The topmost benefit that CRM can give is the potential to perform the entire business with great synergy. Combine your communication and marketing tools with your sales platform, and you are good to go. Now, your team can execute and track various sales conversations via a single tool. In case you are depending on the accounting software as well for managing incoming and outgoing payments, then CRM has a lot to give to your business.
QuickBooks is an accounting software platform designed to serve small and medium-sized businesses. It offers the simplest ways to handle the daily accounting procedures such as routine sales and expenditure, customer invoices, accepting payments, bill payments, and generating reports for planning and tax filing.
Almost all kinds of major CRM platforms on the market are providing QuickBooks integration. However, these integrations are not that equal. Some CRMs give a single-click setup, and others need a long and more complicated installation process to follow.
And hence, it becomes so important to make wise choices when each CRM user comes with a challenge to select the best platform that can seamlessly integrate with QuickBooks.
So here is a blog that will help you find the reasons why you must synergize CRM with accounting software, and some of the best CRMs that integrate with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online.
Your First CRM Should be QuickBooks – Know Why
QuickBooks is majorly used by small businesses as it can store customer contacts and buying histories proficiently.
For a new business, the initial requirement is to get access to customer information from the accounting software. But QuickBooks can just help you manage billing and accounting. Hence, you need to connect your QuickBooks account with software that can help you handle your pipeline.
When you know your business is going to expand, you must get ready for the automation. Because automating your invoicing, billing, and follow-up on unpaid invoices will save your precious time.
The moment you unite QuickBooks with a perfect CRM platform, you will start getting transparent results of your entire sales funnel. This will boost your lead conversions and ultimately will help you grow your business.
How Can CRM Integration Really Help You?
Importing all your data from QuickBooks is essential. Because then only will you realize the number of leads you have in your pipeline.
In addition, you will start getting insights on the quality of customer lists, details of their proposals or estimates, and much more. Also, you will begin to understand the way your team responds to these customers during a follow-up and whether they are working to their best abilities or not.
The cold leads are not with QuickBooks, but they are with your sales team.
Top CRMs That Integrate With QuickBooks.
1. Nutshell
Nutshell is a stealthy CRM and automation platform. It is designed to enable the sales team to perform quick tasks. The QuickBooks Online integration here is a mixture of sophistication and simplicity.
If you have a customer list stored in QuickBooks Online, you can import it into Nutshell in just a few clicks with Nutshell’s direct importer.
All of your QuickBooks Online customers will be rolled over into your CRM in seconds, so you can start tracking communication histories, nurturing clients towards repeat business, and incorporating your QuickBooks contacts and data into your sales and revenue reporting.
In March 2020, Nutshell released a native QuickBooks Online integration, which allows customers to send people, companies, and leads to QuickBooks from their respective pages, as well as create invoices in QuickBooks directly from the lead page.
Send any Nutshell contact or lead to QuickBooks Online in two clicks.
Nutshell also offers a Zapier integration, which allows you to trigger invoices, bills, or new records through QuickBooks Online once you’ve enabled the connection through Nutshell, and keeps customer records synced in both places.
Best for: Sales teams looking for a full-featured CRM that’s user-friendly and highly customizable, with the bonus of having easy integration with QuickBooks Online.
2. Method
Method is playing pretty excellent with almost all the QuickBooks products.
Even if you are or not using QuickBooks Online, Pro, Premier, or Enterprise, your data will integrate seamlessly with Method. Because of its broad integration capabilities, it’s a good choice if you’re looking for a CRM where QuickBooks is integral to your sales process.
From creating estimates to invoicing, Method makes it simple to perform common QuickBooks tasks from within their system. Method also syncs contacts across both platforms to save you loads of time on data entry.
(Invoice directly from Method.)
However, for what it offers in QuickBooks features, Method lacks in some other important aspects of a sturdy CRM, like pipeline automation, customizable reporting, and built-in phone capabilities.
Best for: Companies whose #1 priority in a CRM is how well it plays with QuickBooks.
3. Insightly
Insightly takes great pride when integrated with QuickBooks.
Like Nutshell, Insightly’s main focus is around its QuickBooks Online integration, and they’ve done it well. Insightly’s integration is simple to use, easy to install and offers you a lot right out of the box.
You can view the payment history and status of any of your customers in a customized “QuickBooks Online” tab.
Like other CRMs, Insightly will give you a complete history of any customer you have on your books, allowing your sales team to have a better understanding of the customer they’re dealing with.
Because it plays so nicely with QuickBooks, you might find it surprising that you can’t create invoices or estimates directly from Insightly. Despite all the bells and whistles, you have to leave your CRM to bill a customer. You also can’t accept direct payments through the CRM either, so if these features are deal-breakers for you, you might have to look for another CRM.
Best for: Businesses that need advanced project management features in their CRM platform.
4. Zoho
Zoho’s integration with QuickBooks needs a lot of customization. You need some time to set it up, though.
Although Zoho allows you to add QuickBooks easily enough from the integration dashboard, that’s about as simple as it gets.
Once you’ve allowed access, Zoho requires you to then manually configure your import and export process for QuickBooks:
The benefit of bearing this complexity? Once you set up QuickBooks in Zoho, the level of control you get back is great.
After the initial manual setup, you’ll then have the option to create timesheets, integration reports, and bills with just a few clicks and push them straight to QuickBooks, as well as sync your invoices and expenses back to QuickBooks automatically
Best for: Companies who need a customized, advanced QuickBooks/CRM relationship.
5. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers well-rounded functionality realized through applications focusing on key CRM components: sales, marketing, and customer service.
Microsoft Dynamics 365Sales allows sales teams to centralize account and contract information, gain full control over opportunities in the sales pipeline, schedule engagement activities, monitor sales performance, and carry out other tasks streamlining the sales process.
Key features focused on sales activities include:
- Contact and account management
- Territory and quota management
- Quote and order management
- Opportunity and pipeline management
- Customer contract management
- Task/activity management
- Product and price line management
- ROI analytics
To provide for the consistency of the sales, marketing, customer service processes, and accounting workflows, Microsoft Dynamics 365 integrates with QuickBooks via third-party connectors, e.g., InoLink, Zapier, etc., and custom integrations.
6. Salesforce
Salesforce once had a special integration with QuickBooks called Salesforce for QuickBooks.
The program allowed the sales CRM to plug straight into QuickBooks. But there were problems, and the software was scrapped after three years. The integration was only set up for businesses at the lower level of Salesforce, and it turns out the program wasn’t compatible with a lot of Salesforce’s own extensions.
Thankfully, Salesforce also plays nice with Zapier. So if you’re looking for a QuickBooks integration through Salesforce, you can still have it.
Once connected, you’ll be able to sync your QuickBooks customers to Salesforce accounts and view all of their details from the CRM interface.
You can also do loads of other stuff with the integration, like create transactions, invoices, and manage accounts.
A complete sales history will also be available to your team right from Salesforce, along with an automatic data sync between both platforms.
(Customer breakdown from the Salesforce dashboard.)
Best for: Large companies who are looking to work from the Salesforce Sales Cloud.
7. Copper
At the moment, the only way to connect QuickBooks to Copper is through Zapier. You’ll need premium QuickBooks and Zapier accounts to connect the two.
Once you connect through Zapier, you’ll be able to log payments as activities. You’ll also be able to view past invoices and payment amounts on your records, straight from the Copper dashboard.
Copper’s integration with QuickBooks is fairly limited. There are only a couple of functions available through Zapier to make Copper and QuickBooks talk. But if you only need a lightweight QuickBooks integration, and you are looking at Copper because of its integration with G Suite, don’t be entirely put off.
Even its simple integration will allow your sales team to view key data for each customer on their email dashboard:
(Data synced from QuickBooks straight to the Copper dashboard in G Suite.)
Best for: Companies who have sales teams that work primarily out of G Suite.
8. Freshsales
Freshsales is another CRM that puts its QuickBooks integration at the forefront of its sales pitch.
Freshsales lets you pin or connect invoices to contacts from the CRM, which can come in very handy if you are having trouble chasing payments.
The integration allows invoices and customer histories to be kept for each customer on the Freshsales interface.
But it’s the built-in phone feature that makes this integration unique. If you’ve got problems with invoices or payments, your finance team will be able to follow up with them easier—all from Freshsales.
The feature will also be a massive bonus if your sales team closes more deals over the phone. Because of its functionality, Freshsales gives your sales reps the tools to control the entire deal, from prospecting to the final invoice.
Best for: Sales teams who close a lot of deals over the phone.
9. GreenRope
Even the smaller CRMs on our list are getting in the QuickBooks action.
Although GreenRope only has about 3,000 customers worldwide, they offer direct integration from QuickBooks into their software.
Some of the features you’ll get from the integration include importing customers as new contacts and transferring your invoices across platforms.
You can also sync your customer data over from QuickBooks and then set the system to update any data from that point, automatically.’
GreenRope currently uses QuickBooks’ own Intuit Web Connector, which can be easily installed onto your desktop. You need this to be running for the syncing of invoices and contacts within the CRM, though.
Their reporting functions are relatively simple to use, if a little clunky:
(The view from the GreenRope dashboard.)
Best for: Businesses who are looking for a one-stop, no-frills CRM.
Check Out For The Best CRM, and Not The Best Integration
Integration of QuickBooks with your CRN is of utmost vital. And that is why most of the CRMs have come to the forefront in the market and are offering the best ways to integrate QuickBooks into their system.
So it is important to integrate QuickBooks with your CRM, but not that important when it comes to selecting the right CRM platform.
Choosing the right CRM for your business can make a great impact on the performance of your sales team – unmentioned is the customer service team, your marketing team, and how they work together in sync here. So always ask yourself, are you looking for a CRM that befits the QuickBooks, or a CRM that fits your business?
Ultimately, choose a CRM that can help your business grow and fetch more productivity, rather than looking for just a small part of it.
