Understanding the Rentopian -> QuickBooks Online Integration

This article explains what the integration does, what data is sent to QuickBooks, when sync runs, how retries work, and what to do when something goes wrong. For setup steps (connecting, account mapping, tax sync), see Connecting to QuickBooks Online.

The Rentopian–QuickBooks Online integration keeps your rental and sales data in sync with QuickBooks. Rentopian sends certain transactions and lists to QuickBooks automatically and in near real time so your books stay up to date without manual entry. Sync is one-way: from Rentopian to QuickBooks. QuickBooks does not send data back into Rentopian.

Sync is triggered by actions inside Rentopian. You don’t have to click “Sync” for each transaction.

Synced when you create or update an order or quote (and the order is not marked “No QuickBooks”), when you save invoice changes, when an order is auto-extended, when you delete an invoice in certain cases, or when you run a manual “Update”/resync. Existing orders and quotes created before you connected QuickBooks are not synced automatically; you can sync them manually (see Manual sync below).

When a payment is collected or applied to credit, Rentopian sends that payment to QuickBooks. When a payment is refunded, the refund is synced. When a payment is voided, QuickBooks is updated to void the payment there as well.

When you record a payment on a vendor invoice, that payment is sent to QuickBooks.

When you create, update, approve, receive, or cancel a purchase order (or subrental), the corresponding create/update/delete is sent to QuickBooks.

So: invoices, payments, refunds, voids, vendor bills, vendor payments, and purchase orders are all sent automatically when the relevant action happens in Rentopian (and when the transaction is not excluded by your settings or the “No QuickBooks” option).

When you create or edit an order, you can check No Quickbooks above the Create button. That order and its invoice will not be sent to QuickBooks, and payments for that order will not be synced. Use this when you want to keep a specific transaction only in Rentopian.

Use tax rates that exist in your QuickBooks company and, after connecting, use Sync with QuickBooks in Settings → Financial/Payments → Tax Rates so Rentopian uses the same tax setup. This helps avoid tax mismatches on synced invoices.

If QuickBooks reports that an invoice or payment is temporarily locked (e.g. another update in progress), Rentopian automatically retries that sync after a short delay (about 10 seconds). You don’t need to do anything.

Each sync task (e.g. one invoice, one payment) has a limited number of attempts (e.g. one or two tries for most jobs; void payment has more). If QuickBooks keeps returning an error that is not “item locked,” the job will eventually stop retrying and the sync will fail. In that case you’ll need to fix the cause (see Errors and what to do below) and then use Resync or Update to try again.

When a sync error is shown in Rentopian (e.g. on the invoice or in system messages), you can click Resync with Quickbooks (or Update on the order) after fixing the issue in QuickBooks or in your settings. That sends the same transaction to QuickBooks again.

So: retries are used for temporary QuickBooks locks; permanent errors require you to fix the cause and then manually resync.

Sync is skipped in these cases:

If a sync fails, Rentopian can show a QuickBooks synchronization error (with an optional code and message). Below are the most common cases and what to do.

QuickBooks already has an invoice with the same number. What to do: In QuickBooks, change the existing invoice number, or use a different number in Rentopian, then click Resync with Quickbooks for that invoice.

The invoice (or order) date is earlier than the “As of” date of the inventory item in QuickBooks. What to do: Either (1) in QuickBooks, set the item’s “As of” date to the same date or earlier than the transaction date, or (2) in Rentopian, change the order/invoice date to be on or after the date you started tracking that item in QuickBooks. Then Resync.

The total tax on the invoice in QuickBooks doesn’t match Rentopian (often due to missing or different tax rates). What to do: Ensure your QuickBooks company has the right tax rates and that you’ve run Sync with QuickBooks under Tax Rates in Rentopian. Fix the invoice or tax setup in QuickBooks if needed, then Resync.

For other errors, the message may suggest a fix. You can use Resync with Quickbooks after fixing the cause. If you have access to View QuickBooks Logs, that can give more detail for support.

Always fix the cause (in QuickBooks or in Rentopian settings) before resyncing; otherwise the same error may happen again.

Open the order, make any needed changes, and click the green Update button at the bottom. That saves the order and triggers a sync of its invoice (and related data) to QuickBooks. For an invoice that had a sync error, use Resync with Quickbooks from the error message or invoice screen.

As in the connection article: open each order, then click Update to sync it. New transactions created after connecting are synced automatically (unless No Quickbooks is checked).

Rentopian team can run a dedicated command to sync many invoices at once (e.g. , date range, or invoice number). This is for special cases and is not the normal way users sync.