Knowledge Base

When setting up your service/product list in Camelot, if you plan to use the QuickBooks connection, you need to properly indicate the item name you want to be sent to QuickBooks when exporting your invoices.

This is done on the Service/Product setup screen when entering/editing a particular service or product, on the QuickBooks tab.  You will see a box labeled Code for Service there.  If you leave that box blank, then when posting to the IIF file, Camelot will make the item name be formatted as "Service Category:Service Description", where Service Category is the category for the service there in Camelot, and Service Description is the description for that service as you have it setup in Camelot. 

So if you setup your service categories and descriptions in Camelot just like they are in QuickBooks, then it will be fine to leave that Code for Service blank.

If you want to describe the service/product/item one way in Camelot, but it is represented differently in QuickBooks, then you must enter that QuickBooks Item Name there in that Code for Service box, and you must also always be sure that when you are entering an invoice, that you choose from the drop-down list of the services you have setup instead of just typing something unique for that invoice.  That service description is how it will lookup to find the proper Code for Service when creating the IIF file during the Post to QuickBooks.

Also realize that if you don't use the Code for Service, then when you do the Post to QuickBooks and then you import that IIF file into QuickBooks, it will create new Items in QuickBooks based on the service/product descriptions you've setup in Camelot.  In particular, if you have a colon in the service/product description itself, it may split that into subitems in QuickBooks.  For example, a service description of "SR: Stain Removal" would end up in QuickBooks as an item named SR and a subitem named Stain Removal.

Also, in earlier versions of QuickBooks (pre 1999), there was a hard limit on the length of an item description of 13 characters.  This is the default length in the Camelot setup for QB, so it will truncate the descriptions to 13 letters.  If you have a newer version of QuickBooks, this is not an issue, and so you may want to change that length limit on the QuickBooks tab of the Company Setup screen in Camelot to be something like 40 (Misc/Setup > Company/Misc Info > QuickBooks tab > Max Item Length box).