Once your QuickBooks Online connection is live (see the setup article), every PoolStamp invoice can flow to QBO as a QuickBooks Invoice with the customer, line items, and totals prefilled. This article covers auto vs manual export, mapping, and troubleshooting the common failures.
Auto vs manual export
- Auto (default): when a PoolStamp invoice moves to
SENT, it's queued for export. The queue drains every 5 minutes and creates the QBO invoice. - Manual: turn off auto-export in Settings → QuickBooks → Auto-sync. Each PoolStamp invoice now has an Export to QuickBooks button on its detail page.
Customer mapping
The exporter matches by email first, then by name. If a match is found the QBO invoice attaches to that customer. If not, a new QBO customer is created with the same name, email, and billing address. Duplicates are avoided by locking on email — never on address.
Line-item mapping
Each visit / chemical / repair line on the PoolStamp invoice becomes a QBO line item. The unit is set to 1, description is copied verbatim, and the amount is the line's total. Tax lines flow if your QBO account has tax enabled and PoolStamp has the tax rate configured.
What isn't exported
- Photos and chemistry readings — QBO isn't a receipt system.
- Internal notes — those stay in PoolStamp.
- Payments recorded in PoolStamp Stripe — record those separately in QBO from your Stripe payout report, or turn on the QBO ↔ Stripe app for automatic reconciliation.
Common failures
- "Duplicate document number" — you retried an export after QBO already created the invoice. Look up the invoice in QBO; if it's already there, click Mark as exported in PoolStamp to clear the queue entry.
- "Customer sub-account not allowed" — QBO customer is a child of a parent customer. Move the customer to a parent record in QBO or map it manually in Settings → QuickBooks → Customer map.
- "Item not found" — the QBO service item PoolStamp defaults to (
Pool Service) doesn't exist yet. QBO will auto-create it on the first successful export; if not, create it manually with any tax code.