Reviewing and Managing Your QuickBooks Sync

HomeWatcher keeps your invoices, payments, and voids in sync with QuickBooks Online. For a newly connected business, nothing is pushed to your books without your approval: each item waits in a review queue where you check it and click Approve. This guide covers where to find the QuickBooks tools, how to map your line items, how to manage the review queue, and how to bring older invoices across.

First-time connection: If you haven't connected QuickBooks yet, go to Finance → QuickBooks and connect. You'll authorize through Intuit's secure page, then land back in HomeWatcher. (Connecting and disconnecting QuickBooks is an owner-only action.) For more on the initial hookup, see Sync with QuickBooks Online.

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Where to Find Everything

All QuickBooks tools live in one place: Finance → QuickBooks in the sidebar. From here you can set up item mapping, choose your sync mode, approve or retry items, and backfill past invoices.

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Step 1: Map Your Items (One-Time Setup)

QuickBooks records every invoice line under a service item (a product/service entry in your QuickBooks company). Before syncing, tell HomeWatcher which QuickBooks item each kind of charge maps to, so your revenue lands in the right income category.

Why this matters: with no mapping set, HomeWatcher falls back to QuickBooks' default "Services" item — which doesn't exist in every company and causes syncs to fail. Map your items once and sync becomes reliable. (The QuickBooks page shows a warning banner about exactly this until you map.)

How to set up item mapping

1. On Finance → QuickBooks, find the item-mapping card and click Set up mapping (it reads Edit mapping once you've mapped before).
2. HomeWatcher loads the service items from your QuickBooks company.
3. Assign a QuickBooks item to each of the three line-item types:
   • Home watch visits — your standard recurring inspection charges.
   • Concierge services — extra work like storm prep, vendor meetings, grocery stocking.
   • Other line items — anything added manually to an invoice.
4. If you don't need them separated, point all three at the same item (e.g., a single "Home Watch Services" item).
5. Need a new item? Use the Create a new service item section — give it a name and an income account, then Create & use for all and HomeWatcher creates it in QuickBooks and assigns it to all three types.
6. Click Save mapping.

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Step 2: Choose Your Sync Mode

At the top of the QuickBooks page is a sync-mode selector:

Review before syncing Invoices, payments, and voids wait in a queue until you approve them. Nothing hits your books until you send it. This is the default for newly connected businesses — best when you want a final check, especially while you're confirming the mapping and customer matching look right.

Sync automatically Each sync is sent the moment it happens — no review step, no queue. Best once you've been running a while, trust the setup, and want it hands-off.

Switch modes anytime; the change takes effect immediately for new activity. Existing queue items stay until you clear them.

Were you already connected before this feature arrived? Businesses that had QuickBooks connected before the review queue shipped were left on automatic mode, so their long-standing behavior didn't change overnight. If that's you and you'd prefer a review step, just switch the selector to "Review before syncing."

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The Review Queue

In review mode, every invoice you send, payment you record, and invoice you void creates an item in the Waiting for review list. Each row shows the action (invoice, payment, or void), the invoice number, the client, and the amount.

For pending items, you have:

• Approve — sends that single item to QuickBooks now.
• Approve all — sends everything waiting in one click. Great for an end-of-day pass.
• Skip — removes the item without sending it. It won't go to QuickBooks.

Tip: the dashboard's attention strip shows two QuickBooks chips — one counting syncs waiting for review and one counting failed syncs — so you never forget to clear the queue. See Understanding Your Dashboard.

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Fixing Failed Syncs

If a sync can't complete — QuickBooks rejected a value, the connection expired, an item mapping is missing — it moves to a Failed syncs section at the top of the page, with a plain-English reason.

• Retry — run the sync again after fixing the cause (mapping an item, reconnecting QuickBooks, etc.).
• Skip — give up on that item if it no longer needs to sync.

If your QuickBooks authorization has expired, a reconnect banner appears. Reconnect through Intuit's page (owner-only), then retry the failed items.

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Syncing Past Invoices (Backfill)

Started invoicing in HomeWatcher before connecting QuickBooks? The Sync existing invoices card shows how many invoices haven't been synced yet.

1. Optionally set a From and To date range to limit which invoices are included.
2. Click Queue for review.
3. The invoices — and the payments on the paid ones — are added to your review queue. Nothing is pushed to QuickBooks until you approve them, even if you're in automatic mode — a bulk push into your books should never happen silently.
4. Approve them in batches, or use Approve all.

Backfill only queues invoices that have actually been sent to clients (drafts are skipped) and that haven't synced yet, so it never creates duplicates of invoices already in QuickBooks.

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Sync Status on Each Invoice

Open any invoice and look beside its status badge:

• QBO synced — successfully recorded in QuickBooks.
• QBO sync pending — waiting in the queue or in progress.
• QBO sync failed — hover to read the error; fix the cause and retry from Finance → QuickBooks.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to approve every sync forever? No. Review mode is the default for new connections because it's the safest start, but you can switch to automatic anytime and syncs go through with no review step.

What happens if I skip an item? It's removed from the queue and never sent to QuickBooks. If you later decide it should sync, re-send the invoice or record the payment again to create a fresh queue item.

Why does my sync fail with a "Services item" error? No item mapping is set, so HomeWatcher fell back to QuickBooks' default "Services" item, which may not exist in your company. Set up your item mapping (Step 1) and retry.

Will backfilling create duplicates? No. Backfill only queues sent invoices that haven't synced yet; anything already in QuickBooks is skipped.

Who can approve syncs? Any signed-in member of your business can view the queue and approve, skip, or retry syncs — it isn't limited to owners or admins. The one QuickBooks action reserved for the owner is connecting and disconnecting the QuickBooks account itself.

What if my client doesn't exist in QuickBooks yet? HomeWatcher matches clients to QuickBooks customers by email address and creates a new customer if there's no match. You can also link a client to a specific QuickBooks customer yourself — open the client's edit page and fill in the optional QuickBooks Customer ID field (leave it blank to auto-match by email).

For questions about QuickBooks Online itself — items, income accounts, your chart of accounts — contact Intuit support directly at quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support.