There is now a direct integration option for QuickBooks Online! This will allow you to transition invoices, payments and refunds to your QuickBooks account without having to use a third-party service any longer. For instructions on how to get started, please see our article on QuickBooks Online Integration.
Sera provides a process called batching to help transfer invoices, updates to invoices, initial payments, updates to payments, and journal entries over to Quickbooks to ensure your financial data is present within Quickbooks as well as Sera.
To generate a batch from Sera, navigate to Accounting → Unbatched.
All invoices and payments will be selected for batching, but you can use the checkboxes on the left-hand side or the Date and Department filters to only include the appropriate items that you would like to batch over to your Quickbooks account. Using the upper-most checkbox on the left will select or un-select all items within the table you are currently on (payments or invoices).
If you do not make any selections after loading the screen, all invoices and payments will be batched following the same process as prior to this update.
Selecting the Batch & Download button will download the batch zip file to the computer being used.
Selecting the Batch & Download button will bring up a small verification window in which you can also now alter the name of the batch file that you are generating. The name is pre-populated to use the same format as before if you would like to continue to use that naming convention.
You might also see a warning message highlighted in yellow if you attempt to batch payments but not their invoices that are found within the Invoices tab of the Unbatched table. You can choose to go forward at this time or use the x to close the window and include those invoices.
Note: Previous batch files are found and available for download in Reports → Previous Batches under the Accounting header.
The batch zip file contains 5 Excel files:
- Invoice Inserts contain the newly created or updated invoices.
- Invoices updates contain invoices have that been previously included in a batch and now have updates made to the line items, totals, etc.
- Payment Inserts contain newly created invoice payments or job deposits.
- Payment Updates contain payments that have been previously made on invoices and need to be reallocated to updated invoice numbers. These could have been payments made to an invoice that has been adjusted in some way or payments that were originally taken as job deposits and need to now be allocated to an invoice number.
- Journal Inserts contain refunds completed in Sera after the original payment has been batched
- Credit Memos contain a credit memo that is automatically generated when a batched invoice has been canceled in the Admin Portal or by breaking the work completed signature while adjusting the invoice. Note: The Credit Memo process is no longer used within Sera, but you might have them from previous batches or previous work done that hasn't been included as a part of a batch yet.
- Warnings contain any payments made on imported jobs. These payments will not be automatically applied and the user will need to manually apply these payments to invoices that exist in Quickbooks that did not originate in Sera.
Note: Invoice Updates, Payment Updates, Journal Entries, and Credit Memos will only be present on invoices and/or payments that have already been part of a batch file. This doesn't necessarily mean that they have been loaded into QuickBooks.
These batch files will be loaded into a company called Saasant, which acts as a bridge for data loading directly into your Quickbooks file.
Because not all 6 Excel files described will contain data in every batch, open all 6 files before attempting to import them into Saasant to avoid any unnecessary work and errors being generated. If there is even a single line of data under the headers that file will need to be imported into Saasant. To avoid errors and duplicated work, most if not all, invoicing, and payment collection should be done in Sera to allow the batch process to work completely.
Saasant provides a separate batching program dependent upon the type of Quickbooks that you use at your company. Please see our articles linked below for instructions for the supported types.
If you need to undo a batch, you'll need to navigate to the Batches report. Read more about that in our Previous Batches article.