Should You Connect Field Service Management Software with QuickBooks?

Field service management software has shown to increase productivity both for employees in the field and operations teams in the office. You may be wondering how field service management software works with your existing tools, for things like your accounting system. This article explains how field service management software can work in sync with an accounting system, like QuickBooks.

What is field service management software for Quickbooks?

Accounting software is one of the most popular tools in place, ensuring that businesses maintain a proper balance sheet and process payroll on time. Tools like Quickbooks are widely used by organizations to serve all of their accounting needs with software.

Field service management software is another popular category of software, often used to replace the paper forms, documents, or spreadsheets that are used in the field to capture data. By digitizing information using mobile forms and apps, field service organizations are able to streamline their operations and boost productivity by automating how data is collected and shared. 

Field service management software, like GoCanvas, and accounting software like QuickBooks, offer businesses of all sizes powerful tools to enable their operations. Cloud-based technology has become easier than ever to connect using APIs and integrations to sync data in real-time between systems. This means that field service management software can fit neatly into your company’s existing processes and share data instantly from the field, to the office, and to any other stakeholders that need the information.

Does GoCanvas for field service management integrate with Quickbooks?

As a leader in field service management software tools, GoCanvas provides an easy-to-use platform for mobile data collection and reporting. Our platform is designed to integrate with many of the tools your business already has in place, including QuickBooks. 

Here’s how it works:

• For QuickBooks Desktop: Our out-of-the-box solution, the GoCanvas Quickbooks Connector, integrates with the desktop version of Quickbooks.
• For QuickBooks Online: Our professional services team can help you integrate your GoCanvas apps with Quickbooks Online.
• For Zapier Customers: You may also be able to integrate GoCanvas with Quickbooks online through Zapier. Zapier is a third party service that allows their customers to connect different cloud-based services to one another to automate more of the tedious day-to-day tasks that they might be doing manually. 

Does this make sense for your business?

You may be wondering if it makes sense for your business to connect accounting software data with data from a field service management tool like GoCanvas. Here are the top reasons for leveraging an integration:

#1. Enrich information in the field 

Field service management software empowers your workers in the field to do their jobs easily from a mobile device or tablet. An integration makes this even more powerful by enriching forms with existing information that you already have in your accounting system.

For example, you may need accurate pricing information available to technicians in the field in real-time. Instead of relying on out-dated pricing information or manually jumping between different tools to find what’s needed, all of this information can be synced using an integration.

In this example, you can use real price data from QuickBooks for parts and materials inside your GoCanvas forms to create the proper totals on your customer charge documents. By connecting these systems, data is automatically synced in real-time, meaning you always have accurating pricing information available directly in your FSM solution.

There are many ways to enrich information in the field, including things like pre-populating forms with known information like customer records and project data, helping to cut down on the time it takes to fill out forms in the field. Consider the time-savings and productivity gains, and you can see how it makes sense to enrich information in the field, whenever possible.

#2. Sync data from the field back to the office

One of the main benefits of field service management software is the ability to rapidly collect data from the field and have it sync back to the office for more streamlined operations. Taking this a step further, a data integration can help to ensure that data from the field is automatically connected to the other tools that are used. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and cuts down on the time it takes to process information.

For example, you may need to accurately track inventory based on what has been used by your employees in the field and on job sites. With GoCanvas for FSM, you can track inventory based on real submission data and have it automatically update the inventory quantities in QuickBooks. This will simplify workflows and ensure that data is up to date and consistent across systems.

#3. Automating workflows

Cloud-based tools are designed to increase productivity for businesses, meaning that automation is a key reason for implementing these tools in the first place. One way to scale your business is by creating automated workflows that kick off one task, once another task has been completed. This involves no extra work from your team, meaning they can spend less time on busy work and more time on high value tasks.

For example, you may need to create an invoice once work has been completed in the field. With GoCanvas for FSM, you can set up an automatic invoice creation workflow that will save your accountant the hassle of manually entering invoices into QuickBooks. While these digital processes may take some time upfront to set up, there is significant benefit to your business. We have covered how it benefits your employees’ productivity, but the other key benefit is to your customers and their experience. By moving the customer experience to digital interactions that are connected, you provide a seamless digital experience for your customers that makes it easy for them to do business with you. 

To learn more about GoCanvas for field service management and how we can integrate with QuickBooks, contact our team here and we can set up a time to answer any questions you may have about technology to scale your business. If you already have GoCanvas or want to learn more about our integrations, check out this resource on our website and additional documentation here.