QuickBooks + Orcabase
Ask your books anything.
Sync QuickBooks Online through Fivetran and ask about margins, costs, cash and who owes you, in plain words, next to the sales and ad data that explain them.
- Synced by Fivetran
- Syncs every 6 hours
- No Fivetran account needed
What was our gross margin, month by month?
Gross margin was 58% in August, down from 61% in May.
- Green coffee costs rose 9% since May.
- Packaging per order fell, which helped a little.
- Subscriptions earn a higher margin than one-time orders.
Gross margin by month, %
How I got this· 4 steps
- Looked at your QuickBooks accounts and transactions
- Took cost of goods from revenue each month
- Worked out the margin
- Found the cost lines that grew most
Example answer. Numbers are illustrative.
In plain words
How do I get better reports from QuickBooks?
QuickBooks is built to keep your books right. Answering business questions across them is harder. Fivetran copies your accounts, invoices, bills and payments into a database Orcabase hosts for you.
Then ask in plain words, like “what was our gross margin by month?”, and put the books next to the sales and ad data that explain the numbers.
Ask in plain words
What you can ask about your QuickBooks data
The agent answers with the number, a chart and the steps it took. Keep the good answers on a dashboard.
What was our gross margin each month this year?
Which costs grew fastest this quarter?
Who owes us money, and for how long?
How much did we spend on shipping last month?
What’s our monthly burn, and how many months of runway do we have?
Which customers bring in the most revenue?
How do this year’s expenses compare with last year’s?
Show me profit and loss by month.
What comes in
Your QuickBooks data, ready to ask about.
A copy in a database Orcabase hosts for you, with its own folder for each app.
Accounts
Invoices and payments
Bills and expenses
Journal entries
Customers and vendors
Items
Numbers worth defining
Define them once. Every answer agrees.
Tell Orcabase what each number means, certify it, and your dashboards, the agent and your whole team use the same one. The agent can draft these from your QuickBooks data.
Gross margin
Revenue minus cost of goods, as a share of revenue.
Monthly burn
Cash out minus cash in, each month.
Days to get paid
Average days customers take to pay an invoice.
Operating expenses
Spend outside cost of goods, by category.
Dashboards to start with
Your QuickBooks numbers at a glance.
Ask the agent to build one of these, or pin charts yourself. Share any dashboard with a link.
Finance
4 charts- Profit and loss by month
- Gross margin
- Operating expenses by category
- Monthly burn
Cash
4 charts- Unpaid invoices by age
- Days to get paid
- Bills due
- Runway
Better together
Ask across QuickBooks and the rest of your business.
The best questions need more than one app. The agent can pull from several sources for one answer.
How to connect
Connect QuickBooks, step by step.
- 1
Find it in Sync data
In Orcabase, go to Sync data → Add source and search for QuickBooks. Pick the database to sync into.
- 2
Connect QuickBooks on Fivetran’s page
Fivetran’s page asks for a client ID and secret from an app you create in Intuit’s developer portal, then you choose your QuickBooks company. Fivetran’s guide walks through it.
- 3
Choose what to sync
Back in Orcabase, tick the data you want. Only what you pick is synced, and only it counts toward your allowance.
- 4
Ask away
The first sync starts straight away. When it’s done, ask the agent about your QuickBooks data.
What you’ll need
- QuickBooks Online, and admin access to the company you want to sync. QuickBooks Desktop isn’t supported.
- A free Intuit developer account, to create the app keys Fivetran asks for.
- The Admin role in Orcabase, and data hosting: Fivetran writes into a database Orcabase hosts for you.
- How it connects
- Synced by Fivetran
- How fresh
- Every 6 hours, as standard.
- Where your data lives
- A copy in a database Orcabase hosts for you, with its own folder for each app.
- Who can set it up
- An admin in your organization.
- Your login
- You sign in on Fivetran’s own page. Orcabase never sees your password or keys.
- Cost
- Counts toward your monthly sync allowance: 500,000 changed rows a month, as standard.
Does it work with QuickBooks Desktop?
Why do I need an Intuit developer app?
Can Orcabase change my books?
Do I need a Fivetran account?
How fresh is my QuickBooks data in Orcabase?
What does syncing cost?
Your QuickBooks data already has the answers.
Connect it, ask your first question, and pin the answers you want to see every week.