Ideas

QuickBooks/CiviCRM Initial Scope

We take an agile approach to projects, looking at number of sprints and number of hours per sprint. That allows us to produce something tangible at the end of the sprint (say 1 week). Not that it gives us any greater ability to predict time/cost but we feel sprints/hours per sprint makes it easier for us in project planning.

That being said, we've come up with a list of use cases and core requirements. We haven't broken them down
into actual tasks yet.

There are two use cases that represent ~70% of our needs:

1. "How to collect program fees."
An organization gives us a check. In CiviCRM, we go to their contact record. If they don't exist, we add them. In the Contribution tab, select contribution type, enter total amount and received date. CiviCRM pushes contributor, contribution type, total amount and received date into QuickBooks as an invoice. QuickBooks sends a result code or status message back to CiviCRM and contributions that have been "processed" will be flagged accordingly.

QuickBooks assumptions:

• Deposit is made into 1110 - Accounts Receivable (based on the Unified Chart of Accounts).
• Will quick add customer job if doesn't exist.
• Source field in CiviCRM must match Item field in QuickBooks.
• Rate and Amount will be the same values.
• Class field will not be populated.

2. "How to collect individual donations/foundation grant/corporate giving."
An individual sends a check. In CiviCRM, we go to their contact record. If they don't exist, we add them.
In the Contribution tab, select contribution type, total amount and received date. CiviCRM pushes contributor, contribution type, total amount and received date into QuickBooks as a donation. QuickBooks sends a result code or status message back to CiviCRM and contributions that have been "processed" will be flagged accordingly.

QuickBooks assumptions:

• Automatically goes into "Intuit Standard Donation" template.
• Donation "item" matches contribution type in CiviCRM.

Based on these two use cases, which are basically the same, we think it will take approximately 25 hours to write the code and unit tests. We've already contributed 50 hours to the project and we're looking for the community to fund $2500 to complete the initial prototype. Our hope is that the initial prototype will demonstrate that this approach works and help kick start a larger QuickBooks/CiviCRM integration effort.