How to Publish to QuickBooks Online

Once you’ve integrated with QuickBooks Online, easily publish the items in your Dext Prepare account to your QuickBooks Online account.

Use this article to configure your publishing and integration settings to ensure the items are published with the correct details and to the correct area of your QuickBooks Online account.


Publishing Settings

Before publishing an item, ensure that the appropriate settings are configured and that there is nothing to review on an item. If an item has something to review you will be notified in the Status column in the Costs and Sales Inboxes.

This will reduce the risk of the item having incorrect details, a publishing error or being published to the wrong destination in QuickBooks Online.

The required settings can differ between costs and sales items and are set up in various parts of your Dext Prepare account. We’ll outline them below:

Costs Settings

Publish To: The ‘Publish to’ destination will determine where your costs items will be published to and if they are ‘paid’ or ‘unpaid’. The ‘Publish to’ settings can be applied to an item individually on the Item details page or as a default to all items from the Integrations page.

Supplier: Select the correct supplier on the Item details page, and ensure that the supplier is also in your QuickBooks Online account.

Payment Method: To be able to publish a paid item to ‘Cash’, ‘Check’ or ‘Credit card’, you must have the payment method used assigned to a bank account. See more about payment methods and how to link them here.

Tax Rate: Tax rates are required when publishing items to QBO, this setting allows a default to be applied to all items. It is there to allow users to publish the extracted amount of tax, and have that applied to the default tax rate of their choice. Tax rates can be applied to an item individually on the Item details page or as a default to all items from the Integrations page.

Sales Settings

Type: The area a sales item will be published to is determined by the item ‘Type’ selected. The item ‘Type’ can be applied to an item individually on the Item details page or as a default to all items from the Integrations page.

Customer: Select the correct Customer on the Item details page, and ensure that the customer is also in your QuickBooks Online account.

Tax Rate: Tax rates are required when publishing items to QBO, this setting allows a default to be applied to all items. It is there to allow users to publish the extracted amount of tax, and have that applied to the default tax rate of their choice. Tax rates can be applied to an item individually on the Item details page or as a default to all items from the Integrations page.


Publishing Costs Items

Publish your Costs items as ‘Paid’ or ‘Unpaid’ to your QuickBooks Online account.

The table below outlines where in your QuickBooks Online account an item will be published to:

Item StatusPublishing Destination to select in Dext PrepareItem Location in QuickBooks Online
PaidPublish to either:
– Cash
– Check
– Credit Card
The items will go to ‘Expenses
UnpaidPublish to:
– Bill
This will create an item waiting to be paid

Important: It is mandatory to have a payment method linked to an item if you want to publish it as paid.
If you have an item marked as paid and keep Bill as publishing destination, the item will be sent to Bill but will appear as unpaid in QBO.

Publishing as Paid

To publish a Costs item to QuickBooks Online as Paid, ready to be easily reconciled:

  1. Go to the Costs Inbox and select an item
  2. On the Item Details page go to the Payment Section
  3. Go to Publish to
  4. Select one of three options:
  • Cash
  • Check
  • Credit Card

Important: The assigned payment method should be linked to the appropriate Bank Account. To see how to link a payment method to a bank account see this article.
​Please note that within QuickBooks Online, you can export/publish paid items to Cash, Check, or Credit Card only if you have the linked payment method selected.

Publishing as Unpaid

To publish unpaid items to QuickBooks Online:

  1. Go to the Costs Inbox and select an item
  2. On the Item Details page go to the Payment Section
  3. Go to Publish to
  4. Select Bill
  1. This will create an item waiting to be paid in QuickBooks Online

Publishing Sales Items

Publish Sales items by selecting the ‘Sales Invoice’ or ‘Sales Receipt’ item ‘Type’ to publish them to the ‘Sales’ section of your Quickbooks Online account.

To do this:

  1. Go to the Sales Inbox and select an item
  2. On the Item Details page go to Type
  3. Select Sales Invoice or Sales Receipt
  1. When published the items will go to the Sales section of your QuickBooks Online account

When the sales item is paid for, see this article for how to mark the item as paid in your Quickbooks Online account


Publishing Costs & Sales Credit Notes

Publish refunds or returns by assigning the item to the Credit Card that was used for the original purchase.

To do this:

  1. Go to the Costs or SalesInbox, and select the relevant item
  2. Go to Type on the Item Details page

  1. For Costs items select: Credit Note/Refund

For Sales Items Select Sales Credit Note.

Your sales item then will be ready to published as a sales credit note

  1. Then, for Costs items only, scroll down to the Payment section and the Publishing to field, and select Credit Note
  1. A Costs credit note will be published to QuickBooks Online as Vendor credit and can be located by clicking on the relevant vendor