The QuickBooks integration means entering a payment once. What you record in CMS — the families, the amounts, the bank account, the subcategories — goes to QuickBooks Online as a deposit, with one click from the Deposits list.
Connecting a Company
Go to Settings → Integrations→ QuickBooks.
Click QB Connect, sign in to QuickBooks Online if you aren't already, and authorize CMS Cloud to view and update your data.
In QuickBooks Online, open Apps and look for CMS Cloud under My Apps.
Go to Settings → Financials → Departments, edit the department, and choose the QuickBooks company. This is required. Until a department points at a company, CMS has nowhere to send its deposits and nothing will go across.
You can connect several QuickBooks companies, each tied to its own department. Start with one and add others once the first is running smoothly.
Each connected company is listed with its state — Connected, or Sign-in expired when QuickBooks wants permission again, which Reconnect on the row settles. Disconnect is on the same row, and takes the company's mapping with it, so reconnecting later means matching things up again.
If you charge sales tax, pick the QuickBooks tax rate for the company in the Sales tax column. It saves as you choose it.
A connected company. The two icons on the row open its mapping or disconnect it.
What Matches What
Each thing in CMS has a counterpart in QuickBooks:
| In CMS | In QuickBooks |
|---|
| Families | Customers |
| Bank accounts | Bank accounts |
| Payment methods | Payment methods |
| Subcategories | Service items |
| Classes | Classes |
Nothing has to be matched before you start. CMS asks where something belongs the first time it is sent, and remembers the answer.
Worth doing deliberately, because it comes up on every deposit afterwards: your bank accounts, the payment methods you actually use, and the handful of subcategories that carry most of your giving. A wrong answer on one of those is one you keep seeing.
The rest is better left to fill itself in as you go. Families above all — you have hundreds of them and a deposit has a dozen, so match each one as it turns up. A subcategory you use twice a year can wait for the deposit it appears in. Mapping is not a job to finish before the first deposit.
Mapping Ahead of Time
To get those few out of the way first, open Settings → Integrations→ QuickBooks and click the company. Along the top: Families, Bank accounts, Payment methods, Categories, and Classes if you use them.
Set the filter to Unmatched and you are looking only at what still needs an answer. Choose the QuickBooks record beside each row, or + New to create it in QuickBooks from here — a new item asks for its name and the income account it belongs to. Save changes at the bottom keeps what you picked.
The Categories tab. Each subcategory sits beside the QuickBooks item it posts to; the one marked Unmatched still needs an answer.
Do the bank accounts and the payment methods — there are only a few of each — and the subcategories you recognize as your regulars. Then stop. Working down the whole list, families included, is time spent on records that may never come up.
Sending a Deposit
Work as you always do: record payments, group them into a deposit. On the Deposits list, each deposit that hasn't been sent yet offers Add to QuickBooks. One click sends every transaction in it.
If everything in the deposit is already matched, it goes straight over. Otherwise the Map to QuickBooks window opens first.
The QB column: the green icon sends that deposit, a check mark means it is already in QuickBooks.
The Map to QuickBooks Window
It lists only what still needs an answer, grouped into Families & Customers, Bank Accounts, Payment Methods, Items and Classes. Items are your subcategories, listed as Category: Subcategory. Each row shows where it stands:
Families waiting to be matched. Leave a row alone and QuickBooks gets a new customer; start typing to pick the one that already exists.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|
| Matched | You've picked the QuickBooks record it belongs to |
| Auto-create | No match chosen, so QuickBooks gets a new record — the usual answer for a family or a bank account that isn't there yet |
| Action required | You have to decide. Items and classes are never created silently |
For a family, start typing to search your QuickBooks customers and pick one. For accounts, methods, items and classes, choose from the list. Items and classes also have + New, which creates the record in QuickBooks — a new item asks for its name and income account.
Add to QuickBooks at the bottom stays disabled until nothing is left unanswered. A red note beside it says what remains, and clicking it jumps to the next row needing attention.
Matching a family to an existing customer is worth the few seconds it takes. Auto-create makes a second customer record when one already exists under a slightly different name.
After It's Sent
The deposit is recorded in QuickBooks and no longer offers the button, so the same deposit can't be sent twice. While an export is running the other deposits' buttons are held, which keeps two exports from overlapping.
Send deposits rather than individual payments, and let the deposit be the thing both systems agree on. That way the bank statement, the CMS deposit and the QuickBooks deposit are the same figure.