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Quick Book for Mac and FileMaker Integration


Pushkraj

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Hi all,

Here is my requirement.

I need to integrate FileMaker (Mac) with QuickBook for Mac.

123 Sync is a product used to integrate FM (Windows) with QuickBook (Windows).

123sync is compatible with Windows QB versions only. Mac users can run QB on Parallels, VMware or Boot Camp (This is an additional expense). I am looking for an integration product which supports FM and Quickbook integration without any other supporting software expenses.

FYI Please refer the following link...

http://secure.solutionmakers.com/store/index.lasso?page=detail&category_id=&keyword=&skip=3

Regards

Pushkraj

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QuickBooks for Mac doesn't have an API to hook into, which is why 123Sync (or any other QB API-based integration tool) is Windows-only.

Is the target environment ALL Macs? Or a mix? The Mac and Windows QB products have different file formats, so you can't share a file across both environments.

If you're all Mac, you could possibly do something with QB's Import/Export routines built into the desktop app - though those don't enforce QB business rules the same way as the API.

In any case, I'd suggest that the software expenses involved with setting up Macs to use QB for Windows is pretty trivial compared to the development expenses of rolling your own integration solution for the Mac. If this is for vertical market solution that you plan to resell, the calculus is, of course, very different.

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Just another random thought:

Do the Macs actually need access to a QB Desktop app (e.g. they're viewing/editing data directly in QB)? Or do you need this access solely for integration purposes, and the Mac users are otherwise just FileMaker users?

If it's just to integrate with QB, then another scenario is to set up a windows robot machine to periodically collect FM data and post to QB/pull QB data down into FM. In this scenario, you're using a Windows QB product, and 123Sync or FMBooksConnector. The Mac users never touch QB in this setup.

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Here what I got from Productive Computing....Same issue as with 123Sync from SolutionMakers...I am needing "Quickbook for mac" <---> "3rd Party SW or Plugin" <--> "FileMaker for Mac" (Direct integration(pull,push)without parallels,boot camp or VMware)...I think there is no other option than going for this additional expense.

As per my requirement,Quick books for Mac that I am using is not interacting with Address Book or any other applications/features of Mac. Mac is simply runing the Quick book application, acting as an environment.I am simply needing interaction/integration of QuickBooks with FM.

8) QuickBooks Integration Setup

Requirements:

QuickBooks for Windows Only and the FM Books Connector Plug-in from Productive Computing, Inc. (www.fmbooksconnector.com for more info and video overviews). If you are not ready to purchase the plug-in to acquire a registration code, you can still download a demo of the FM Books Connector and you will witness full functionality of the QuickBooks Integration process for 12 days using the plug-in demo.

You can use the Plug-in to integrate with just about the entire family of QuickBooks Financial Software products, for the U.S. (2002-2008), Canada (2003-2007), and the UK (2003-2006). The Plug-in works with ALL U.S. editions of QuickBooks 2006 and later, except for QuickBooks for the Mac.

Attention Macintosh Users:

Although QuickBooks runs on a Macintosh, Intuit does not offer a Mac compatible Software Development Kit (SDK) for plug-in developers. Therefore there is no plug-in available for the Macintosh and you cannot transfer data to and from QuickBooks using the Macintosh OS. However as an alternative the plug-in will operate properly with Windows running on the Intel Mac. This would require the installation of FileMaker and QuickBooks for Windows on the Intel Mac. If you are an all Mac based organization, then use emulation software (like Parallels or Fusion) to run QuickBooks for Windows on your Macintosh. The plug-in is fully compatible in this environment. In fact, the entire Invoices file was created in an emulated environment.

Edited by Guest
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I think the historical background here is that for a while Intuit punted on Mac development, and by the time they picked up the ball again, the codebases were so different between the Mac and Windows QB products that there was no clean way to port the SDK to the Mac.

At this point as I understand it, they would have to rewrite the SDK from scratch, and I think they're basically making a business decision that it's not worth the huge cost of doing so; they just wouldn't make enough extra sales on the Mac side to justify the development time. The tradeoff of course is that they annoy the heck out of their Mac client base.

Edit:

By the way, if you have a FileMaker Advisor subscription, the folks at SolutionMakers wrote up a great overview for working with QuickBooks generally and an outline of the things to bear in mind when integrating. It's broken up into two issues, the first came out this summer and I think the second one is out as well. They should be accessible online if you have a subscriber login:

Learn how to (and how not to) link FileMaker Pro to QuickBooks and other accounting software

Edited by Guest
Added bit about Advisor article.
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