Production, pricing, and money

Your books, and getting them into QuickBooks or Xero

3 minute read

Broidry is not accounting software and does not try to be. It knows every order you priced, every payment you confirmed, and every expense you recorded, and it will hand all of that to whoever does your books — a person, QuickBooks, or Xero.

There is no live connection to an accounting product. Nothing pushes your sales into QuickBooks overnight, and nothing reads your books back. You download a file when you want one and upload it there.

If a person does your books

Open Money and click Export for your accountant. You get one spreadsheet with three labelled sections: every order with what it was quoted and what you collected, every payment you have confirmed, and every expense. Sales tax is broken out per order.

This is the file to email a bookkeeper or an accountant. It is written to be read.

Note: This same file will not import into QuickBooks or Xero, and that is not a bug. Their importers read one table with one header row, and this file has three sections. Use the files below for them.

If you use QuickBooks Online

On the Money page, open Using QuickBooks or Xero? Get the file it will import. There are two downloads: your orders as invoices, and your expenses as bills.

In QuickBooks, go to Settings, then Import data, then pick Invoices or Bills and upload the file. QuickBooks will ask you to match each customer and each category to one of your own — it never picks for you, and nothing is added to your books until you say so.

  1. 1Download Invoices from the Money page. QuickBooks takes 100 invoices at a time, so if you have more than that you will see numbered files — import them in order.
  2. 2In QuickBooks: Settings, then Import data, then Invoices. Upload the file and map the columns it shows you.
  3. 3Do the same with the expenses file under Bills, if you want your spending in there too.
Note: Each order arrives as one invoice line for the work plus, when you charged it, a second line for sales tax at the exact dollars you collected. That way the invoice total in your books matches what the customer actually paid.

If you use Xero

Same place on the Money page: sales invoices in one file, expenses as bills in another. In Xero, go to Business, then Invoices or Bills, then Import.

They arrive as drafts so you can look before you approve. The account code on each line is left empty on purpose — Xero fills in your own default rather than a guess of ours, because every shop's chart of accounts is different and a wrong code files your sales in the wrong place without telling you.

What is in the files, and what is left out

Orders you have priced become invoices, dated the day the order came in and due on its due date. Cancelled orders are left out, and so are orders you have not put a price on yet — there is nothing to bill on those.

Card fees are already recorded as expenses on your Money page, so they come across with the rest of your spending.

Note: If you want a live sync instead of files, say so from the Help page. It is on the list, and hearing that you want it is what moves it up.