QuickBooks Integration
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- Luminous and QuickBooks: A Powerful Partnership
- Streamlining Wholesale AR with Invoicing and Payments
- Purchasing and Landed Costs
- Summarizing Transactions for QuickBooks
- Luminous: Smooth Implementation
Luminous and QuickBooks: A Powerful Partnership
One of the most common questions after implementing Luminous is how it interacts with QuickBooks. Many accountants and operators expect QuickBooks to remain their source for all transaction and inventory costing data, but once Luminous is in place, that changes. Luminous takes over as the source of truth for sales orders, invoices, payments, and purchase orders.
Here’s a simple breakdown of how Luminous and QuickBooks work together across three main areas:
Streamlining Wholesale AR with Invoicing and Payments
Once Luminous is up and running, all your invoicing is managed within the system. Each invoice created in Luminous is automatically pushed to QuickBooks as a live sales invoice, and any updates—such as changes in products, quantities, or pricing—are also reflected in QuickBooks.
Payments work both ways. If you record a payment in QuickBooks, Luminous will pull that data back into its system. If you record the payment in Luminous, it will push it to QuickBooks. That keeps both platforms in sync without manual updates between the two.
Key Benefit: Invoices live in Luminous, and payments can be recorded in either system, so Luminous and QuickBooks stay aligned.
Purchasing and Landed Costs
Luminous is your system of record for purchasing and landed costs. Pushing purchase orders to QuickBooks is optional. If you turn it on, each PO you create in Luminous is pushed to QuickBooks as a live purchase order, and any changes you make in Luminous are updated there as well. Your accountant can then bill off of that purchase order.
Key Benefit: Purchase orders are managed in Luminous but can be synced to QuickBooks, so your accounting team works from the same data. See how to enable PO sync to QuickBooks.
Summarizing Transactions for QuickBooks
To keep QuickBooks from becoming overloaded with hundreds of thousands of transactional line items, Luminous takes a more efficient approach. It summarizes notable actions that change your inventory value, such as receiving products or shipping sales orders.
These summaries are mapped to specific charts of accounts and can be pushed into QuickBooks as journal entries. QuickBooks still gets the key financial data it needs without being bogged down by too much detail.
Key Benefit: Luminous provides concise summaries of key actions, reducing clutter in QuickBooks and keeping your financials clear.
Luminous: Smooth Implementation
At Luminous, we understand the importance of keeping operators and accountants in sync. That’s why we offer as much training as you need during implementation, and we meet with your accountants as much as possible so they can close the books effectively every month.
Getting set up? See how to connect your QuickBooks account to Luminous and how to set up QuickBooks on Luminous.
With Luminous integrated into your workflow, QuickBooks remains an essential tool, but it no longer has to handle the heavy lifting. Luminous takes care of the detailed operations data, letting QuickBooks focus on financial reporting. Book a free demo today!
Video transcript
How Luminous Works With QuickBooks
How does Luminous sit on top of and interact with QuickBooks? Let's go over that.
The number one thing accountants and operators get confused about after you implement Luminous is that QuickBooks will no longer be the source for all of your detailed transaction data, or your costing data for inventory. Luminous will.
Luminous Becomes the Source of Truth
Let me explain it very simply. Once implemented, Luminous will actually be the source of truth for all of your sales orders, your invoices, your payments, your purchase orders, and everything associated with those objects.
So if Luminous is now front of line for all that data, how do we interact with QuickBooks? How can I do what's needed there? There are three main interactions to go over.
1. Invoicing and Payments (Wholesale AR)
Number one: invoicing, or wholesale AR, as I like to call it. Luminous will now house all of your invoices. Once an invoice is written in Luminous, it will push a live sales invoice into QuickBooks. Anything that's updated on the invoice in Luminous — details like products, quantity, pricing, etc. — will be pushed as an update to the sales invoice in QuickBooks.
Payments will also be stored in Luminous. If you do the payment flow in QuickBooks, Luminous will pull it back in and store it there. Or if you do the payment natively in Luminous, we'll push it over to QuickBooks. Either way, QuickBooks and Luminous will have everything you need on the invoicing and payment side of your wholesale business.
2. Purchasing
Number two: purchasing. Purchasing is done in Luminous, because we're your system of record for landed cost. Pushing a purchase order from Luminous to QuickBooks is actually optional, but if you'd like us to do that, it works very similarly to our invoicing flow.
When you create a purchase order in Luminous, we push a live purchase order into QuickBooks. Any updates will also be pushed over to QuickBooks. The accountant can then bill off of that purchase order if they want to.
3. Journal Entries
Number three: journal entries. Instead of bogging down QuickBooks with hundreds of thousands of transactional line items, Luminous summarizes all of the notable actions or transactions and maps them to specific charts of accounts. The most notable ones would be things like receiving, or when a sales order ships.
Overall, when your inventory value changes in some material way, Luminous will easily summarize it in a list of journal entries you can push over to QuickBooks. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Training and Working With Your Accountant
Overall, we find this to be one of the most important parts of implementation: how the operators interact with their accountants. We give you as much training as necessary to make sure all of these connections are happening properly. We also make sure we meet with your accountants as much as possible, so they can close the books effectively every single month. Thanks, guys.