QuickBooks Online integration

Overview

Integrating your Brex account with QuickBooks Online reduces manual errors and data entry. It also offers:

• Better control over accounting processes by letting you tag expenses as billable and assign customer codes before exporting them
• More accuracy with a data export feature that transfers expense data, including receipts and memos, directly from your Brex dashboard to QuickBooks Online
• Create rules and mappings to reduce manual categorization of transactions
• Synced data with vendor mapping that matches merchants in Brex to the list of vendors in QuickBooks

There are two ways to connect Brex with Quickbooks:

• Bank feed: Your Brex transactions will show up in Quickbooks, where you can categorize them without using Brex-offered mappings and custom rules.
• Brex Integration: You can categorize transactions in your Brex Accounting tab to automate transaction categorization, include memos and receipts in your journal entries, and access audit logs of exported transactions.

You can have both connections active at the same time. When you export transactions from Brex to Quickbooks, you can match expenses from your Bank Feed to your exported transactions to simplify your reconciliation process. To set up both connections follow both sets of instructions outlined below.

Setup bank feed on QuickBooks Online

Account admins, card admins, and bookkeepers can add a Brex business account or Brex card to the bank feed of QuickBooks Online by following the steps below. Note: This process is not supported on QuickBooks Desktop. Please sign in via the Intuit QuickBooks Online website to link your Brex account. Step 1: Sign in to QuickBooks Online and go to Transactions > Bank Transactions. Step 2: Click Link account or Connect account and search for Brex (Brex.com). Step 3: Select Brex and click on an account or multiple accounts you want to add. Step 4: Select a QuickBooks account that you'd like Brex transactions to sync to (you can create a new account if needed). Step 5: Select a sync-from date (transactions older than 90 days will not sync) and click Connect.

Brex transactions will start automatically syncing right away and begin appearing in your bank feed, where you'll be able to manually categorize them. If you encounter any issues, please reach out to the QuickBooks support team. You can also read more about adding bank and credit card accounts to your QuickBooks Online.

Setup the Brex integration in your dashboard

Now that you have completed the initial setup in QuickBooks Online, an admin can finish the process from their Brex dashboard. Step 1: In your dashboard, go to Accounting and click Get started.

Step 2: Select QuickBooks Online and click Continue.

Step 3: Sign in to QuickBooks Online with your credentials. Select your company and click Next.

Step 4: Back in your Brex dashboard, the ERP data will load and you’ll see a message indicating that the data import was successful. Now Brex and QuickBooks Online are integrated. Brex will start importing your QuickBooks Online fields and values, so you can categorize transactions appropriately in the Accounting tab. A banner will indicate when all of your fields have been imported successfully.

Step 5: Click Quickbooks settings and map your GL accounts to indicate how we’ll export your transactions to Quickbooks. If you aren’t sure which accounts should go here, contact your accounting team or reach out to Brex Support. After mapping your accounts, set up your accounting automations in your Brex dashboard. Note: You can’t export transactions until your GL accounts are properly mapped.

Bank feed vs. Brex integration

Brex integrates with QuickBooks Online in two ways:

How to choose

Some finance teams rely solely on the bank feed to manage their account. This means:

• They rely solely on QuickBooks Online to categorize their transactions.
• They don’t see their QuickBooks Online accounts, classes, and locations in the Brex dashboard.
• Receipts and memos attached by cardholders do not make their way into QuickBooks Online.

In many cases, however, the QuickBooks Online categorization and receipt match push will complement your business. If this is the case, we recommend using the two integrations together. Each time you manually export your transactions from Brex, they'll be matched to the bank feed records automatically. You can then confirm whether the matches are accurate by clicking Match to the right of each transaction in the bank feed. You should not see any duplicates. To categorize your transactions and match your receipts, you must first enable your bank feed on QuickBooks, before navigating to the Accounting tab of the Brex dashboard to finalize your setup.

Mark as billable

Brex bookkeepers, account admins, or card admins of accounts that use the QuickBooks Online integration can tag expenses as billable prior to exporting them to QuickBooks Online. Users with other role types can also set these fields on their own expenses. You can only mark an expense as billable once you tag a customer for an expense. A billable expense needs to have a customer code before being exported to QuickBooks Online and expenses marked as billable need to be associated with a GL account which allows billable expenses. The following GL account types may be used for billable expenses: expense, other expenses, other current liabilities, other current assets, other assets, fixed assets, or COGS. When you export your expenses to QuickBooks Online, the billable field will be populated based on your selections within Brex.

Automatically tag expenses

You can automatically tag expenses with customers or as billable expenses by creating custom rules. The Customer field and Billable field can automatically be coded based on the custom rule created.

Map to vendors

Vendor mapping lets you map merchants in Brex to the list of vendors found in QuickBooks. Once mapped, the vendor name will appear on each expense that is exported. Brex admins and bookkeepers can create these rules by following the steps below. Step 1: Click Accounting on the left side of your Brex dashboard. Step 2: At the top, click Fields & rules. Step 3: Expand the Vendor field and scroll down to Mappings. Step 4: In Expense field to map, select Merchant and click Add mapping. Step 5: For each Brex merchant on the left, map it to a Quickbooks vendor on the right. Changes will be saved automatically. You can add as many mappings as you like. Future transactions with these merchants will follow the vendor mappings, with the appropriate QuickBooks vendor added to each of the expenses exported. Any current transactions that have not been exported to QuickBooks will also have their vendor mappings retroactively updated.

Customer code

Brex bookkeepers, account admins, and card admins can also tag transactions with a customer code prior to exporting them to QuickBooks Online. Users with other role types can also tag a customer code on their own expenses. To do so, select a transaction in your Brex dashboard and set the field labeled QuickBooks customer with a customer. Customers are automatically pulled in from QuickBooks Online. When you export your expenses to QuickBooks Online, the Customer field will populate based on your selections within Brex.

Adding new customers to Brex

After adding new customers in QuickBooks Online, account admins, card admins, and bookkeepers can update Brex with the latest QuickBooks Online data by going to Accounting > QuickBooks settings and scrolling down to the Integration management section. Look for the Refresh integration row and click Refresh.

Exporting transactions to Quickbooks

For a step by step tutorial on how to prepare, review, and export your transactions to QuickBooks, read this help article. As long as you haven't yet closed your books on QuickBooks, QuickBooks will automatically match any transactions in the bank feed to data exported from Brex (receipts, memos, and categorization). You'll then have the option to confirm whether these matches are accurate by clicking Match to the right of each transaction on the bank feed. You shouldn't see any duplicates. Note: Choosing CSV won’t automatically send the expense data to QuickBooks — they'll need to be added to QuickBooks manually. We’ll mark these transactions as exported to avoid duplicates the next time you export.

Disconnect QuickBooks Online

You can disconnect Brex from your Quickbooks Online account if you no longer want to directly export expense data from Brex. Note that it won’t affect the bank feed from QuickBooks’ end. Step 1: In your dashboard, click your name in the upper right and go to Integrations. Step 2: Click the three dots next to the QuickBooks Online tile. Step 3: Click Disconnect. Note: If you reconnect to the same account, disconnecting your integration will not impact your mappings.

Remove bank feed

Step 1: In QuickBooks Online, go to Transactions > Bank transactions. Step 2: Click the tile for the bank account > the pencil icon > Edit account info. Step 3: Checkmark Disconnect this account on save. Note: You won’t have this option if QuickBooks Online is downloading new transactions. Wait a few minutes for the update to finish and try again. Step 5: Click Save > Close. If you’re going to set up the bank feed connection again, use the date of the last expense they categorized from the bank feed as the new sync date.

Troubleshoot

The following are some issues you may encounter when using your QuickBooks Online integration. If you still have trouble, or don’t see your problem listed here, please reach out to Brex Support via your dashboard or file a ticket with the QuickBooks support team.

Duplicate payments on Quickbooks Online account

You may see duplicate payments to Brex on your QuickBooks Online account if you've added your bank to the QuickBooks Online bank feed. This happens because the payments to Brex pulled from the bank feed will typically have the date that the payment left your bank account, whereas the payment to Brex pushed from the Brex dashboard will have the date that it reached Brex's bank account. Because of this date discrepancy, the payments will not auto-match. To rectify this, please follow these steps: Step 1: In QuickBooks Online, go to Transactions > Banking and find the payment to Brex. Step 2: Click on the payment, and click Find Match. QuickBooks will suggest the payment to Brex that is a duplicate for the same amount. Each line will prompt you to match the transaction in your bank feed to the expense data, combining the two to reconcile.

Transactions won’t export to QuickBooks Online

To help troubleshoot, please refer to the relevant section(s) below, depending on whether you have expenses data enabled.