Overview
We recently changed how Housecall Pro sends your data to QuickBooks Online (QuickBooks), and it’s a meaningful upgrade for the accuracy of your books. Previously, we synced the whole Housecall Pro job to your QuickBooks as a single invoice. Now, Housecall Pro syncs invoice objects to your QuickBooks.
A job is an operational record that keeps changing as work, line items, and payments are added, so QuickBooks often received inflated or incorrect amounts. With the new invoice-based sync, each invoice you create in Housecall Pro is created in QuickBooks as its own document, for the exact amount you billed, with its own line items, taxes, and discounts. Payments are applied to each invoice individually. QuickBooks now receives the real accounting artifact (the invoice) at the moment it should appear in your books, instead of a constantly changing operational unit (the job).
Before the change, we synced job objects and sent the Housecall Pro job number to QuickBooks as an invoice number. Now, Housecall Pro syncs invoice objects and sends the Housecall Pro invoice number to QuickBooks. Because those are two separate sequences in our platform, in some cases the invoice number may already be used by a previously created document in QuickBooks.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this article or related to your QuickBooks Online integration with Housecall Pro is intended to be accounting or tax advice. We highly recommend you work with an accountant for any tax or accounting questions, including any related to this product.
How Housecall Pro will address this change
You may have received an email indicating that we’d like to update your Housecall Pro invoice number sequence so that it does not collide with your current Intuit invoice number sequence. Please fill out the form in that email to give us permission to make this change to your Housecall Pro invoice number sequence, or indicate that you would like to connect with our Housecall Pro Support team to discuss this change.
If we do not update your Housecall Pro invoice number sequence, your Housecall Pro invoices may not sync to QuickBooks for an indeterminate amount of time. This means that your QuickBooks integration will effectively not be working.
Resolving this issue on your own
We do support an in-product UI to help you resolve this issue on your own. Please see below for instructions on how to fix this error. Note that if you have many invoices that have not synced, you will have to go through one by one and re-sync them. We suggest reaching out to Housecall Pro Support to help resolve this issue.
When Housecall Pro’s sync job attempts to send an invoice and receives a response from QuickBooks Online that there is already a document with the same number, you will see an error generated on your Sync Alerts page.
To view the error on your Sync Alerts page:
Click the QuickBooks icon in the top right of your Housecall Pro navigation bar to be directed to the QuickBooks Online Sync Alerts settings page.
Error anatomy
To see the details of the error:
Click the 3 dots menu on the right of the error line. A menu will appear with Sync again and Dismiss alert options.
Click Sync again. A pop-up window will appear with additional details.
The pop-up will include:
Reason for the alert
Details of both invoices to review and decide whether these two are essentially the same invoices
The details will show the invoice number, customer name, amount, and address for the Housecall Pro invoice and the QuickBooks Online invoice, side by side.
Two options to tell Housecall Pro how the number should be changed:
Select Regenerate invoice number using Housecall Pro sequence. Housecall Pro will search through your data and suggest the number we believe is safe to use. It continues your current Housecall Pro sequence using the next available number, one that does not interfere with your QuickBooks sequence. You can type your own number in the input field, however it cannot be lower than the suggested number.
Select Regenerate invoice number using QuickBooks sequence. Housecall Pro will search through the QuickBooks data available to us and suggest the number we believe is safe to use. It aligns Housecall Pro’s sequence with your QuickBooks sequence, so numbers stay consistent across both systems.
You can type your own number in the input field of any of the options, however it cannot be lower than the suggested number. If you enter a lower number, an error will appear that reads “The number can’t be lower than the suggested number,” followed by the suggested number, and the Submit button will be disabled.
Once you are happy with the number the invoice should have:
Click Submit. Housecall Pro will attempt to send the invoice to QuickBooks using the new number.
What to expect once the selection is made
Once you make a selection, the following may happen:
The invoice number in Housecall Pro is changed, the invoice is synchronized to QuickBooks Online, and the error disappears from the Sync Alerts list
If you have other errors related to this invoice failing to sync (such as payment and/or deposit that could not be synced to QuickBooks because the invoice was not synced), you can also see those errors here.
The invoice number is still taken by a different document. This means that there was a different document using the provided number and QuickBooks rejected the document again.
If this happens, repeat the operation with a different number and try to trigger the push again.
If this happens repeatedly, please reach out to the Housecall Pro Support team.
FAQ
I don’t like any of the suggested options - what should I do?
If neither of the numbering options is acceptable, or you keep running into the same issue over and over again and you are unable to push the document through to QuickBooks Online, please reach out to Housecall Pro Support. Our team has a set of tools that would allow them to adjust the number.
I am using the option to Match invoice and job number
If you have the Match invoice and job number toggle on, please reach out to the Housecall Pro Support team before you attempt to reprocess any error. You can find this toggle by going to Settings > Invoices > Configuration, where it will be turned on.
In this specific situation the team will need to make changes to both your invoice and your job numbering sequence to make sure that you do not keep running into the error. The flow described above only changes the invoice numbering sequence.
I use progressive invoicing or collect deposits before the job start
If you are using progressive invoicing, on average you probably generate more than 1 invoice per job. There is a chance that your invoice number sequence is already above the job number sequence, and changing one invoice number might be enough to resolve the issue.
I want to use a custom sequence for invoice numbering
If you have a specific sequence in mind and you cannot enter it via the dialog box, please reach out to Housecall Pro Support team.
Need help?
We're here for you! Chat with Support using the Blue Chat Bubble in your Housecall Pro account, or give us a call at (858) 842-5746.