Calxa can be used with a number of different accounting packages and integrates with these packages in different ways. Aside from your initial company setup and subsequent updates, Calxa behaves in much the same way regardless of the chosen accounting package. There are, however, some important differences to be aware of.

This help note will outline the things you should know about using Calxa with QuickBooks Online and discuss best practices for a smooth integration.

The user that connects the QuickBooks file to Calxa has to have at least the Administrator user permissions in QuickBooks.

Calxa references each QuickBooks account on a key rather than the account number or name. This means you can safely renumber or rename accounts in QuickBooks Online and Calxa will still recognise it as the same account.

Deleting an account in QuickBooks Online that has transactions does not really delete the account, instead it marks it as inactive. Calxa will also mark this account as inactive on the next sync.

If the account deleted is a Balance Sheet account, and it contains a balance, QuickBooks Online will create an automatic journal to keep your Balance Sheet in balance. Calxa cannot detect this journal on the next sync, meaning your Balance Sheet will not balance in Calxa, therefore do not delete balance sheet accounts that have an account balance.

During the initial import Calxa will setup account opening balances as obtained from the opening balances in QuickBooks Online. Future organisation syncs will not affect these balances so changes made to opening balances in QuickBooks Online will not be reflected in Calxa. For this reason do not adjust opening balances in QuickBooks Online - if changes are needed, they should be done via journal entry instead.

Additionally, it is not a good idea to merge balance sheet accounts as the opening balances will not be updated on the merged account.

Business units are the broader term in Calxa representing Customers/Jobs, Locations and Classes. Calxa uses neutral terminology naming business units Projects, Departments and Classes when first imported, however these names are configurable via the Business Unit Configuration menu.

Calxa references business units on a key rather than the number or name. This means you can safely renumber or rename Customers/Jobs, Locations and Classes and Calxa will recognise them as the same business unit.
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Marking a business unit in QuickBooks Online as Inactive will also mark it in Inactive in Calxa on the next sync.

Warning: When adding a new Class or Location in QuickBooks as a Sub-Class or Sub-Location, to an existing Detail Class or Location, this will cause Calxa to delete the existing Class/Location, which has become a Header. Calxa then creates a new Detail Class/Location to replace the existing one.

Budgets associated with the old Class/Location are not currently transferred to the new header and will be lost during the sync.

If you have setup two business unit types in QuickBooks. For example, Locations and Classes and wish to budget and report on the intersection of these two categories in Calxa, then you will need to configure Business Unit Combinations. Combinations are not synced by default and must first be defined in the Business Unit Configuration menu. After defining the valid combinations Calxa will then sync these specific intersections.

By default Calxa does not import/sync balance sheet amounts by each business unit. You can however optionally turn this on in the Business Unit Configuration menu.

This will import the balance sheet account movements for each business unit. This feature enables you to do Budget vs Actual style reporting. For example an Unspent Budget Report including capital expenses or project to date reports including work in progress from the balance sheet.

When you initially add a QuickBooks Online organisation, Calxa will give you the option to import one of your QuickBooks Online budget versions. In Calxa this will be called your QuickBooks Budget, and each time you sync your org the budget will be updated from your QuickBooks Online budget.
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You can change the budget that is being synced in General Settings. When you do so Calxa will continue syncing to this budget version in Calxa. Changing the budget version can allow you to build a budget version containing multiple years.
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If you didn't import your budgets to Calxa when you added your organisation, you can still choose to do this anytime you sync your organisation by adjusting your sync settings on the General Settings screen. This is also where you can turn off the budget sync.

If your QuickBooks Online Budget is set up as Class, Customers or Location these will be brought through to Calxa as Business Unit Budgets. When you first open the QuickBooks Budget in Calxa you may need to set the Consolidation Setting to see the overall organisation figures in the screen.
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Note: Budgets cannot be updated from Calxa back to QuickBooks Online.