Syncing to Quickbooks Online

***This integration requires Quickbooks Online – Plus edition***

 While Tailwind offers many administrative and accounting tools, it is not fully-fledged accounting software. To help businesses requiring a more robust accounting solution, Tailwind integrates with QuickBooks Online.

Getting Started — What is a Chart of Accounts?

A Chart of Accounts is a table that lists all the accounts you will be using to run your business – and a key reference point when it comes to setting up Tailwind to sync with your QuickBooks Online account. Bank accounts and AR/AP accounts in QuickBooks will have corresponding Accounts in Tailwind, and Income and Expense accounts in QuickBooks will have a corresponding Revenue and Expense item in Tailwind. Mapping those accounts (covered below) is a crucial step in setting up your sync. This will be easiest if you set up both systems from the same Chart of Accounts, but it is not necessary that they match exactly – as may be the case if you have been using QuickBooks separately from Tailwind up to this point.

Step 1 – Configuring QB

Navigate to Account Settings->Sales->Sales Form Content and turn ON the setting for “Custom Transaction Numbers”

If they don’t already exist in QB you will also need to create new products/services to link your Tailwind revenue and expense lines to.

After clicking the “New” button from the Product and Services list you’ll be prompted with the screen below.

You’ll be required to only fill in the following fields.

Name: This will be the name of the product/service inside of QB. This doesn’t need to match the name inside of Tailwind but will be what displays when performing the mapping.

Description: If this is a revenue related item, you will need to ensure that you have checked off the “I sell this product/service to my customers”

Income Account: The income account from your chart of accounts that the transactions will be linked to.

Purchasing Information: If this is an expense related item, you will need to ensure that you have checked off the “I purchase this product/service from a supplier”

Expense Account: The expense account from your chart of accounts the transactions will be linked to.

Set Up & Configuration — Tailwind Accounts

We must now ensure that the corresponding accounts, expense items, and revenue items exist in Tailwind. First, navigate to the Configuration page via the

in the top right. Once there, click on the ‘Financial’ drop-down and select Accounts. This will bring up your Accounts page.

You will need to have a Tailwind account for every bank account, AR account, AP account, and credit card account that you are using in QuickBooks. Use the ‘add Account’ button located at the top of the page to add any missing accounts. It will probably be easiest to give both sets of accounts the same names, but this is not strictly necessary. Note that if you use multiple currencies, you will want to ensure you have bank, AR and AP accounts created in both currencies.

Synching Your Data — Initial Steps

Once you have configured all your Accounts, Revenue Items, and Expense items, it is time to start syncing your data. To do so, navigate to the QuickBooks module, available under the Tools section of the left navigation. This will bring up the QuickBooks sync tool.

The first step in every sync is to ensure that you are logged in to your QuickBooks Online account, and that you have authorized QuickBooks to share information with Tailwind. To ensure this is the case, click on the ‘Connect to QuickBooks’ button – this will open a pop-up window, where you will either be asked for your log-in information or, if you are already logged in, be asked to ‘Authorize’ communication between the two applications. Once you have completed this authorization process, return to the Tailwind page and click ‘Next’.

Next, select the Branch you want to sync. If you have only one branch, you can safely skip this step.

You can also choose whether to use QuickBooks’ or Tailwind’s exchange rates for your sync.

Earliest Transaction Date

Select the earliest Transaction date you want to sync across. By default, Tailwind will sync all available data, but if necessary you can set a cut-off date to avoid sending across earlier data.

This is useful if you have been using QuickBooks Online already, and have been manually entering your data up to this point. In this case, you will want to pick a date from which to switch over to using the synching tool. Otherwise, you may end up duplicating some of your manually-entered data.

You may also want to periodically move this date to ‘lock down’ data for particular periods, e.g. at financial year-end. This will ensure that data prior to the date is never ‘updated’ in QuickBooks, even if for some reason adjustments are made on the Tailwind side.

Account Mapping

The first time you go through the syncing process, you will need to map your Tailwind Accounts to the corresponding Accounts in QuickBooks. To do so, use the Local Financial Account and QuickBooks Account drop-down menus to select the two corresponding accounts, then click the ‘Add’ button to add the mapping. Continue to do this until you have mapped all your Tailwind Accounts – at this point the option to map new accounts will disappear, and you will simply have a list of your mapped accounts.

You will only need to create this mapping once. If you need to change these mappings in the future, you can use the

to remove a mapping, and replace it with an updated association. Once all your accounts are mapped, click the ‘Next’ button to proceed to the final step.

Expense and Revenue Item Mapping

Just like above, the first time you go through the syncing process, you will need to map your Tailwind Revenue and Expense types to the corresponding Products/Services in QuickBooks. To do so, use the Local Revenue/Expense Item and QuickBooks Item drop-down menus to select the two corresponding accounts, then click the ‘Add’ button to add the mapping. Continue to do this until you have mapped all your Tailwind Revenue and Expense items – at this point the option to map new accounts will disappear, and you will simply have a list of your mapped accounts

You will only need to create this mapping once. If you need to change these mappings in the future, you can use the

to remove a mapping, and replace it with an updated association. Once all your Revenue and Expense types mapped, click the ‘Next’ button to proceed to the final step.

Synching Your Data — Last Step

Most of the time, you will proceed immediately to this step, where you can select which data you actually want to sync across to QuickBooks. Only posted Invoices or Bills will show here and be available to sync. The buttons along the top of the final step allow you choose what type of data you want to sync. Selecting a category will show all the records that currently exist in Tailwind, but have not yet been synched to QuickBooks. It is important to note that for the Invoice and Bill related categories, only posted items will be available to sync.

Use the ‘Sync’ toggle on the left of the individual items to select which items you want to sync. New items will be selected by default. Once you have selected all the desired items, click on the red ‘Sync’ button at the top right of the page. Items will disappear from the list as they sync, and the corresponding data should now appear in QuickBooks online. If there is a problem with the data moving to QuickBooks, the item will remain on the screen and will return an error message.

Note: Customers/Vendors’ Internal Names

When synching Vendor and Customer records between Tailwind and QuickBooks, the tool uses the Tailwind ‘Internal Name’ field to determine whether or not a record needs to be synched. This means that, if you have already created Vendors and Customers in QuickBooks, it is crucial that the Internal Name of your Customer and Vendor records matches exactly with those records. If the names do not match, Tailwind will assume that the Vendor or Customer in question does not have a record in QuickBooks, and will create a duplicate record – which will cause a lot of headaches, when you start trying to sync Invoices and Bills related to those businesses.

This is only important if you were using QuickBooks Online already, and are now synching with Tailwind directly for the first time. Vendor and Customer records created by the Tailwind sync will be named correctly.

If you have been using QuickBooks separately, we recommend you double-check any Customer or Vendor records before synching them, and adjust the Tailwind ‘Internal Name’ field to match if necessary

Note: Multiple Currencies

If you have a Customer or Vendor who operates in two currencies – sometimes they pay you in USD, sometimes in CAD – you will need to create two separate Customer or Vendor records in Tailwind, one for each currency. You will also need to give them a unique Internal Name that matches the corresponding name in QuickBooks.

For example, if you have a customer, ‘ABC Company,’ you will want to create one customer with an internal name of ‘ABC Company – USD’ with the currency set to USD and another customer record with an internal name of ‘ABC Company – CAD’ with the currency set to CAD. This should be done in the internal name field only. QuickBooks requires a separate customer or vendor record for each currency.