or not the Customer's purchases are taxable. (Default values are, I think: "tax" and "non")

InvoiceLines have a SalesTaxCodeRef, which indicates whether or not that line is taxable. It gives no indication of the rate that applies. The InvoiceLine::SalesTaxCodeRef will default to the value in the specified Item, again "tax" and "non" are the norm, if you don't pass that element in your Request.

The ItemNonInventoryQuery does not provide a TaxCode filter in the Query, so you'll need to parse the response to identify all those with "tax" or with "non" values. The Xpath filter in the PCQB_ZParseXML function is the tool of choice for quickly identifying Items with one or the other. Note that there may be more than two TaxCodes: I've seen companies add "exempt" to their TaxCode list. And if you're integrating with a Canadian version of QB, all bets are off.

To answer your second question, you'll need to look at the Invoice's design layout in QB. Field labels don't have to match the field they're paired with, so many companies will repurpose the Other and/or FOB fields as the home of data that doesn't fit elsewhere. If it's one of those used to hold the "Project" value, adding data to it via the API is easy. It could also be a Custom field, which makes adding the data a little more involved, but still  not difficult.

HTH!

Geoffrey Gerhard
Creative Solutions Incorporated
14000 Creekside Drive
Matthews, NC 28105
704.814.6852

[Bruce Herbach]

Hi Geoffrey,

In digging through the example scripts,  I found what I needed to get the Sales Tax items.  I just needed to use ItemSalesTaxQuery.  I didn't see it when scrolling through the list in the SDK.

For this project/company we do business in multiple states and counties.  So need to use the correct tax code and rate.  I set up a script that will add new or update existing in our main file. 

Regards

Bruce Herbach