How-To

QuickBooks for Contractors: How to Connect It and Send Your First Invoice

By Travis Evans, Founder of TradeGOAT · 20+ years in the trades

Most contractors who use QuickBooks type every invoice twice: once wherever the job lives and again in QuickBooks. QuickBooks for contractors works a lot better when the job and the books talk to each other. TradeGOAT connects to QuickBooks Online, so an invoice you make on the job lands in your books without retyping it.

Here's how to connect it and send your first invoice through it.

Step 1: Connect QuickBooks

The owner of the TradeGOAT account does this once.

1. Click Settings at the bottom of the left menu.
2. Click Integrations.
3. On the QuickBooks Online card, click Connect QuickBooks.
4. Sign in to your QuickBooks account when it asks, and allow the connection.

That's it. QuickBooks stays your books. TradeGOAT sends invoices to it and reads payments back from it.

Step 2: Bring your customers over

If your customer list already lives in QuickBooks, you can import your customers from it, so you're not building the list again by hand.

Step 3: Draft an invoice in QuickBooks

When a job is ready to bill:

1. Click Invoices in the left menu and open the invoice.
2. Under How is this invoice going out?, click Draft it in QuickBooks.
3. Click Yes, create the draft.

The invoice is waiting in QuickBooks as a draft, with the job's numbers on it. Look it over in QuickBooks and send it the way you always do.

If you already billed that one yourself, click I already billed this myself so TradeGOAT knows it's handled.

Step 4: Watch the payments come back

When the customer pays and the payment is recorded in QuickBooks, TradeGOAT reads it back. Each job shows its real billing history, so you can see where a job stands from the job itself.

What you end up with

You end up with one invoice, typed once. The job knows what's been billed and paid, and QuickBooks stays the record your accountant works from. Your office stops doing the same work in two places.

You can see the rest of TradeGOAT in the demo at thetradegoat.com/demo.html, with nothing to sign up for.