quickbooks-reconcile.md
71 lines · small-business/skills/month-end-prep/reference/quickbooks-reconcile.md at 2574e29
QuickBooks — Reconciliation Reference
Raw lines 1 to 2Reports to pull
Raw lines 3 to 4Profit & Loss (P&L)
Use the Profit and Loss report via the QuickBooks connector:
- Date range: first day to last day of target month
- Accounting method: Accrual unless the user has told you they run cash-basis
- Include all accounts
Key fields used downstream:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
TotalRevenue | Top-line revenue |
GrossProfit | Revenue minus COGS |
GrossProfitMargin | Compute as GrossProfit / TotalRevenue |
NetIncome | Bottom line |
TotalExpenses | Operating expenses subtotal |
Transaction Register
Pull the Transaction List by Date report or equivalent for the target month. This is the line-item detail used for uncategorized flagging and duplicate detection.
Key fields:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
TxnDate | Transaction date (not posting date) |
TxnType | Invoice, Payment, Expense, Deposit, etc. |
Amount | Positive = income, negative = expense in most QB exports |
AccountRef.name | The GL account category |
EntityRef.name | Vendor or customer name |
Memo | Free-text description |
AttachmentCount | > 0 means a receipt is attached in QB |
Identifying uncategorized transactions
Flag a transaction as uncategorized if AccountRef.name is any of:
- "Uncategorized Income"
- "Uncategorized Expense"
- "Uncategorized Asset"
- blank / null
- "Ask My Accountant" (QB's built-in "I don't know" category)
Pagination
The QB API returns a maximum of 1,000 rows per request. For businesses with high transaction volumes, paginate using startPosition and maxResults parameters. Request in 500-row batches to stay safely under the limit.
Common data issues
Split transactions — a single purchase split across multiple categories appears as multiple rows with the same date and vendor but different amounts. These are NOT duplicates. Before flagging duplicates, group rows by TxnID — rows sharing an ID are splits of one transaction.
Bank feeds vs. manual entries — bank-feed transactions have PrivateNote set to "bank feed" or similar. Manual entries often lack a memo. Neither is a signal of a problem on its own, but it helps explain why a transaction might lack a receipt.
PayPal transactions already in QB — if the user has the PayPal-QB auto-sync enabled, PayPal transactions will already appear in the register. Don't double-count them during reconciliation (Step 3). Check whether the QB deposit lines have "PayPal" in the account or memo before matching.
Retainer / deposit transactions — a customer deposit is not revenue until the work is delivered. If the user is on cash-basis accounting this distinction matters less, but flag any large Deposit-type transactions without a matching Invoice for their awareness.
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