Many of our kitchens use QuickBooks Online to manage their budgeting and accounting. Because each kitchen sets up their chart of accounts differently, we want to provide some general best practices to help make reconciliation of your Food Corridor revenue data with your QuickBooks Online easy.
The easiest option is to integrate your QuickBooks Online account with your Food Corridor account. Here is why the integration is so helpful. The integration allows you to simply export your paid client bills to QuickBooks and map each item in a sales receipt to the QB account of your choosing. Here is how to get it started.
The integration is only for QuickBooks Online (not Desktop), and available only for US accounts. If this means the integration is not an option for you, or if you decide not to utilize the integration, the information below may assist your process.
General Process
Every kitchen is a little different with how they set up their QuickBooks account. Most kitchens on The Food Corridor reconcile their books after the 1st of the following month. This way all report data is complete at the time of reconciliation. (Note that Stripe transfers payments into a US kitchen's bank account after 2 days (3 days in Canada, with PADs payments taking a bit longer), and ACH payments may fail after another day or 2 and be reversed.)
Since The Food Corridor generates client bills for bookings, plans, storage, fees, and credits, there is no need to recreate invoices in QuickBooks. Our Payments reports provided in the Reporting tab can be downloaded as.CSVs, sorted, and imported or entered into QuickBooks Online once a month or as needed.
Most kitchens that don't have the integration opt to enter the total revenue per category numbers into QuickBooks each month. These categories often include storage revenue, kitchen time revenue, and kitchen fee revenue, minus the Food Corridor platform fees. This helps keep your process simple and organized by revenue type. (The integration does this for you at a more minute level, with charge type mapping.)
Helpful Reports on The Food Corridor
The Reporting tab provides you with information to make reconciliation easier.
The report most commonly used for QuickBooks reconciling is Total Revenue by Type.
Monthly Revenue by Type report. This report includes monthly totals for each category that has been successfully billed (i.e. it does not include any declined billings or unpaid amounts). The Total Revenue report groups charges by when they were actually billed. So for example, the July revenue would include one-time fees, monthly bills, and hourly bookings that were billed in July, as well as any previously past-due payments that successfully went through in July. Most kitchens only use this report. This report is helpful for entering total revenues by category into QuickBooks Online, that were collected that month.
If you need to dive in deeper, some kitchens also find the following reports helpful:
Billed Line Items report. This report includes month and year, bill #, client name, line item charge type, charge description, billed-at-date, bill status, and Stripe payment ID. The Billed Line Items report groups charges by the month they are associated with under the first column. So for example, a one-time fee that was originally set to be charged in May and became past due, and was then finally successfully billed in July, would still be associated with May. To see which line items were successfully billed in July, you will want to sort by the "Billed At" column. This report is helpful if you need to verify specific line item amounts/charge types and billing dates per client.
Payment Details report: This report helps you track and reconcile client payments. Many client payments include multiple charges on a bill (e.g. storage, monthly fee, billing plan, etc.). Where the Billed Line Items report breaks down each of these separate charges by charge type, the Payment Details report shows you the details for a client's total bill and payment. The report shows, for each payment: the bill number, bill creation date, amount owed vs. amount paid, payment status, platform fee, tax, net revenue, payment date, Stripe payment ID, payment type, any payment notes on manual payments, and Stripe payout date. This report is helpful if you need to compare clients' payments in Stripe with your bank statements.
Monthly Revenue report. This report includes totals for gross revenue, tax (if applicable), TFC platform fee, and net revenue for the month, for payments that have been successfully billed. Similar to the Monthly Revenue by Type report, this report groups charges by when they were actually billed. So for example, the July revenue would include one-time fees, monthly bills, and hourly bookings that were billed in July, as well as any previously past-due payments that successfully went through in July. This report is helpful for entering other totals into QuickBooks.
Custom report fields. These can help you organize and tag your clients for any additional client tracking you may need (such as a QuickBooks ID).
A Few Examples from our Kitchens
Example #1
Kitchen A used to break down each Stripe transaction and attribute it to a specific kitchen user each time money was transferred to his bank account from Stripe until they learned that their ‘powers that be’ only needed the totals. So, the kitchen simply classifies their charges as “kitchen rent” and “storage rent” as a split transaction in QuickBooks each month. They use the Total Revenue by Type report to pull these numbers by category. For their own kitchen utilization knowledge and forecasting, they use other Food Corridor reports to track client-specific items, such as kitchen times, charges, bookings, etc. per client.
Example #2
Kitchen B compares Stripe transfers and matches them up with TFC bills/clients because tracking that user detail in QuickBooks is necessary for them. To do this, they post their Stripe transactions into a general QB account, and then use the Billed Line Items report or Payment Details report to confirm on or after the 1st of the following month. The Payment Details report offers quicker reconciliation, whereas the Billed Line Items report offers more detail if more investigation is needed.
Other Integrations
QuickBooks Online
If you use QuickBooks Online and The Food Corridor integration is not an option for you, there are a handful of options listed on Stripe here that may help, such as Sush.io, Greenback, Business Payments, Commerce Sync, and PennyPipe. You may also check out Zapier's Stripe and QuickBooks integration automation. Please note that The Food Corridor is not familiar with these companies and cannot offer endorsements or recommendations.
QuickBooks Desktop
If you use QuickBooks Desktop, check your Stripe dashboard's Data Settings to see if the IIF file will work for your needs, via a direct import into QuickBooks. Here is more that can be helpful to get you started.