CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#vb.netquickbooks
HK1
HK1

Reputation: 12220

Pushing TimeClock Data from Mobile Phone to Quickbooks

I need to find a solution or develop one for allowing employees to enter their "hours worked" at the end of the day and then easily and quickly "pushing" that data to Quickbooks Pro 2010.

I'm trying to formulate, in my mind, how to build this type of solution. With my understanding of QuickBooks integration I think it will look like the following:

Quickbooks Software on PC  
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Custom App "Linking" Online DataStore to QB (on same PC as above)
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Online Data Store Such as MS SQL Server, MySQL, or CSV Files  
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Website or Web Service Used to Receive Data From Blackberry Phones  
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App on Blackberry Phone to Enter and "Push" Data To Data Store in the Cloud

Do you see any flaws in this design? Any ideas how to improve on it or simplify it?

Remember, the application on the PC will likely be on a consumer or small business network that doesn't even have static IP.

On a separate note, as near as I can tell nothing yet exists that will do what I'm looking for. The apps I have looked at require you to import iif files into your phone (specifically ReportAway). During an initial test of the app, the import failed to import anything but did not produce any error messages. It's unclear to me how the data gets input from the BlackBerry app to QuickBooks but it appears to simply be CSV files. If someone does know of an existing app for this I'd appreciate knowing about it. However, we may still opt to program our own anyway.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 323

Answers (3)

Josh
Josh

Reputation: 189

I have solved exactly this problem in the past, in a manner very similar to as described by DustinDavis. In my case, I simply connect the smartphone client app to the php app server. App server stores the data immediately. In a separate scheduled process, app server refreshes and pushes data to QuickBooks server every 15 minutes or every 30 minutes as configured. I can provide more details if you are interested.

Upvotes: 0

Keith Palmer Jr.
Keith Palmer Jr.

Reputation: 27992

You're on the right track with what you proposed. I have a few further suggestions:

  • Instead of building a custom app that sits alongside QuickBooks, why not re-use something that's already built? For instance, the QuickBooks Web Connector or (if you're building a SaaS service) the Sync Manager via the Intuit Partner Platform? Both of those are specifically designed to enable web/remote applications to communicate with QuickBooks. There are C# examples of doing almost exactly what you're talking about included in the QuickBooks SDK, and open source QuickBooks libraries for doing what you're asking.

  • Why would you ever want to use CSV files for storing data? Do yourself a favor, and use a database.

  • You could easily make the phone end of things available via more than once interface- build a web interface for iPhones/web browsers, and an app for Blackberry if you want. Once you have the infrastructure, the actual interface/view should be trivial to implement.

  • Have you looked at the available Workplace.Intuit.com apps for time tracking yet?

Upvotes: 1

Dustin Davis
Dustin Davis

Reputation: 14585

are you wanting to build your own app? Your best option is the build your phone app that makes a call to a web service hosted somewhere on the network where QB is hosted, the service can use the QB API to put the data where you need it. Or simply create a website that they can browse to that will make the call to the API, then you dont even need to bother with a phone app.

Phone/Website > Web Service > QB/SQL

Upvotes: 0

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