Revenue accounts and importing into Quickbooks

This article outlines how to create and configure revenue accounts, and how to import financial information to Quickbooks (Desktop and Online).

• Adding a New Revenue Account for Quickbooks Desktop and Online Users
• Adding a New Revenue Account for Non-Quickbooks Users
• Reporting on Revenue
• How to Update Accounting Software with MC Professional

Basic Accounting Principles

Why Are Revenue Accounts Used?

Revenue accounts track the flow of sales and payments over time, creating the basis for financial reporting. While revenue accounts are not required in MC Professional, they are strongly recommended because they will make your accountant or bookkeeper's job easier.

Configuring Revenue Accounts

Proper Revenue Account configuration is not only necessary to organize transactions within MC Professional, but to also accurately export transactions out of MC Professional and into your financial system of record.

How to Access

Navigate to Financial > Invoicing, then click on Revenue Accounts in the top righthand corner.

Adding a New Revenue Account for QuickBooks Desktop Users

Important: Revenue accounts are tied to transactions (sales and payments) at the time they occur, so it is important to set up the revenue accounts correctly from the start. If you have any questions about what to enter into any of the revenue account setup field, please contact your accountant or bookkeeper.

1. First, click "Add New Revenue Account."

2.  Name the Revenue Account to match the account name within QuickBooks.

3.  Select whether the account will be used for Dues Revenue or not using the "Dues Revenue" dropdown.  If "On" is selected, transactions tied to the Revenue Account will not be included in the Aged Receivables graph on the Admin Dashboard.  If "Off" is selected, transactions will be included in the Aged Receivables graph on the Admin Dashboard.

4.  Select whether the Revenue Account will be accrual or cash to control how transactions are exported from the Transaction Report.  This should align with your current accounting methodology, and can generally be answered by whether or not you recognize accounts receivable (if you are unsure, be sure to ask your accountant).

Note:  The following transactions will be exported as journal entries in the IIF file for each account type:

• Accrual:
  • Transaction for each sale, discount, or refund (sale debit and sale credit)
  • Transaction(s) for each payment or settlement (payment debit and payment credit)
• Cash:
  • Payment or settlement transactions only (sale credit and payment debit)

5.  Input your sale/payment credit and debit accounts to control which accounts the Transaction Report will export for IIF files.  Be sure to use the exact account name from QuickBooks to ensure the transactions are imported appropriately.  The following table can be used as a guideline.

6.  Input the QuickBooks class associated with the revenue account if you use Classes within QuickBooks.  If you do not, feel free to leave this field blank.

7.  Provide a description of this revenue account.  Depending on your account structure in QuickBooks, you may want to include the account number in this field if you did not include it in the preceding fields.

Sample Accrual Account:

Sample Cash Account:

Adding a New Revenue Account for Non-QuickBooks Desktop Users

Important: Revenue accounts are tied to transactions (sales and payments) at the time they occur, so it is important to set up the revenue accounts correctly from the start. If you have any questions about what to enter into any of the revenue account setup field, please contact your accountant or bookkeeper.

1. First, click "Add New Revenue Account."

2.  Name the Revenue Account to match the name in your accounting software.  Depending on your accounting software, you may want to include the account number in this field.

3.  Select whether the account will be used for Dues Revenue or not using the "Dues Revenue" dropdown.  If "On" is selected, transactions tied to the Revenue Account will not be included in the Aged Receivables graph on the Admin Dashboard.  If "Off" is selected, transactions will be included in the Aged Receivables graph on the Admin Dashboard.

4.  Select whether the Revenue Account will be accrual or cash to control how transactions are exported from the Transaction Report.  This should align with your current accounting methodology, and can generally be answered by whether or not you recognize accounts receivable (if you are unsure, be sure to ask your accountant).

5.  Input your sale/payment credit and debit accounts to control which accounts the Transaction Report will export for each transaction.  The following table can be used as a guideline.

6.  Provide a description of this revenue account.  Depending on your accounting software, you may want to include the account number in this field if you did not include it in the preceding fields.

Sample Accrual Account:

Sample Cash Account:

Reporting on Revenue

The Transaction Report under Financial > Transactions is the central area to report on revenue. The Transaction Report allows administrators to report on sales, payments, credit memos, refunds and discounts within a specified date range and provides the following filters: Revenue Account, Transaction Type, Transaction Status, Payment Type and Credit Card Type. Exporting from the Transaction Report as a CSV file will include all of the transaction details, including the corresponding debits and credits for each invoice line item. Organizations using Quickbooks will see the option to export an IIF file from the Transaction Report which can be imported into Quickbooks, as well as the CSV option.

Important note for QB Desktop users: The IIF file produced by MC Professional does not include address or other contact information about customers. We do not recommend using the IIF import if you also invoice directly from QB Desktop because the contact information already stored in QB will be removed with the IIF import.

How to Update Accounting Software with MC Professional

Quickbooks Desktop Users 

Quickbooks Desktop users can use the transaction report to create an IIF file (Intuit Interchange Format) to import into Quickbooks Desktop. This file will include transaction and customer level detail for the transactions occurring in MC Professional. The IIF export/import should only be used by organizations that want transaction and customer level detail in Quickbooks. For Quickbooks users that are not familiar with the IIF import, please see the Quickbooks Support Article. It is strongly recommended to backup the company file before importing into Quickbooks.

Quickbooks Online Users

Quickbooks Online pulls payment information from the linked bank account. With this information automatically added QB Online, only the sale, discount and refund transactions need to be imported from MC Professional. Before downloading the CSV from MC Professional, be sure to filter the transaction report appropriately by transaction type.

Quickbooks online users can use the transaction report to create a CSV (Comma Separated Value) to import into their accounting software via a third party tool (many MC Professional customers use Transaction Pro Importer, but several options are available in the Intuit App Store). Please note, QB Online does not support directly importing sale transactions from a CSV; the CSV file can be imported into the accounting software via the 3rd party tool.

This process requires mapping the fields from the CSV to the fields in QB Online within the 3rd party tool. While specific use-cases vary, here is an overview of the basic process with Transaction Pro Importer:

Export the sale and discount transactions from MC Professional. A few formatting adjustments need to be made in the CSV file:

1. QBO identifies customers as First Name and Last Name, so these columns will need to be combined. If viewing the CSV in Excel, use the CONCATENATE function to combine the two columns. We recommend titling the new column Customer Name.
2. Select the Transaction Date column and change the formatting to mm/dd/yyyy
3. Save your changes

With the updated CSV file, follow the steps below in TPI:

1. Select Import Type “Invoices” 
2. Map RefNumber in TPI to Invoice ID in the CSV export from MC
3. Map Customer in TPI to Customer Name (this column is the result of the contenation described above) in the CSV export from MC
4. Map txnDate in TPI to Transaction Date in the CSV export from MC
5. Map LineItem in TPI to Revenue Account in the CSV export from MC
6. Map LineDesc in TPI to Description in the CSV export from MC
7. Map LineAmount in TPI to Amount in the CSV export from MC

If applicable, credit memos will need to be imported separately following the same process as outlined above for sales and discounts.

Non-Quickbooks Users

Non-Quickbooks users can use the transaction report to create a CSV (Comma Separated Value) to import into their accounting software. Some accounting programs, such as Microsoft Dynamics GP, require a 3rd party tool to import from a CSV. This file will include transactions (with the respective debits and credits) and customer level detail. The CSV file can be imported into the accounting software, but formatting needs to be confirmed or possibly adjusted to meet the requirements of your accounting software. It is strongly recommended to backup your records before doing any mass import into your accounting software.