[mv] Re: Interchange QuickBooks Extension -- Quickbooks support for transactions and items: where do I find more information

[Mike Heins <mikeh@minivend.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from Mike Heins <mikeh@minivend.com>     ******

Quoting Dan Browning (danb@cyclonecomputers.com):
> I just downloaded (via CVS update) the Interchange Quickbooks extension.
> I've translated the ic_qb.pod to a pdf format and have been reading that,
> and I'm trying to read the source code as well to get a handle on this.
> 
> It is very important to me right now because within the next week I need to
> decide on either Quickbooks Pro 6, BusinessWorks Gold, or MAS90 for my
> accounting software.  And the decision is mostly based on "cheapest software
> that will integrate with interchange (or at least integrate with the
> postgresql backend)".
> 
> I was going to write my own middleware for whichever actg. package I chose,
> but I'm glad I haven't started yet --because now I have found this!
> 
> How new is this software?

You must be monitoring CVS closely, because it is *very* new. I wrote
it all yesterday and committed it to CVS this morning. 8-)

> Is it stable or a first release (or both, which
> happens sometimes)?  I see Mike Heins is the author, which comforts me.  Is
> there any development in the works for other actg. packages?

Very possibly, but the likely targets include neither of the above-mentioned
other packages. We will be targetting mid-market packages like Great Plains
and Solomon next.

> 
> In the docs, it says that after the .IIF file is created, you have to
> manually startup Quickbooks and do a FILE-IMPORT.  That is the reason that I
> decided to evaluate MAS90 and the expensive packages--because there was no
> real-time import/export for Quickbooks.  The real-time, automated transfers
> is important to me because I need to be able to scale to several thousand
> orders per day.

> 
> I guess at this point I have two options:
> 	1.  Use this extension and manually export all the orders, new customers,
> and inventory changes on a regular basis (e.g. daily).  This would leave
> Quickbooks always a day late on information, and seems a little
> labor-intensive.
> 	2.  Find some sort of way to hack Quickbooks or use a scripting technology
> that will run the file/import automatically every 60 seconds or so (and also
> program interchange to generate a new IIF file every 60 seconds).
> 

The next piece of the puzzle is a Perl script on the Windows side which uses
Net::FTP and OLE to do the automated import. I didn't plan on doing that until
I get QB2000 (the stuff that is there works with QuickBooks 5.0 and I cannot
guarantee it even works at all with QuickBooks 2000).

-- 
Akopia, Inc., 131 Willow Lane, Floor 2, Oxford, OH  45056
phone +1.513.523.8220 fax 7501 <heins@akopia.com>

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher Von Braun
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