Sync with QuickBooks Online

If you already run QuickBooks Online, you don't want to re-key every invoice and payment by hand. Connect HomeWatcher to QuickBooks once, and your billing activity flows into your books with no double entry. This guide covers connecting; for the day-to-day review queue, item mapping, and backfilling old invoices, see Reviewing and Managing Your QuickBooks Sync.

Connect QuickBooks once

1. Open Finance → QuickBooks and click Connect to QuickBooks. (Connecting is an owner-only action.)
2. You're taken to Intuit's secure sign-in screen.
3. Sign in and choose which QuickBooks company to connect.
4. You're brought back to HomeWatcher with a confirmation, and the page shows your connected company.

What syncs, and when

This is a one-way push from HomeWatcher into QuickBooks — HomeWatcher updates your books for you, and your existing QuickBooks data is the destination. Three things sync:

• Invoices — when you send one to a client. HomeWatcher creates the matching invoice in QuickBooks (or updates it if it's already there).
• Payments — when you record one, whether entered manually or paid online by card. The payment appears in QuickBooks linked to the right invoice.
• Voids — when you void an invoice, the matching QuickBooks invoice is voided too.

By default, each of these waits for your approval first. A newly connected business starts in review mode: invoices, payments, and voids land in a "Waiting for review" queue on the Finance → QuickBooks page, and you approve them (one at a time or all at once) before they reach your books. Prefer hands-off? Switch the sync mode to automatic and they go through the moment they happen. Either way, both online card payments and offline payments you record are covered. The full queue workflow is in the QuickBooks sync management guide.

How clients become QuickBooks customers

The first time an invoice for a client syncs, HomeWatcher looks for a matching QuickBooks customer by email. If it finds one, it links them; if not, it creates a new customer for you. After that they stay linked.

If you'd rather point a client at a specific QuickBooks customer yourself, open that client's edit page and fill in the optional QuickBooks Customer ID field. When it's set, HomeWatcher uses that customer directly and skips the email lookup.

Map your items

So your revenue lands in the right income category, tell HomeWatcher which QuickBooks service item each kind of charge (home watch visits, concierge services, and other line items) should post against. This one-time setup lives on the same Finance → QuickBooks page — see the sync management guide for the walkthrough. Until you map your items, syncs fall back to QuickBooks' default "Services" item, which can cause failures.

Disconnecting

Need to unhook the connection? On the Finance → QuickBooks page click Disconnect, then confirm (owner-only). Future activity stops syncing, but everything already in QuickBooks is left exactly as it is. You can reconnect anytime, and HomeWatcher prompts you to reconnect if the connection ever expires.

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A quick note on accuracy: this is a one-directional push into QuickBooks, so changes you make inside QuickBooks don't flow back into HomeWatcher.

That's it — connect once and stop double-entering your books. See the full feature set, check pricing, or get started at app.homewatchtools.com.