Your Books on Autopilot: QuickBooks Integration Recap

Fresh off SUMMIT, we got moving company owners, operators, and office teams back together for an hour to talk about the part of the business that keeps everything else running: the money.

Edward Sanchez hosted, with special guest Theo Cameron, Customer Success Manager at Remedy Payments. The focus: keeping your books current without the double entry, and knowing exactly what you made on every job.

The big idea is simple. Your crews and office keep working the way they already do in SmartMoving. Behind the scenes, every payment and every finalized job flows into QuickBooks automatically, so your books stay current without anyone retyping a thing.

Theo set up the Quickbooks connection live, showed what your P&L looks like once payments start flowing in, and walked through how to make sure every dollar you recorded actually hit your bank account.

Watch Theo set it up live.

What the QuickBooks Integration Does: Your Books, on Autopilot

Nothing about your day-to-day process changes. You send estimates, book jobs, and take payments the same way you do today. Once the integration is connected, here’s what happens every time you take a payment or finalize a job:

• A customer profile is created in QuickBooks and keeps track of every payment and invoice for that customer
• An invoice is created in accounts receivable using the same number as the SmartMoving opportunity, so it’s easy to match records
• Payments are recorded in your Undeposited Funds account (called Payments to Deposit in newer versions of QuickBooks) until you reconcile them
• Every invoice line item carries over, from moving labor and materials down to a piano fee, along with its pricing and revenue
• Your P&L and balance sheet update automatically, so they’re ready when you need to apply for a loan, prove revenue, or check in on the health of your business

“Nothing that needs to get done in here is manual, except for the reconciliation,” Theo said.

Setting Up Your Mapping: Done in Minutes With a Bulk Upload

Theo set up the integration live on the call, start to finish. With the bulk upload file Remedy provides after the webinar, most of the setup takes about 5 to 10 minutes.

• Turn on account numbers in QuickBooks to keep your chart of accounts and P&L organized
• Import your chart of accounts from Accounting > Chart of Accounts > New Account > Import Chart of Accounts using the bulk upload file
• Batch import your products and services from Sales > Products and Services using the same file. Products and services connect SmartMoving to the right income account in QuickBooks.
• Map everything in SmartMoving from Settings > Integrations > QuickBooks > Manage. The integration is organized into three tabs: Jobs for invoice line items like moving services, packing, and materials; Storage for everything storage-related; and Accounts for where revenue is recorded.
• Map payments to Undeposited Funds or Payments to Deposit instead of directly to your bank account, so you can confirm every payment actually lands before it’s recorded as deposited
• Map by service type if you want local, intrastate, and interstate revenue tracked in separate accounts
• Turn off sales tax in QuickBooks from All Apps > Sales Tax. SmartMoving already handles your localized sales tax, and leaving it on in both places will double it.
• Run a test job to make sure your payments, invoice, and line items come through the way you expect

The most common mistake Theo sees is selecting the wrong target account in the SmartMoving dropdown during that final mapping step. Take a moment to double-check each one so your P&L reports exactly what you expect.

Reconciliation Made Simple: Match Every Dollar in Three Places

Reconciliation is the one part of the process you’ll do yourself, and SmartMoving and Remedy give you the tools to make it quick. Think of it as confirming that the revenue recorded in SmartMoving and QuickBooks matches what actually reached your bank account.

• Start in QuickBooks by going to Create > Bank Deposit to see the payments recorded for a given day or date range
• Check your E-Check payments in Paya Connect under Reports > Transactions. E-Check payments are listed individually, so they line up one to one.
• Check your credit card payments in AnywhereCommerce under Reporting > Closed Batch, then open a batch to see each individual transaction
• Confirm in SmartMoving with the Payments report in Smart Insights, available at no additional cost
• Save the deposit in QuickBooks and tie it to your bank account once everything matches

Your Questions, Answered

What happens to our existing chart of accounts when we upload the new one?

Everything you already have stays in place. The upload only adds accounts, and you can choose which ones to import, so you can bring in just the accounts you need.

Will SmartMoving’s products and services conflict with the ones already in QuickBooks?

No. Your existing products and services stay connected and available in your mapping dropdowns. There’s no need to delete anything.

Will payments sync to existing customers or create duplicates?

SmartMoving checks the customer’s name, email, and phone number. If a match is found, payments and invoices are added to the existing profile. If not, a new profile is created, so customers with common names stay separate. Payments already in QuickBooks before you connect stay as they are.

One important tip: if you’ve taken a deposit before connecting the integration and the final payment comes in after, that final payment syncs the deposit too. If you already entered that deposit manually, you’ll have a duplicate. Before your initial sync, check your SmartMoving deposit dates and plan to remove the manual entries, since the synced versions are written automatically.

What triggers an invoice to sync?

Finalizing the job. Payments taken before then show up in QuickBooks as unapplied payments. Once you finalize, the invoice is created within about two minutes and the earlier payments are applied to it automatically. If an invoice ever doesn’t appear, go to the bottom of the opportunity’s Accounting tab and click Resync.

Why do some payments show up on a different day?

Batches close at the end of each business day based on Eastern Time. If you’re in another time zone and a job wraps up after the cutoff, the payment lands in the next business day’s batch, so a Friday evening payment shows up on Monday. Keep the cutoff in mind when you reconcile.

What should we do when an E-Check payment comes back?

An E-Check can be returned when the customer’s account doesn’t have enough funds. You’ll see an icon on the payment in SmartMoving. With Remedy’s balance protection, customers who put an E-Check on file also put a credit card on file, so you can charge the saved card from the payment’s menu. If you aren’t receiving email notifications for returned E-Checks, reach out to Theo to confirm the email on file.