Accounting: QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, Wave

What gets sent

• QuickBooks: a sales receipt for each payment, under the member as a customer.
• Xero: an invoice for each payment, under the member as a contact.
• FreshBooks: an invoice for each payment, marked paid, under the member as a client.
• Wave: a deposit into the bank account you choose, booked to the income account you choose.

Never twice

Each payment is sent once, even if the instant push and the scheduled sync both run. FreshBooks invoices are numbered from the Mybers payment, and Wave keeps track of the last payment it sent and continues from there. If the other tool refuses a payment, the sync stops there and tries it again next time, so nothing is skipped.

What's not sent

FreshBooks and Wave also send payments you record by hand (cash, check). Refunds are not sent yet; record those in your accounting tool.

Setting up

Wave needs only a full-access token from its developer page. QuickBooks, Xero and FreshBooks sign in the way an app does: you create an app in their developer portal, allow it once, and paste the refresh token Mybers then keeps renewing. Three things trip people up:

• The developer portal asks for a redirect URL. Any web address you own works. After you click Allow, the code you need is in your browser's address bar, even if the page itself doesn't load.
• QuickBooks has two sets of keys. Development keys only reach Intuit's sandbox companies; use the Production keys for your real books. The Company ID (realmId) is in that same address bar.
• Xero no longer accepts the old accounting.transactions permission. Ask for accounting.invoices, accounting.payments, accounting.contacts, accounting.settings.read and offline_access.

Paste a refresh token only once. Each time Mybers uses it, the tool hands back a new one, and Mybers saves that, so an old copy stops working. If you need to reconnect, allow the app again and paste the fresh token.