Integration to Quickbooks (Qlinker?)

[calexplorer]

Sorry, if I am posting this question in the wrong forum but this forum is somewhat related to what I want to do.

I am developing a job tracking, scheduling and maintenance sales and tracking system. I would like it to be able to integrate with Quickbooks Pro 2009.

Some of the data I would be using will come driectly from current customers that already exist in the QB data files.
New or Potential customers will exist initally though only in the custom Alpha5v10 database application. Once a potential customer buys a maintenace contract then their customer data is integrated into the Quickbooks data file and from then on when accessed is pulled from the Quickbooks over to the custom application.

Likewise Billing for the Maintenace Services while generated via the external A5 applicaton is immediately posted to the Quicbooks for financial tracking and billing. Yet all tranactions regarding the maintenace can be viewed and updated via the external alpha application.

Job Scheduling for these maintenance contracts is also done via the external Alpha application.

Ultimately, I can even see the sales of the contracts and the labor maintenace for the contracts having to also be incorporated into payroll records.

I am trying to make a seemless integration of these two products, such that data which appears in the Alpha 5 Application Form files but comes from Quickbooks, when it is changed or edited in the Alpha Forms Screens then I want that change to be reflected back in the QB customer file or whatever QB data file needs to be updated. Again, I would like this to occur in a realtime process not a data import process.

I prefer these changes to be realtime not an import / export process.

I was under the impression that Alpha Software use to market a product called Qlinker which allowed for this two way data integration. But I believe it is no longer marketed by Alpha Software or perhaps does not do what I want.

I found a few old posts regarding the product and how the users were getting FoxPro ODBC error messages. This seems strange to me since I know Intuit and Quickbooks don't use a Foxpro DBF file format. So I assume that somehow this product was using some sort of Jet Database ODBC connector between Quickbooks and the Alpha Data Files via the Qlinker. Then again I could be completely wrong.

Regardless, does anyone know how to integrate directly with Quickbooks and what product to use.

Clearly this is a huge and growing need espeically with all the items now being sold online and the transactions needing to integrate back to Quickbooks.

My customer is selling maintenace and service agreements but needs this data to be reflectd back into the Quickbooks on a realtime basis yet still allow for access to the data from external remote sources. Laptop, iPhone, iPad, etc.

Thanks for your assistance.

[MikeC]

Re: Integration to Quickbooks (Qlinker?)

Cole,
QLinker was a way used I think with Alpha5 v5 to connect somewhat to QuickBooks but from what I heard, not that easy and not that well. Discontinued.

QReportBuilder connects to a QuickBooks' company file utilizing a read only QODBC driver via Passive linked tables. There is a Read/Write QODBC driver available via FlexQuarters that enables Alpha5 development version to read and write data back to Quickbooks.

Regarding

I prefer these changes to be realtime not an import / export process.

How else can it be done as Alpha and QuickBooks are two separate applications????

Although you can read and write directly to QuickBooks via Alpha5 (still basically an export/import operation of sorts), I cannot see having QuickBooks do the same back to Alpha as a possibility without exporting the data or utilizing the passive tables---Passive tables use the QODBC driver to get the data from QuickBooks and places all into the passive tables where it now part of the dbf tables that can be manipulated.

So most can be done as you intend, just in a bit different way....and there is also the limitations that QuickBooks imposes on what data can be read and written to....yes, you read that right....not all data can be seen or written to due to the limits QuickBooks has via the SDK they provide.....Sometimes has to be exports of reports from QuickBooks to obtain some data.

I have little knowledge of writing back to QuickBooks, but just enough to add the above thoughts to the mix until others chime in.

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Integration to Quickbooks (Qlinker?)

To integrate A5 with QB, you use QODBC to open QuickBooks to the ODBC world and the use Alpha DAO to read and write to QB.