Official SugarCRM Integration for Quickbooks (2011 and newer)

[Chris_C]

Background:

There are 2 OFFICIAL Salesforce (Sugar's primary competitor) Integrations for Quickbooks - developed by Intuit and Salesforce themselves (!!!!) - and available in the official Quickbooks app store - and priced for the masses with a very low monthly subscription fee.

The more interesting of the two Salesforce QuickBooks Integrations, is the one developed by Intuit:
Intuit App Center: App overview - Salesforce Integration for QuickBooks

Strengths:
* VERY attractively priced at $20/month (for the version that plugs into salesforce group edition - up to 5 users) or $40/month (plugs into salesforce pro edition - unlimited users?) PER Quickbooks Company file.
* The other official integration is developed by Salesforce but it's much more expensive - $23 and $65 per month PER USER - which makes it far less interesting.

Weakness of the salesfore QB integrations:
* It's a pretty bad flaw - they require FLASH support in the user's browser - making them totally incompatible with the Apple iPhone , iPod, iPad - and utterly useless for the millions of sales road warriors loyal to iDevices.

I request that SugarCRM develop directly - or partner with Intuit - or sponsor the development by an outside development team - an OFFICIAL SugarCRM Quickbooks Integration:

Why an official Sugar QB Integration :
* SugarCRM NEEDS this for growth - it would essentially *guarantee* that ALL Sugar users - no matter large or small their company is - can CHEAPLY and RELIABLY eliminate manual double data entry of bookkeeping data in Sugar and a crucial bookkeeping system - saving significant time, manpower, and lost sales due to missing, incorrect, or outdated information,

Why is it low risk high reward:
* No backward compatibility needed. Only needs to be compatible with Quickbooks 2011 and newer, and Quickbooks Online (just like the salesforce integration) - because 2011 is widely accepted as the highest quality, most mature, reliable, and grown up release of Quickbooks ever,

Reusability:
* sequels to the SugarCRM Integration should enable Sugar to talk to the rest of the top 10 most popular bookkeeping systems, and to open-source (and closed source) ERP systems - for example OpenERP, Oracle ERP, SAP ERP, etc. The only requirement is the standard SOAP interface,

Why it will help Sugar beat Salesforce:
* Use NO Flash in the browser - just standard HTML5 - for 100% mobile compatibility for road warriors - this is where Sugar will trounce the Salesforce competition which uses Flash,
* attractively priced ($20 for CE and $40 for Pro and above - per QB company file, per month).

-Chris

[jmertic]

Background:

There are 2 OFFICIAL Salesforce (Sugar's primary competitor) Integrations for Quickbooks - developed by Intuit and Salesforce themselves (!!!!) - and available in the official Quickbooks app store - and priced for the masses with a very low monthly subscription fee.

The more interesting of the two Salesforce QuickBooks Integrations, is the one developed by Intuit:
Intuit App Center: App overview - Salesforce Integration for QuickBooks

Strengths:
* VERY attractively priced at $20/month (for the version that plugs into salesforce group edition - up to 5 users) or $40/month (plugs into salesforce pro edition - unlimited users?) PER Quickbooks Company file.
* The other official integration is developed by Salesforce but it's much more expensive - $23 and $65 per month PER USER - which makes it far less interesting.

Weakness of the salesfore QB integrations:
* It's a pretty bad flaw - they require FLASH support in the user's browser - making them totally incompatible with the Apple iPhone , iPod, iPad - and utterly useless for the millions of sales road warriors loyal to iDevices.

I request that SugarCRM develop directly - or partner with Intuit - or sponsor the development by an outside development team - an OFFICIAL SugarCRM Quickbooks Integration:

Why an official Sugar QB Integration :
* SugarCRM NEEDS this for growth - it would essentially *guarantee* that ALL Sugar users - no matter large or small their company is - can CHEAPLY and RELIABLY eliminate manual double data entry of bookkeeping data in Sugar and a crucial bookkeeping system - saving significant time, manpower, and lost sales due to missing, incorrect, or outdated information,

Why is it low risk high reward:
* No backward compatibility needed. Only needs to be compatible with Quickbooks 2011 and newer, and Quickbooks Online (just like the salesforce integration) - because 2011 is widely accepted as the highest quality, most mature, reliable, and grown up release of Quickbooks ever,

Reusability:
* sequels to the SugarCRM Integration should enable Sugar to talk to the rest of the top 10 most popular bookkeeping systems, and to open-source (and closed source) ERP systems - for example OpenERP, Oracle ERP, SAP ERP, etc. The only requirement is the standard SOAP interface,

Why it will help Sugar beat Salesforce:
* Use NO Flash in the browser - just standard HTML5 - for 100% mobile compatibility for road warriors - this is where Sugar will trounce the Salesforce competition which uses Flash,
* attractively priced ($20 for CE and $40 for Pro and above - per QB company file, per month).

-Chris

Thanks Chris for letting us know about this, we are following up internally. Have you looked at the current Quickbooks integrations we have? What are your thoughts on them?

[Chris_C]

Thanks Chris for letting us know about this, we are following up internally. Have you looked at the current Quickbooks integrations we have? What are your thoughts on them?

Thanks John.

I'll give my thoughts in a series of replies on this thread, because there are a lot of Sugar Quickbooks Integrations, too many to fit into one post.

First - I am neutral and unbiased. I've got no relationship with any company or individual that puts out, or anticipates putting out, a Sugar Quickbooks Integration. The only stake I have is as a Sugar and Quickbooks user.

Richlode's Quickbooks Sugar integration offering:
Richlode Solutions - SugarCRM consulting, implementation, customization, development and hosting services.
SugarExchange: Product Details

The Good:

a) uses the QB SOAP interface - avoids installing any modules on the QB server which could break in the future, and take the system down.

b) Bi-direcetional sync of Sugar Account to/from QB Customer. This is great - enter or modify the data in either QB or Sugar.

c) One-way sync of QB Invoices to Sugar Account - visible on the Sugar Account detail view, implemented with a custom Sugar module. This is OK - but you really need to have bidirectional sync of closed won Sugar Opportunities to QB Invoices.


The Bad:

a) It's missing support for syncing a lot of important QB data with Sugar.
For example:
You must re-type the data from the Sugar closed won Opportunity into the QB Invoice. Then, the outstanding Invoice will show up in the Sugar Account detail view.
This wastes significant time , for no reason.
The end result is you end up with slow or incorrect double entry of data, and an inaccurate or outdated version of reality.

b) other objects that should be synced but are not:
Sugar Product Catalog to/from QB Item.
Sugar Targets to/from QB Potentials (new in QB 2012)

Sugar Leads to/from QB Leads (new in QB 2012).

Sugar Calendar events to/from QB Calendar events (new in QB 2012).
Sugar Calls to/from QB Calls (new in QB 2012).

Sugar Opportunities to/from QB Jobs.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Estimates.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Sales Orders.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Sales Receipts.

Sugar Accounts/Contacts and QB Vendors
Sugar Quotes and QB Purchase Orders
Sugar Quotes and QB Checks
Sugar Quotes and QB Bills

c) Price is high to sync your Sugar Account and QB Customer and Invoice: $300 subscription locked in for 1 year (works out to $25/month).
The competing Salesforce Quickbooks Integration (not to mention the built-in info@hand QB Integration- possibly a more direct competitor to Sugar) gets you much more complete set of objects sync'd for less money ($20/month for 5-user Salesforce Group edition).

d) incompatible with 2009+ QB UK, and 2010+ QB Canada.
This alone leaves out millions of Sugar users in the UK and Canada.
And, the Salesforce Quickbooks Integration serves these Canada and UK users.

[GreginSJ]

Thanks John.

I'll give my thoughts in a series of replies on this thread, because there are a lot of Sugar Quickbooks Integrations, too many to fit into one post.

First - I am neutral and unbiased. I've got no relationship with any company or individual that puts out, or anticipates putting out, a Sugar Quickbooks Integration. The only stake I have is as a Sugar and Quickbooks user.

Richlode's Quickbooks Sugar integration offering:
Richlode Solutions - SugarCRM consulting, implementation, customization, development and hosting services.
SugarExchange: Product Details

The Good:

a) uses the QB SOAP interface - avoids installing any modules on the QB server which could break in the future, and take the system down.

b) Bi-direcetional sync of Sugar Account to/from QB Customer. This is great - enter or modify the data in either QB or Sugar.

c) One-way sync of QB Invoices to Sugar Account - visible on the Sugar Account detail view, implemented with a custom Sugar module. This is OK - but you really need to have bidirectional sync of closed won Sugar Opportunities to QB Invoices.


The Bad:

a) It's missing support for syncing a lot of important QB data with Sugar.
For example:
You must re-type the data from the Sugar closed won Opportunity into the QB Invoice. Then, the outstanding Invoice will show up in the Sugar Account detail view.
This wastes significant time , for no reason.
The end result is you end up with slow or incorrect double entry of data, and an inaccurate or outdated version of reality.

b) other objects that should be synced but are not:
Sugar Product Catalog to/from QB Item.
Sugar Targets to/from QB Potentials (new in QB 2012)

Sugar Leads to/from QB Leads (new in QB 2012).

Sugar Calendar events to/from QB Calendar events (new in QB 2012).
Sugar Calls to/from QB Calls (new in QB 2012).

Sugar Opportunities to/from QB Jobs.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Estimates.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Sales Orders.
Sugar Quotes to/from QB Sales Receipts.

Sugar Accounts/Contacts and QB Vendors
Sugar Quotes and QB Purchase Orders
Sugar Quotes and QB Checks
Sugar Quotes and QB Bills

c) Price is high to sync your Sugar Account and QB Customer and Invoice: $300 subscription locked in for 1 year (works out to $25/month).
The competing Salesforce Quickbooks Integration (not to mention the built-in info@hand QB Integration- possibly a more direct competitor to Sugar) gets you much more complete set of objects sync'd for less money ($20/month for 5-user Salesforce Group edition).

d) incompatible with 2009+ QB UK, and 2010+ QB Canada.
This alone leaves out millions of Sugar users in the UK and Canada.
And, the Salesforce Quickbooks Integration serves these Canada and UK users.

-----------------------------------------
This is an excellent and important thread - I hope you keep it going. I agree with Chris that QB integration would seem to be very important to the SugarCRM community. Our company is currently in the process of selecting a CRM solution and Sugar is at the top of our list. As a stand alone product SugarCRM is fantastic and will meet most, if not all, of our CRM needs. However, integration with QuickBooks is a big deal for us, and it appears that the current integration packages available are very weak. Chris is suggesting a serious and robust integration that reaches deep into both packages - Sugar and QB. I hope this is taken seriously by development teams at both companies. Keep the posts coming Chris....

GreginSJ