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: Free at Builder tier (500,000 CorePlus API calls/month); paid tiers from $300/month (Silver) unlock higher volumes and Premium APIs.
- Rate limits: 500 requests/minute per company, 10 concurrent maximum; batch endpoint 120 requests/minute.
- Authentication: OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow.
- Webhooks: Native — invoice, customer, and payment events (20+ event types)
Important to know:
- Access tokens expire after 1 hour (auto-refreshed by Apideck); refresh tokens expire after 100 days of inactivity and rotate on each refresh — dormant connections must be re-authorized by the consumer.
- App Assessment Questionnaire required before production access is granted.
- The free Builder tier's monthly CorePlus (data retrieval) call cap is hard — calls above it are blocked, not throttled, until the next billing cycle or a tier upgrade.
Facts synced from Apideck's connector metadata API —
GET /connector/connectors/quickbooks(overviewfield) 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:
- Which Apideck unified API covers QuickBooks (Accounting)
- The correct
serviceIdto pass on every call (quickbooks) - 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, orapideck-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
| QuickBooks entity | Apideck Accounting resource |
|---|---|
| Invoice | invoices |
| Bill | bills |
| Payment | payments |
| BillPayment | bill-payments |
| JournalEntry | journal-entries |
| Account | ledger-accounts |
| Customer | customers |
| Vendor | suppliers |
| Item | items |
| TaxRate, TaxCode | tax-rates |
| Company info | company-info |
| P&L, Balance Sheet reports | profit-and-loss, balance-sheet |
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
currencyfield route correctly - ✅ Attachments on invoices/bills via the
attachmentssub-resource - ⚠️ Tax rates read-only (QuickBooks requires tax setup through its UI)
- ⚠️ Recurring invoices — not exposed; use Proxy
- ❌ Deposits — use Proxy with the
/depositendpoint - ❌ 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 (distinctconsumerId). - 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
Linearray withDetailTypediscriminators. Apideck normalizes toline_items[]with unified fields. - Tax calculation —
TotalAmtvs.SubTotalsplit is exposed astotal_amountandsub_total. - Customer refs — QuickBooks uses
CustomerRef.value; Apideck exposes ascustomer.id. - Soft-deleted records —
Active: falseentries. Apideck filters these out by default; passfilter[active]=falseto 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 checksapideck-best-practices— architecture, Vault, pagination, error handlingapideck-node— TypeScript / Node SDK patterns- QuickBooks official docs