Transportation Software Integration with QuickBooks

By default, QuickBooks provides an accounting and payroll solution for growing companies that need transportation management. It comes with many benefits, such as managing labor costs, handling payroll taxes, tracking time, getting tax penalty protection, offering same-day direct deposit, and administering workers' comp. However, logistics businesses often use both a TMS for their core operations and QuickBooks for bookkeeping, which can lead to double data entry.

Pain Points Faced by Companies Without Integrated QuickBooks/TMS Systems

Though a TMS is great at real-time, transportation-specific workflows, it does not have professional quarterly and financial reporting, which is why QuickBooks comes into play.

However, the disjointed trucking management and accounting systems lead to the manual transfer of data between them.

The staff must copy the same data from their TMS or spreadsheets into QuickBooks. Employees toggle between two systems either to enter load information  or upload documents. As a result, they constantly have to fix invoices and ensure that documents match across the two systems.

The absence of integration causes inconsistencies in bookkeeping, delayed invoicing, and poor financial statement reporting.

The Solution

There are two primary solutions to the disconnection between transportation management and accounting systems, offering synchronization for load and payment information.

1. Order a custom integration of QuickBooks with your current TMS, since QuickBooks supports API integrations.
2. Switch to a ready-made TMS that is integrated with QuickBooks out of the box.

Need QuickBooks integration services? Contact our integration team.

QuickBooks TMS Integration 

As a custom logistics software development company, Belitsoft has many years of experience in developing and integrating logistics and transportation software. We have developed and customized transportation management systems and performed numerous API integrations, including integrating QuickBooks for a major logistics company.

We have noticed that we often need to address several common requests from clients. Here are the selected ones related to the integration of dispatching and accounting.

Clients often order custom integrations that enable automatic updates in QuickBooks Online or Quickbook Desktop’s customer or vendor databases whenever customer or carrier records are added or modified in the TMS.

They want loads/orders marked as 'Delivered' in the TMS to generate corresponding estimates and purchase orders in QuickBooks, capturing costs and payments at delivery. And generally, any further changes to such orders should be synchronized in both systems. 

Business users often demand automatic synchronization of invoices in QuickBooks any time an invoice is created, modified, paid, or deleted through the TMS and vice versa. After payments are marked in QuickBooks, the invoices should be automatically updated as paid in their TMS. 

They also want to generate and send QuickBooks invoices directly from the TMS, using rate agreements and dispatch details. 

The TMS should automatically attach associated files, such as proof of delivery, to the appropriate QuickBooks records. 

They also want tracking open balances on the customer A/R Balance page in the TMS. Accordingly, invoices issued in QuickBooks should be viewed from the TMS.

Some trucking clients want integrations that translate trucking-specific calculations of particular units of measurement from their TMS into QuickBooks unit types, whether it’s by hundredweight or ton, by flat rate or mile, and including fuel surcharges, stop pay, detention, or day pay. 

Once the TMS is connected to QuickBooks, invoices should be automatically organized in QuickBooks based on the types of the services set up in the TMS. Clients want to categorize each invoice by different types of earnings.

Some clients seek Truck and Order-Level Profitability Analysis capabilities within their transportation management systems after marrying QuickBooks to the TMS. They want to identify which load types are driving the best results, which drivers, trucks, and customers are most profitable, and which are the costliest. They also want to know their profitability per mile, analyzed by each of these factors. 

How we use QuickBooks API to integrate with your TMS

Using an API, it's possible to automate nearly any task in QuickBooks (QB) without having to log in and manually perform them yourself. Imagine that orders seamlessly flow into QB without you or your staff typing them in, new customers get automatically added to your QB customer information, and time tracked in your application generates time entries and invoices directly in QB.

Here at Belitsoft, we are experts in integrating TMS with QuickBooks, and we do this by using APIs to connect these two systems. This integration process involves several key steps.

The first step is to register your TMS in QuickBooks. To do this, we create a QuickBooks App at developer.intuit.com and receive the app token, and OAuth consumer and secret keys required to connect a QuickBooks account to our middleware API application.

Our goal is then to develop such an API application and host it on a separate web server. This application can be written in Java, .NET, PHP, or any other language designed to make JSON-based REST calls. QuickBooks accepts calls directly to its API's REST endpoints (to create invoices, retrieve a list of clients, etc.) or through QuickBooks  SDKs that simplify the development.

To receive credentials to interact with live data and perform real transactions, all companies must fill out a security questionnaire and complete a related assessment. Questionnaires are lengthy, include detailed information about your business, and ask technical compliance questions, which may slightly prolong the integration timeline.

Responses from QuickBooks are also in JSON format. Our middleware API application will directly process these responses into your TMS. We also automate the token update process to prevent the possibility of suddenly interrupted integration someday. 

In order to comply with the rate limiting policy of QuickBooks API, we employ a scheduling engine that monitors when the last batch of requests went out and figures out the delay required before sending the next batch to never break the rate limit.

During the initial synchronization process, our team maps fields from your TMS to QuickBooks to ensure that all data fields, such as Customer Name or Supplier Phone Number, match up.  

From that time, your TMS can synchronize data with QuickBooks.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does QuickBooks handle IFTA taxes?

QuickBooks can consolidate mileage and fuel data, and after syncing with your TMS's route information, you can generate accurate IFTA reports.

Can QuickBooks calculate Fuel Tax Return?

QuickBooks can categorize and track fuel expenses. After Integration with your TMS's operational data, like mileage, you can get precise fuel tax calculations.