Accounting

The Accounting section in Settings contains your QuickBooks Online integration for syncing customers, invoices, and payments between Chisel Tide and QuickBooks. Once connected, you can keep your financial records synchronized across both systems.

QuickBooks Online Integration Overview

The QuickBooks Online integration allows you to:

• Sync customers — Match Chisel Tide customers with QuickBooks customers to maintain a single customer record

• Sync invoices — Send invoices created in Chisel Tide to QuickBooks for accounting

• Sync payments — Record payments received in Chisel Tide back to QuickBooks

• Track items — Match service items between both systems for accurate line-item reporting

Connection Statuses

The QuickBooks panel displays one of four connection statuses:

• Not connected — No QuickBooks account is linked. Click Connect to QuickBooks to begin the integration.

• Connected — You've authorized QuickBooks access but haven't completed setup. The setup wizard guides you through account mapping and activation.

• Expired — Your QuickBooks authorization has expired. Click Reconnect to restore the connection and resume syncing.

• Active — The integration is fully set up and syncing. You'll see synced entity counts for customers, items, invoices, and payments.

Setting Up QuickBooks Online

If you haven't connected QuickBooks yet, you'll see the status Not connected with a Connect to QuickBooks button. Click this button to begin authorization.

After connecting your QuickBooks company, the status changes to Connected and shows the message "QuickBooks is connected. Complete the setup wizard to start syncing."

Step 1: Accounts

The first step maps your Chisel Tide financial data to QuickBooks accounts. Select which QuickBooks accounts will receive synced transactions:

• Income Account * (required) — Where invoice line items are recorded as revenue in QuickBooks. Choose an income or revenue account from your QuickBooks chart of accounts.

• Payment Deposit Account * (required) — Where payments received from customers are deposited. Choose a bank account from your QuickBooks accounts.

• Payout Account (optional) — For tracking payout transfers if you process payments through Chisel Tide with Stripe.

• Payment Fee Account (optional) — Where payment processing fees from Stripe are recorded as expenses.

Account dropdowns are grouped by type (Income/Revenue, Bank, Expense/Cost of Goods Sold) to help you find the right account. If no accounts match a category, all accounts appear.

After selecting your accounts, click Next: Review Customers.

Undeposited Funds and automatic payout matching

Choose Undeposited Funds as your Payment Deposit Account to enable automatic matching of daily Stripe payout deposits. Undeposited Funds is identified by its QuickBooks account subtype, not its display name, so it still works even if QuickBooks renames the account (for example, to Payments to deposit).

With Undeposited Funds selected, customer payments post into that holding account, daily Stripe payout deposits can be matched automatically against the payments and fee line, and automatic payout recording can produce a deposit equal to the exact amount that reached the bank. If you choose a different deposit account, Tide warns that payments post individually into that account's register and daily Stripe payout deposits can't be matched automatically.

Automatic payout recording is a separate opt-in, Automatically record Stripe payouts in QuickBooks. When enabled, payouts that contain something Tide can't verify — such as a refund, adjustment, or a payment that didn't go through Tide — are skipped and flagged for manual entry.

Step 2: Customers

This step matches your Chisel Tide customers with existing QuickBooks customers. Click Load Customer & Item Matches to fetch matching data from QuickBooks.

The system imports customer records from your QuickBooks company and matches Chisel Tide customers to QuickBooks customers by name and contact information. Matches are grouped into two categories:

• High confidence — auto-selected — Strong name or contact matches that are checked by default.

• Needs your review — confirm each — Weaker matches that require manual confirmation.

If no automatic matches are found, the step shows No automatic matches found — all records will be created new in QBO.

Search for QuickBooks customers

Each customer row has a search icon that opens a QuickBooks customer search panel. Type at least two characters of a display name to search. Records already linked to another customer aren't shown in results.

Save matches without activating

You can save checked matches without completing the full setup. Click Save Match (or Save Matches when multiple rows are selected) to persist the checked pairs. A confirmation appears: Matches Saved — Saved customer matches. They're stored permanently — you can close this page and finish the rest later.

Saved matches are removed from the review list and won't appear again in future setup runs. A saved-matches counter appears at the top of the step showing how many have already been linked.

When you're ready to continue, click Next: Review Items. You can also import unmatched QuickBooks customers into Chisel Tide using the import checkbox on the final step.

Exclude a customer from QuickBooks

You can exclude an individual customer from syncing to QuickBooks. From a customer's profile, open the QuickBooks section and choose Exclude from QuickBooks. Excluded customers aren't created or updated in QuickBooks, and their invoices and payments aren't synced. Use Include in QuickBooks to reverse it. Excluding a customer doesn't delete any QuickBooks record already created for them.

Step 3: Items

This step matches your service items (products and services you sell) between Chisel Tide and QuickBooks. Review the item matches to ensure accurate line-item reporting in QuickBooks.

As with customer matches, you can save checked item matches without completing the full setup. Click Save Match or Save Matches to persist the checked pairs. A confirmation appears: Matches Saved — Saved item matches. They're stored permanently — you can close this page and finish the rest later.

After reviewing, click Next: Review Summary.

Step 4: Review

The review step shows a summary of:

• Already linked (saved matches) — Customer and item pairs saved in earlier steps.

• Linking now (checked matches) — Pairs you've checked but not yet saved; they'll be linked during activation.

• Suggestions left for later review (not synced) — Unchecked suggestions that won't be imported or pushed to QuickBooks; they remain untouched.

• New customers to create in QuickBooks — Chisel Tide customers without a QuickBooks match.

• QuickBooks customers to import into Tide — Unmatched QuickBooks customers you can import. Check Include deactivated QuickBooks customers to include deactivated records.

• New items to create in QuickBooks — Service items without a QuickBooks match.

Review everything carefully. After activation, synced data will flow according to your account mappings.

Step 5: Activate

When ready, click Activate & Sync to complete setup and start syncing. The button first saves any unsaved checked matches (showing Saving matches...), then runs the activation (showing Activating & Syncing...).

Activation requires an income account and a QuickBooks item mapping for every line item category. If either is missing, activation won't proceed.

Upon success, you'll see a confirmation with counts of synced entities. The connection status changes to Active.

Managing an Active Connection

Once your QuickBooks integration is active, the panel shows sync status information and provides several management actions.

Sync Status

The status section displays:

• Customers — Number of customers synced to QuickBooks

• Items — Number of service items synced

• Invoices — Number of invoices synced

• Payments — Number of payments synced

Sync health cards show:

• Last Sync — Timestamp of the most recent sync

• Pending — Count of items waiting to sync

• Failed — Count of syncs that encountered errors

If the last sync encountered an error, a red error box displays the error message.

Manual Sync Actions

The panel provides three sync actions:

• Sync Now — Processes all pending changes in the sync queue. Use this to immediately push new customers, invoices, or payments to QuickBooks instead of waiting for automatic sync. The button shows Syncing... while processing.

• Reconcile — Scans all customers, items, invoices, and payments for anything in Chisel Tide that hasn't synced to QuickBooks. Use this when something was edited outside the app or you suspect sync gaps. This is slower than Sync Now. The button shows Reconciling... while processing.

• Disconnect — Removes the QuickBooks connection. Sync stops but account mappings are preserved for future reconnection. You'll see a confirmation prompt: "Are you sure you want to disconnect QuickBooks? Sync will stop but data mappings are preserved."

Viewing Sync Activity

Click View Sync Activity to see a detailed records panel showing:

• Pending (count) — Items queued for the next sync

• Failed (count) — Syncs that failed with error details

• Recent Activity — Successfully synced items with timestamps

Failed syncs show error messages to help diagnose issues. Pending items display a message: "changes queued for next sync. Click 'Sync Now' to process immediately."

Click Hide Sync Activity to collapse the panel.

Pending matches

When QuickBooks can't automatically identify the customer or item behind a transaction, it lands in Pending Matches instead of syncing. Open Pending Matches from the sync activity panel to review each unresolved transaction and assign the correct QuickBooks customer or item. Resolving a match lets the transaction sync on the next cycle.

Reconnecting an Expired Connection

QuickBooks authorization tokens expire periodically for security. When this happens, the status shows Expired with the message "Your QuickBooks connection has expired. Please reconnect to resume syncing."

Click Reconnect to authorize QuickBooks again. Your account mappings and sync history are preserved, so you can resume syncing immediately after reconnecting.

How QuickBooks Sync Works

When your integration is active, Chisel Tide automatically syncs data to QuickBooks:

• New customers — Created in QuickBooks when added in Chisel Tide

• Updated customers — Changes sync on the next sync cycle

• Invoices — Created in QuickBooks with line items mapped to your income account

• Payments — Recorded in QuickBooks with the deposit account you selected

The sync queue processes changes automatically. Use Sync Now to push changes immediately instead of waiting.

Troubleshooting

Next steps

After QuickBooks is active, create invoices from Invoices or from a completed work order, then track collections on Payments. Paid invoices with a QuickBooks customer mapping export automatically on the next sync cycle.