Connector Query Guide

How to pull the right data from each connector for each mode. Ledgers are peers (../../../shared/connector-neutrality.md): use whichever is connected. Both modes are US federal tax; the country check in the skill's Step 0 runs before any of this.

Xero — Quarterly mode (P&L)

get_profit_and_loss for January 1 through the last day of the most recently completed quarter. Capture the same three figures as the QuickBooks path: total income, total expenses, net profit.

Read get_organisation_info first if the business context has no Country or Currency: it returns both, plus the base currency the P&L is in. get_organisation_financial_year returns the year end; a US organisation on a calendar year is the case this path was built for, and a non-calendar year end changes which months "YTD" covers — resolve the dates once and say which basis the estimate is on.

Confirm each tool name in this section before the first live run.

Xero — Year-end mode (contractor payments)

Two reads, in this order:

1. **get_1099_report_summary** — for a US organisation, Xero already computes the 1099 view: payees, totals for the year, and the contact's tax-ID status. This is the expected output of Path 2 in one call. Use it as the candidate list and skip to the W-9 check.
2. **get_bills** with include_line_items=true, status PAID, grouped by contact.name — when the summary is unavailable, or to cross-check it. Attribute each bill to the year it was paid, not the year it was dated: 1099 totals are by payment date, so a bill dated in December and paid in January belongs to the later year. Read the payment date from the bill's payments (or fully_paid_on_date where the connector exposes it), pull bills from both calendar years around the boundary, and sum per contact by payment year. Exclude bills coded to goods, refunds, and transfers.

For each contact, capture: name, tax ID present or not (the W-9 signal), total paid, payment dates. Xero's contact record holds a tax number field; empty means no W-9 on file.

Worked example, shape only:

Xero 1099 summary, tax year 2025:
  Rivera Design Co        USD 14,200   tax ID on file
  M. Okafor               USD  2,850   no tax ID — collect W-9
  Northgate Electrical    USD    580   under threshold — near-threshold list

Same aggregation, threshold, and W-9 logic as every other source from here.

QuickBooks — Quarterly mode (P&L)

Pull a Profit & Loss report for the period January 1 through the last day of the most recently completed quarter.

Key fields to capture:

• Total Income (gross revenue)
• Total Expenses (all operating expenses)
• Net Ordinary Income (= income − expenses; this is the basis for tax calculation)

If QuickBooks returns multiple income/expense categories, sum them. You want the single bottom-line net profit figure.

If the user's QuickBooks is on cash basis, use that. If accrual, note it in output — the accountant should confirm which basis to use for estimated taxes.

QuickBooks — Year-end mode (contractor payments)

Pull all bill payments and checks to vendors for the full tax year (Jan 1 – Dec 31).

Filter for:

• Vendor type = "1099 eligible" (if the user has tagged vendors in QuickBooks)
• OR any vendor whose category is: consulting, contract labor, subcontractor, freelance, design, legal, accounting, marketing, staffing

For each vendor record, capture:

• Vendor name (legal name if available)
• EIN / SSN (from vendor profile — indicates W-9 on file)
• Total payments for the year
• Payment dates and amounts (for cross-reference)
• Vendor type / 1099 eligibility flag

Common issue: Many QuickBooks users do not tag vendors as 1099-eligible. If 1099 eligible returns few or no results, pull ALL vendors with significant payment totals and let the user / accountant classify them. Note this in output.

When the connector returns totals with no payee breakdown

Try the live connector first, then fall back. Three steps:

1. Try the live connector. Attempt to pull vendor-level payment records via the QuickBooks MCP. If it returns individual payee records with name, amount, and account category, use them directly and skip the rest of this section.

1. Detect an aggregate-only response. If the response carries only category-level totals — "Contract labor: USD 7,500" with no payee breakdown — the connector does not support vendor-level queries on this account. Ask for an export:

"QuickBooks returned summary data only — I need payee-level detail to build your 1099 list. Please export a Transaction List by Vendor report (QuickBooks → Reports → Expenses → Transaction List by Vendor, filtered to this tax year) and upload the CSV here. I'll process it automatically."

1. Process the CSV. Map columns: payee name, amount, date, payment method, and EIN/SSN status. From there the aggregation and threshold logic is identical regardless of which source the data came from.

If the QuickBooks MCP later exposes vendor payment records directly, step 1 simply succeeds and the fallback is skipped. No skill change is needed — the try-first order handles it.

PayPal — Year-end mode

Pull all "Goods & Services" payments sent (not received) for the tax year.

Key fields:

• Recipient name / email
• Total amount per recipient (aggregate for the year)
• Transaction type = "Payment" or "Business Payment"
• Date

Exclude: personal payments ("Friends & Family"), refunds, disputes, transfers to own accounts.

1099-K note: PayPal issues its own 1099-K to any recipient who receives ≥ USD 600 in goods & services payments. Flag this in output — the accountant determines whether the business must also issue a 1099-NEC or can rely on PayPal's 1099-K.

Stripe — Year-end mode

Pull all transfers to external accounts (payouts to contractors, not payouts to the business owner's own bank).

Key fields:

• Recipient name / ID
• Total transferred per recipient for the year
• Payment description / metadata (to confirm these are for services)

Exclude: Stripe payouts to the business's own bank account.

1099-K note: Same as PayPal — Stripe issues 1099-K to contractors above the threshold. Flag and defer to accountant.

Square — both modes

Square is a peer of PayPal and Stripe in the payments category, and it holds less of what this skill needs. Say what it cannot do, in one line, and move on.

Quarterly mode: the P&L comes from the ledger, not from Square. Square's payments list (all locations — ListPayments without location_id returns only the main one) gives gross card receipts for the period, useful only as a cross-check that the ledger's income line is not missing a location. Never substitute it for the P&L.

Year-end mode: Square exposes no payments to external parties through the connector — its payouts go to the business's own bank, and contractor pay lives in Square Payroll, which the connector does not reach. Square contributes nothing to the 1099-NEC list. Say so by name in the Sources section rather than leaving it out silently.

1099-K note: like PayPal and Stripe, Square issues a 1099-K to the business for card receipts above the threshold. That is the business's own income reporting, not a contractor's; note it for the accountant so gross receipts on the return reconcile to the processors.

Ramp — both modes

Card transactions with GL and category coding, vendor bills with their approval history, vendor records, and reimbursements.

• Quarterly mode: card spend by category, for the expense side of the estimate. Anything not yet synced to the ledger is spend the P&L does not know about — name it as an adjustment rather than folding it in silently.
• Year-end mode: vendor and bill records help confirm a payee list built from the ledger. Ramp is a cross-check, not the source of truth.

Ramp can approve bills and mark them ready to sync. Nothing in this skill writes. Read only.

Expensify — both modes

Read-only search. Expense reports, individual expenses, receipts, invoices, trips, category-grouped totals, and approval-state statuses.

• Quarterly mode: category-grouped expense totals, for the deduction side.
• Receipt substantiation is a first-class filter. Search for expenses with no receipt attached and report the total and the count. That is the line the accountant acts on: an expense without a receipt is a deduction that may not hold.
• Expensify does not carry contractor payee detail suitable for a 1099 list. Do not build one from it.

NetSuite — both modes

P&L via ns_runReport for the quarterly path; vendor bill payments by payee via ns_runCustomSuiteQL for the year-end path. Same fields as the QuickBooks path. NetSuite vendor records carry the tax-ID field that stands in for the W-9 signal.

MYOB — quarterly mode only

Read-only, and P&L-side only. MYOB gives net profit with monthly or quarterly breakdown and a prior-year comparison — which is exactly the input the quarterly estimate needs.

What it cannot do:

• No contractor or payee detail. MYOB has no role in 1099 prep. Say so and fall back to PayPal, Stripe, or a CSV for the payee list.
• No bank balances.
• Three financial years only — the current and prior two. Anything older is unavailable.

Resolve the business financial-year dates once before pulling the P&L and reuse them. Any "last quarter" or "FYTD" reference means the financial year, not the calendar year, unless the owner says otherwise — and if the financial year is not the calendar year, say which basis the estimate is on, because the accountant needs that stated.

Zoho Books — both modes

No report endpoints, so both modes are assembled from document lists and labelled as such.

Quarterly mode. list_invoices for January 1 through the quarter end with response_option=3 (summed total), and list_expenses for the same range summed on total. Income minus expenses is the net figure for the estimate — an invoiced-and-recorded estimate, not a P&L. Say that in the output; the accountant confirms basis. get_organization supplies country_code, currency_code, and fiscal_year_start_month for the Step 0 country check and the YTD dates.

Year-end mode. list_contacts with contact_type=vendor, reading track_1099 (Zoho's own 1099-eligible flag) and tax_id_type / tax ID presence as the W-9 signal. Then list_expenses per vendor_id for the tax year, summed on total by payment year.

What it cannot do: there is no bill object and no vendor-payment list, so only expenses count toward each payee's total. A vendor paid through bills in Zoho Books is invisible here — say so, and ask for the Payments Made or Vendor Balances export from Reports for the payee list when the business uses bills.

Desktop / CSV fallback

If any connector is unavailable, ask the user to:

1. Export a P&L from their ledger as CSV (QuickBooks: Reports → Profit & Loss → Export; Xero: Reports → Profit and Loss → Export; Zoho Books: Reports → Profit and Loss → Export; and for the year-end path, Xero's 1099 report or a Payable Invoice Summary by contact, or Zoho Books' Payments Made report by vendor)
2. Export a transaction history from PayPal (Activity → Download → CSV)
3. Export a payout report from Stripe (Dashboard → Payouts → Export)

When reading uploaded CSVs, look for these columns (names vary by export):

• P&L: Description, Amount, Type (Income / Expense)
• PayPal: Name, Type, Amount, Date, Transaction ID
• Stripe: Description, Amount, Created date, Status

If columns don't match, ask the user to identify the payee name and amount columns.