Are you looking for a cloud-based Point-of-Sale solution that integrates with QuickBooks Desktop like QuickBooks Point-of-Sale? Well, good luck.
Several weeks ago, Intuit announced the discontinuation of QuickBooks Point-of-Sale, I was asked by one of my long-standing QBPOS clients to recommend a point-of-sale solution they could use with their QuickBooks Desktop. When I first mentioned “Intuit is recommending,” I was immediately told, “Look for something other than what Intuit was recommending.”
You see, my client was one of several who screamed at the top of their lungs when Intuit made the POS announcement. To note, what they screamed is not something I can put to words here.
Nevertheless, I set out to comply with my client’s request. My client also asked for a solution that might provide more sales flexibility, including using a tablet for mobile sales within the confines of the overall operation and future e-commerce capabilities.
Naturally, this meant I would be looking at cloud-based systems, many of which have been around a reasonably long time and are used by thousands of merchants (of one type or another).
So now, all I had to do was track down one or two of these POS systems that offered direct integration with QuickBooks Desktop similar to QBPOS.
I thought to myself; they likely will use the QuickBooks Web Connector, an application that has been around a long time giving cloud-based apps the ability to connect with QuickBooks Desktop.
While it was easy to track down the leading cloud-based Point-of-Sale systems, direct integration with QuickBooks Desktop was not high on the priority list of these POS developers. Instead, most of these POS developers leave integration to any accounting software to a third-party developer to do it for them.
You can find a few connector solutions that will enable you to build-your-own integrations between many of these POS systems and QB Desktop, but most of the popular ones (like Zapier) don’t work with QuickBooks Desktop. I’m unsure if most QuickBooks Point-of-Sale users would have the time, patience or expertise to use such solutions.
Accordingly, I think you are stuck with what the POS solution recommends (or offers) as their integration path to QuickBooks Desktop.
With all of this said, here's what I have identified:
Clover POS is for small- to medium-sized businesses needing a versatile POS with mobile capabilities. Clover POS relies on a third-party application called CommerceSync (sold separately) to transfer sales and payment data to QuickBooks Desktop.
Sales are transferred as an invoice mapped to QuickBooks Desktop customers. In addition, payments taken in Clover POS are transferred to corresponding invoices in QuickBooks Desktop to pay/close them.
Typically, CommerceSync, an app installed on your desktop computer, will transfer sales and payment information to QuickBooks Desktop once per day, typically after midnight, to ensure all orders for the sales day are closed.
For more information about the CommerceSync app with Clover POS, see this YouTube video.
Lightspeed POS is one of the most highly-rated POS systems on the market. It has grown in terms of customer base as well as product offerings. While it initially attempted to make variations of its core product to handle special needs, like hospitality (bars and restaurants), it ultimately expanded its capabilities by acquiring other market-specific POS systems.
Accordingly, it offers a lot of capabilities and functionalities that many other POS systems in this list don’t.
But like several others, Lightspeed never saw a reason to directly build an integration with QuickBooks Point of Sale, even though it initially offered iiF export of data that could be imported into a QB Desktop Company file.
Today, even the most sophisticated Lightspeed products (Retail X-series) also rely on CommerceSync as their recommended app for migrating Lightspeed data into QuickBooks Desktop.
During the configuration process, users select whether they want their sales data transferred to either a single customer or transferred on an individual customer basis. Users can also opt for having sales information transferred into a single QuickBooks income account or recorded on a sales-by-category basis into different income accounts.
As with the other Commerce Sync integrations, each day, CommerceSync will transfer (sometime after midnight) all your sales information for the previous day to QuickBooks Desktop.
Revel POS is for small- to medium-sized businesses needing a POS system offering long-standing functionality and high-end features. You may remember that Intuit once had a cooperative arrangement that marketed a version of Revel POS as specific to QuickBooks Online.
But the demise of that arrangement didn’t impact the offering of Revel POS since it was the first POS system to use Apple’s iPad.
Revel learned a lot from their cooperative arrangement with Intuit. But unfortunately, those lessons only applied to QuickBooks Online. So, although Revel has developed its POS and now offers a variety of options, including retail and hospitality (restaurant) versions, it doesn’t provide any integration with QuickBooks Desktop.
Shopify POS is for businesses of any size looking for an integrated all-in-one platform that can provide brick and mortar, mobile and online sales capabilities. In April (2023), Intuit designated Shopify as its "preferred provider" to offer a POS solution that would integrate with QuickBooks Desktop. The integration had been in a Beta-test after being co-developed with Intuit.
Shopify has offered a POS solution for some time. The QuickBooks Desktop POS offering includes its payments solution. In addition, it enables users to manage in-store and online sales from a single platform with remote access, enhanced reporting, a modern interface, and multi-channel selling.
Part of configuring QuickBooks Desktop to work with Shopify POS, if you have been using QuickBooks Point-of-Sale, occurs while migrating your existing QB POS to Shopify. During this migration, your data is mapped to Shopify for future Shopify transactions to follow the same update configuration QuickBooks Point-of-Sale used in updating your QuickBooks Desktop company file.
The new integration using the QuickBooks Desktop Connector app makes it possible to sync your Shopify data with QuickBooks Desktop, including sales, fees, discounts, and taxes. This data allows you to reconcile your bank and other payment systems easily. In addition, you will have accurate inventory information reflecting products from every Shopify source.
For more details about how Shopify and QuickBooks Desktop integrate on a data type/field basis, check out this Shopify help document.
Square POS is for small- to medium-sized businesses needing a basic POS system with easy to use features and mobile capabilities. The problem is that Square POS (any version) doesn’t support integration with QuickBooks Desktop. Like Clover POS (above), you must use an add-on app (sold separately) called Commerce Sync to connect Square to Desktop.
Even though the Commerce Sync App runs as software on your computer, the Integration is more of an export/import process. Your data is first exported from Square using the app and then imported into QuickBooks Desktop using the app. While the application runs continuously, it typically is configured to transfer Square data just once per day, either at the end of the day or at the start of the following day.
In addition, QuickBooks doesn’t need to be open for the integration to work if the Desktop Company file has been configured to permit access without QuickBooks running.
Even with the Commerce Sync app, there are problems if you have multiple Square locations; the Sync App doesn’t support integrating multiple Square locations (which have individual accounting data sets) into a single QuickBooks Desktop Company file.
TouchBistro POS is for small- to medium-sized restaurants needing a POS with features specific to hospitality operations. Rather than infer they have an integration with this, that, or the other, TouchBistro tells you their integration path is via MarginEdge.
MarginEdge is a restaurant management software designed to give users a real-time view of their food costs. It also helps to automate many restaurant back-office operations. For example, in addition to processing invoices and pulling in data from the users’ POS system, MarginEdge also can be configured to send purchasing and sales data into QuickBooks Desktop.
Users have complete control over what data is sent and when it is sent to QuickBooks. For example, the user determines how their invoices will be coded concerning Vendors and payment information. Users also control sales entries, including sales by category and related inventory adjustments.
In addition, MarginEdge offers both an automatic without requiring approvals of data to be transferred or a manual mode where nothing is sent to your QuickBooks Desktop company file without specific authorization and approval.
Vend POS is for small- to medium-sized businesses needing a highly customizable POS with plenty of retail-related features. I must admit I don’t know exactly when it was purchased, but Lightspeed acquired Vend POS. While it still is marketed under the Vend name and logo, you will note that you typically see it as Vend by Lightspeed.
This is another POS product that hung its entire relationship to QuickBooks on the Online version and failed to offer a direct integration with QuickBooks Desktop. Instead, Vend has relied upon DBSync’s QuickBooks Integrations to provide a quick and accurate integration between your Vend sales and QuickBooks Desktop accounting.
As with other integrations using a third-party app, the integration is a two-step process involving the extraction of the sales data, followed by updating the accounting data.
Note: DBSync offers several integration products that work with QuickBooks Desktop; they may provide proprietary integration apps that work with other POS solutions discussed in this feature, but for which they were not the preferred or recommended solution.
As I mentioned in the Headline description to this article, "if you are looking for an alternative to QuickBooks Point-of-Sale that works with QuickBooks Desktop, your options are really slim...," as far as I can find.
If you have any suggestions, drop them in the comments to this article and I will check them out. If I find out they are tremendous offerings, I will write them up and give you credit in my feature.
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