QuickBooks (via Apideck)

Access QuickBooks through Apideck's Accounting unified API — one of 34 Accounting connectors that share the same method surface. Code you write here ports to Access Financials, Acumatica, banqUP and 30 other Accounting connectors by changing a single serviceId string. Apideck handles auth, pagination, rate limiting, and retries so you don't write per-tenant QuickBooks plumbing.

Quick facts

• Apideck serviceId: quickbooks
• Unified API: Accounting
• Auth type: oauth2
• Gotchas: page
• QuickBooks docs: https://developer.intuit.com/app/developer/qbo/docs
• Homepage: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/

At a glance

• Implementation difficulty: moderate — Self-Service Signup + App Review Required
• Vendor partnership required: yes (Intuit Developer Portal) — Intuit Developer Account required (free, self-service).
• Apideck-managed credentials: available — OAuth shows "Apideck" as the requesting application.
• Account type required: QuickBooks Online (Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, or Advanced)
• Consumer access level: Any user with QuickBooks Online access (Admin recommended for full data access)
• Sandbox: available (signup) — Free sandbox via Intuit Developer Portal (up to 10 companies, valid for 2 years).
• Costs: Reads are metered, writes are not: Builder is free with 500K CorePlus calls/month then blocks; Silver $300/month includes 1M.
• Rate limits: 500 requests/minute per company (realm) and 10 concurrent requests/second per realm and app. Enforced on every tier; upgrading does not raise them.
• Authentication: Authorization Code flow.
• Webhooks: Native — invoice, customer, and payment events (20+ event types)

Important to know:

• Only successful production calls (list/get-one, query, reports, attachment downloads) count as CorePlus; sandbox/OAuth never do. Builder's free cap blocks calls outright until reset, not throttled — a payment method moves you to Silver, which bills overage instead.
• Intuit's platform fees fall on whoever owns the Intuit app, not on the end QuickBooks company. Apideck-provided credentials are for evaluation and testing; a production integration uses your own Intuit app, so the tier and any fees are yours.
• The projects resource is served by Intuit's Projects API, which is a Premium API available only to Silver, Gold and Platinum partners. On the free Builder tier this resource is unavailable regardless of your CorePlus allowance.
• Intuit refresh tokens expire after 100 days of inactivity and, since a November 2025 policy change, after a hard maximum of 5 years regardless of activity. Dormant and aged-out connections need consumer re-authorization.
• A 400 with an Intuit SystemFault, or a 401 citing error code 100/140 or a "company locked out" (LOCKED_BY_SERVER) message, is QuickBooks' concurrent-request lockout — it happens when two requests hit the same company file at the same time, not because the credentials are invalid. Apideck treats these as transient: the connection is not invalidated and no reconnect is needed. Retry after a short backoff.

Facts synced from Apideck's connector metadata API — GET /connector/connectors/quickbooks (overview field) is the live, authoritative version.

When to use this skill

Activate this skill when the user explicitly wants to work with QuickBooks — for example, "create an invoice in QuickBooks" or "reconcile payments in QuickBooks". This skill teaches the agent:

1. Which Apideck unified API covers QuickBooks (Accounting)
2. The correct serviceId to pass on every call (quickbooks)
3. QuickBooks-specific auth and coverage caveats

For the full method surface (parameters, pagination, filtering), use your language SDK skill:

• apideck-node, apideck-python, apideck-dotnet, apideck-java, apideck-go, apideck-php, or apideck-rest

For the raw OpenAPI spec:

• Accounting: https://specs.apideck.com/accounting.yml · API Explorer

Minimal example (TypeScript)

import { Apideck } from "@apideck/unify";

const apideck = new Apideck({
  apiKey: process.env.APIDECK_API_KEY,
  appId: process.env.APIDECK_APP_ID,
  consumerId: "your-consumer-id",
});

// List invoices in QuickBooks
const { data } = await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({
  serviceId: "quickbooks",
});

Portable across 34 Accounting connectors

The Apideck Accounting unified API exposes the same methods for every connector in its catalog. Switching from QuickBooks to another Accounting connector is a one-string change — no rewrite, no new SDK.

// Today — QuickBooks
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "quickbooks" });

// Tomorrow — same code, different connector
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "access-financials" });
await apideck.accounting.invoices.list({ serviceId: "acumatica" });

This is the compounding advantage of using Apideck over integrating QuickBooks directly: code against the unified Accounting API once, gain access to every connector in it. New connectors Apideck adds become available to your app without code changes.

QuickBooks via Apideck Accounting

QuickBooks Online is the most widely used SMB accounting connector on Apideck. Coverage is near-complete for core accounting resources.

Entity mapping

Coverage highlights

• ✅ Full CRUD on invoices, bills, payments, customers, suppliers, items
• ✅ Journal entries (create/read)
• ✅ Financial reports: P&L, Balance Sheet, Aged Receivables/Payables
• ✅ Multi-currency — invoices created with currency field route correctly
• ✅ Attachments on invoices/bills via the attachments sub-resource
• ⚠️ Tax rates read-only (QuickBooks requires tax setup through its UI)
• ⚠️ Recurring invoices — not exposed; use Proxy
• ❌ Deposits — use Proxy with the /deposit endpoint
• ❌ Purchase orders — use Proxy

QuickBooks-specific auth notes

• Company/realm selection: QuickBooks is multi-tenant via realmId. The user picks their company during OAuth; the connection is bound to that single realm. Multi-company = one connection per realm (distinct consumerId).
• Sandbox: QuickBooks Sandbox is a separate environment. The user toggles sandbox vs. production during Vault OAuth — connection is bound to whichever was selected.

Common QuickBooks quirks handled by Apideck

• Line items on invoices — QuickBooks uses a nested Line array with DetailType discriminators. Apideck normalizes to line_items[] with unified fields.
• Tax calculation — TotalAmt vs. SubTotal split is exposed as total_amount and sub_total.
• Customer refs — QuickBooks uses CustomerRef.value; Apideck exposes as customer.id.
• Soft-deleted records — Active: false entries. Apideck filters these out by default; pass filter[active]=false to include them.

Example: create an invoice with line items

const { data } = await apideck.accounting.invoices.create({
  serviceId: "quickbooks",
  invoice: {
    customer_id: "12", // QuickBooks customer ID
    invoice_date: "2026-04-18",
    due_date: "2026-05-18",
    line_items: [
      {
        description: "Consulting — April 2026",
        quantity: 10,
        unit_price: 150.0,
        item_id: "7", // QuickBooks Item ID
        tax_rate: { id: "TAX" },
      },
    ],
    currency: "USD",
  },
});

Example: pull P&L report for a date range

P&L is exposed via /accounting/profit-and-loss. See apideck-node for the canonical method signature.

const { data } = await apideck.accounting.profitAndLoss.get({
  serviceId: "quickbooks",
  filter: {
    start_date: "2026-01-01",
    end_date: "2026-03-31",
  },
});

Escape hatch: Proxy API

When an endpoint isn't covered by the Accounting unified API, use Apideck's Proxy to call QuickBooks directly — Apideck injects auth headers and handles token refresh. Set x-apideck-downstream-url to the target endpoint on QuickBooks's own API:

curl 'https://unify.apideck.com/proxy' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${APIDECK_API_KEY}" \
  -H "x-apideck-app-id: ${APIDECK_APP_ID}" \
  -H "x-apideck-consumer-id: ${CONSUMER_ID}" \
  -H "x-apideck-service-id: quickbooks" \
  -H "x-apideck-downstream-url: <target endpoint on QuickBooks>" \
  -H "x-apideck-downstream-method: GET"

See QuickBooks's API docs for available endpoints.

Sibling connectors

Other Accounting connectors that share this unified API surface (same method signatures, just change serviceId):

access-financials (beta), acumatica (beta), banqup (beta), campfire (beta), clearbooks-uk (beta), digits (beta), dualentry, exact-online, and 25 more.

See also

• Accounting OpenAPI spec · API Explorer
• apideck-connector-coverage — programmatic coverage checks
• apideck-best-practices — architecture, Vault, pagination, error handling
• apideck-node — TypeScript / Node SDK patterns
• QuickBooks official docs