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The Next Phase of the IPP Journey

I’m super excited to share with you recent announcements we’ve made to make the Intuit Partner Platform and QuickBooks a truly open platform. It’s been a long journey, not without a few bumps along the way, but we are now in a position to deliver on the open platform that our small business customers want and that you, our developer community, have asked for.

A successful developer community is an important part of Intuit’s open platform strategy and we are more committed than ever to enable your success by making it easier to connect with our platform and reach millions of small business customers.

Last week at the Sleeter Conference, we announced the general availability of QuickBooks API V3 and a new business model.

  • QuickBooks API V3 is the global API platform that will allow you to integrate with QuickBooks Online in the US and in global markets. Just like QBO is going global, we’re enabling you, our partners, to go global with us by making our platform global.
  • We are eliminating the $5/month connection fee for QBO integration through the QuickBooks API. This means that Intuit will not charge you to build apps that work with QBO. 
  • We also announced the general release of Intuit Apps.com, our next generation apps store where small businesses can find community-generated content about apps and can find the right apps for their business. 

As part of these changes, we ask that new partners with apps for QuickBooks Desktop use the QuickBooks SDK to integrate. We will support the QuickBooks SDK with updates, and of course, there has never been a connection fee for integrating through the QuickBooks SDK.

Partners with existing apps for QuickBooks Desktop already using the QuickBooks API and some select future partners can continue with the Desktop API and will benefit from new pricing. ((We are reducing the $5/month connection fee for QBDT integrations through the QuickBooks API.  We will offer API access in packets of 200 connections for ~$1,000 annually.)

This is an exciting time for the Intuit Partner Platform and our developer community, so it is bittersweet for me to announce that I will be moving on to lead a new business unit for Intuit. It’s been a tremendous honor for me to work with you to get IPP to this stage and I’m leaving you in good hands for the next phase of the journey. Avi Golan will join as the new leader of the IPP business unit on November 13th. Avi spent the last 5+ years with Google, where he led organizations that helped large partners and external developers using AdWords API by building internal and external programs and open sourcing capabilities.

This is an exciting time to be a part of Intuit’s open platform. I look forward to seeing more of you build deeper integrations with QuickBooks, gain more exposure to small businesses through Apps.com, and produce the best apps in the small business industry around the world.

Alex Chriss

Vice President, Intuit Partner Platform.

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16 responses to “The Next Phase of the IPP Journey”

  1. Bob Roos Avatar
    Bob Roos

    We will support the QuickBooks SDK with updates

    And yet the front page of this site has two options: QuickBooks Online API and QuickBooks Account Data API. There is no mention of the QBXML SDK.

    Reply
  2. Blair Connolly Avatar
    Blair Connolly

    So… does this mean that if I want to continue to use the API for desktop that I have to pay for a minimum of 200 connections? Even if I only end up using 10? This means to me that the price really just went WAY up, not down. Please tell me I’m just reading this wrong.

    Reply
  3. David Leary Avatar
    David Leary

    @Bob – Thanks for the feedback. As you can imagine with an major shift in direction like this, we have a lot of documentation updates to catch up on.

    @Blair – Yes, your math is correct, but if your app is going to be listed on Apps.com wouldn’t you expect to have way more than 200 connections?

    Reply
  4. Blair Connolly Avatar
    Blair Connolly

    @David, well to be honest I’m just not sure. I would LOVE to have more than 200 connections but I had not really expected it in the coming year for my brand new app. I have a rather focused target audience and we have planned on a slow first year while we get our feet wet with our new app. So I suppose one question that I have is: what SHOULD I expect when we do get listed on apps.com?

    Reply
    1. Pearce Avatar
      Pearce

      @Blair To add a little context, you save money if you have 17 or more connections as compared to the previous pricing model.

      Reply
  5. David Leary Avatar
    David Leary

    @Blair – I send you an email, let setup a chat to discuss your specific app.

    Reply
  6. David Leary Avatar
    David Leary

    @Bob – FYI we just pushed a new version of the developer site LIVE, QuickBooks Desktop SDK is now at the top level left hand navigation menu. https://developer.intuit.com

    Reply
  7. Cody Caughlan Avatar
    Cody Caughlan

    I have an existing app using the v2 QB Desktop API with existing QB Desktop companies connected. However, just today I attempted to connect a new Desktop company but when I sign via the OAuth flow I am not offered the ability to connect to my app but am offered to create a QB Online account.

    Question: are new Desktop companies not allowed to use the OAuth sign up flow?

    Reply
    1. Pearce Avatar
      Pearce

      @Cody, Developers have two main options. They can connect to QuickBooks Online by using the QuickBooks Online API and/or they can connect to QuickBooks Desktop by using the QuickBooks Desktop SDK. I sent you an email directly about your specific situation.

      Reply
  8. Rob Wormald Avatar
    Rob Wormald

    I don’t often spout off in blog posts, but I have to agree with Blair Connolly.

    We are in the final stages of a YEAR of testing integration with Quickbooks Desktop, specifically the Enterprise version. We have written code to deal with QBD’s frankly atrocious V2 XML API, with the caveat that at some point at least we’d be able to move to V3 and work in JSON (I have written a Node.js connector for IPP which I had planned to open source.)

    I don’t know how you expect developers to trust you – at this point, I’m considering dropping any and all support for Quickbooks, because what’s to say you guys won’t change your mind again in 6 months?

    The whole concept of the IPP platform was that a developer like myself, who has no interest in dealing with SOAP based services (since you know, it’s the 21st century) could easily and cleanly integrate via a REST API. Telling me to “use the SDK” is laughable. I didn’t hire SOAP/WDSL developers, I hired people to deal with PROPER REST APIs.

    Instead of getting a team of developers together to FIX THE SYNC MANAGER (which again, in the 21st century doesn’t run properly on a server – so much for Enterprise…), you’re asking 3rd party developers to do your work for you and write our own integration with your archaic platform.

    I’m disgusted. The QBO product is nowhere near feature parity with the QBD product – it doesn’t even do basic Job costing (or even support the concept of a Job for that matter).

    Complete clusterfuck.

    Reply
    1. Pearce Avatar
      Pearce

      @Rob Appreciate the feedback and apologize you are faced with a complex situation.

      Based on your comment it sounds like you are an existing developer so you should not have to switch to the SDK unless you feel as though it is the best choice for you. We worked hard to take into consideration every developer use case and address them as reasonably as possible. In your use case we are giving you months to switch from V2 to V3 API (with JSON) and giving you months of advanced notice that we will not be expanding the V3 QBD API. We hope that this time allows you to choose your next steps with IPP. Feel free to reach out to me if any of this is unclear.

      Reply
  9. Rob Wormald Avatar
    Rob Wormald

    @pearce – I’ll continue this with you further if you could email me via this Inuit Account.

    Reply
  10. Jen Skibitsky Avatar
    Jen Skibitsky

    I sent an email to David about a week ago but did not receive a response. Can somebody please get back to me on this…

    I am a Developer for a SaaS provider offering a comprehensive CRM, Marketing and Project Management Suite. Our clients are mostly large financial firms. Many of them have been asking about Quickbooks integration for some time, and I am currently working on an integration that will allow them to transfer data in both directions: they can import their QBD customers into their CRM; and they can add customers, employees and time entries from their CRM to QBD.

    Most of our clients are using QBD, not QBO. Some of them are using a hosted QBD solution. After reading through your API documentation about a month ago, I decided that the best way to integrate would be to use the IPP REST APIs v2 and v3. I created an app and began testing various API calls to make sure they can accomplish everything I’ll need with this integration.

    However, now you have deprecated the REST APIs for QBD and are telling us to use the Desktop SDK. Unless I’m missing something, it appears that this solution won’t work for us, as we are an online SaaS provider and need our app to interact with our clients’ QBD data via Intuit Sync Manager.

    If I continue to develop my integration using the IPP REST APIs, even though they have been deprecated, will I still be able to move my app to production? I do not want to invest weeks of programming time on this app only to have it not work when I try to make it live. Also, each of my company’s clients access our system through their own domain. Will I need to create a separate Intuit app for every client and need to go through the security review process every time?

    There is also the question of billing. If each of our clients needs a separate app, are we going to be charged $1,000/year for 200 connections for each app? Even though each client will only be using a small handful of connections (or, most likely, just 1 or 2)? Is there any way to spread these 200 connections across all our clients’ apps?

    Thank you in advance for your help.
    -Jen

    Reply
    1. Pearce Avatar
      Pearce

      Jen, Sorry for the slow response. The changes have some developers confused on what their next steps should be. So we are all working hard to give the best advice for each specific situation.

      First you can feel free to email me if I don’t answer all your questions: pearce@intuit.com

      QBD REST API vs SDK – You can continue to use the QBD REST API as you are an existing developer, however it is important to know that beyond the existing road-map new features will not be added. The QBD SDK has a tool called the web connector which acts much like sync manager. The major difference is the web connector syncs directly with your app instead of with Intuit servers.

      If you choose to continue to use the REST APIs then you can move to production the same way as you would in the past. I am not 100% sure about your need to create create a new app for each client as that is something we never supported with the REST APIs. Please reach out to me or submit a ticket so we can better understand your situation.

      The billing details for QBD REST API are still being finalized. Pay attention to the blog for more details in the near future.

      Reply
  11. krishna banala Avatar
    krishna banala

    @pearce
    We are integrating our salesforce application with Quickbooks desktop enterprise edition using QBD V2 REST API and working on the same from last 4 months. we came to know that QBD V2 got deprecated and V3 is available. in one of responses below you have mentioned that we can still use QBD REST API V2 as we are existing developers.

    “QBD REST API vs SDK – You can continue to use the QBD REST API as you are an existing developer, however it is important to know that beyond the existing road-map new features will not be added.”

    in this process we are trying to move our Developer app to production. we have submitted the app for review but we didn’t get any response for the review and the App publishing page is showing us the below status.

    “Your App Card has been submitted for review. You cannot make further changes until a decision has been taken.”

    we have submitted it for review long back and we didn’t get any response for the same. could you please suggest us how to proceed further to move our App to production.

    we just want to move to Production and don’t want it to be in App Center.

    Thanks,
    Krishna

    Reply
    1. Pearce Avatar
      Pearce

      @Krishna – I will look into your app to see what the current status is.
      To clarify one point, as an existing QBD API developer you can continue to use the QBD API. You will need to move to the V3 version of the API before the the V2 API is deprecated. We do not have a timeline yet as to when V2 will be deprecated, but it will be out soon so please keep an eye on the blog.

      Reply

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