Product Mapping - Best Practice

Summary

Mapping your product catalog is essential for invoicing your clients. There are a few key things to keep in mind. 

• QuickBooks Online will always map a product to the same account in your Chart of Accounts despite the GL Mapping in ConnectWise. 
• ConnectWise PSA doesn't provide an item for services lines, so one must be created. This can be mapped in Mobius using the service item source setting.
• Mapping the Product Item Types is essential to managing (or not managing) your inventory and inventory asset evaluation in QuickBooks Online.

Best Practices

1. Verify your Product item types are set correctly. (In ConnectWise navigate to System > Setup Tables > Product Type) 
   1. If you plan to keep inventory in QuickBooks Online, you will want to make sure the Product Type Cross reference is set to Inventory Part. This will tell QuickBooks Online to keep track on inventory. 
   2. If you are keeping inventory in QuickBooks Online, you will need to enable "Track inventory on hand" in QuickBooks Settings. Click the Gear icon > Account and Settings > Sales and enable Track inventory quantity on hand.
   3. Map your Inventory Asset account on all inventory type product categories.
   4. If you do not plan to keep inventory in QuickBooks Online, verify all Product Item Types are set to a non-inventory type. 
2. If you do choose to use product categories in QuickBooks Online, map out the categories prior to setting up your product catalog.
   1. Each Product ID must contain the category name (ProductCategory:ItemName)
      1. If I wanted to map Office 365 Basic to a product Category named MSFTSoftware, then the product ID becomes MSFTSoftware:Office 365 Basic
   2. If Categories are enabled in QuickBooks Online, then all parents of a multi-level product mapping MUST be a product Category and the lowest level MUST be a Product.  We support sub-categories as long as the final level maps to product and all other levels are a category.
3. Select your Service Item Source prior to mapping your GL Accounts. 
   1. This will determine how your time shows up on a clients invoice.
   2. [Service-GLAccount] is the recommended mapping.
   3. Please note that the GL account that is used the first time when this item is created in QuickBooks Online will ALWAYS be used in the future. So, if the GL account changes in ConnectWise PSA for that item, it will still show up in QuickBooks Online as the original items GL entry.
   4. If you want to map by work type and work role then each of these will need to be mapped accordingly. Select Work Role-Work Type only if these will not change in the future. 
4. Product mapping 
   1. QuickBooks Online Assumes that once you've created an item, that item will Always be mapped to the Same GL Account
   2. If you are creating a product in ConnectWise that will need to go to a separate Account in QuickBooks online (this is often the case with agreement products), you will want to create a separate item that will map the GL Accounts desired. 
      1. Use a naming convention to associate "_A" with agreement Products and "_TM" for time and materials
      2. Use the product Type or Class to identify agreement products. 
5. Product Bundles
   1. When bundling products, Bundle them according to the QuickBooks Online Account you want that bundle to map to. 
   2. Bundled products will only map to 1 Account in QuickBooks Online. If you have a bundle with Hardware and Software, it will only map to 1 of the 2 Accounts as defined by the Bundle Category/Sub-category.

Additional Resources

• Service Item Source
• Product Item Type Mapping
• Product Mapping
• Product Category Mapping