Power BI integration with QuickBooks can significantly elevate your business intelligence capabilities, allowing you to visualize and analyze your financial data more efficiently.
Power BI, a powerful data visualization tool from Microsoft, helps you create interactive dashboards and reports, while QuickBooks, an accounting software, manages your financial transactions and accounting operations. By integrating these two platforms, you can deliver an insightful financial report.
In this blog, I will walk you through three simple steps required for seamless integration of Power BI with QuickBooks. Whether you’re a small business owner, a financial analyst, or a data enthusiast, this guide will help you learn about tools to optimize your financial data analysis.
Prerequisites
- A QuickBooks Online Account.
- Access to the QuickBooks Online connector that uses the QuickBooks ODBC Driver.
- Working knowledge of Power BI.
- Working knowledge of Databases and Data Warehouses.
Load Data from Quickbooks Time to BigQuery
Load Data from Quickbooks Time to Snowflake
Load Data from Quickbooks Time to Databricks
Methods to Set up QuickBooks Power BI Integration
Now that you have a basic understanding of QuickBooks and Power BI, let’s discuss how you can perform QuickBooks Online Data Analysis with Power BI. There are 2 methods you can use to set up QuickBooks Power BI Integration to analyze QuickBooks Online data with Power BI:
Method 1: Manual QuickBooks Power BI Integration
In this method, you use the QuickBooks Power BI Online Connector to connect your QuickBooks Online account so that you can view, analyze and report your company data on Power BI. The QuickBooks Online Connector leverages the QuickBooks ODBC Driver, which is shipped along with Power BI Desktop.
To do this, you need to have a QuickBooks Online account, username, and password. Your account must also support the Import functionality. Once you have done all this, you can follow the steps given below:
Step 1: Connect to your QuickBooks Online Account
To connect with QuickBooks Online, go to the Get Data Dialog Box and search for QuickBooks in the Search box, and select QuickBooks Online (Beta) from the product-specific data connector list and click on Connect. This is shown below.
Preview Connector Box – QuickBooks Power BI
Select Continue in the Preview Connector message.
Preview Connector Box
Step 2: Sign in to your QuickBooks Online Account
Select the Sign In option to log in to your QuickBooks Account and enter your QuickBooks credentials. In some cases, you will need to perform 2FA (2 Factor Authentication) as well. This is shown below.
Sign In Dialog box
Entering Username and Password of your QuickBooks Account
Step 3: Choose your Company to set up Power BI
Select your company in the next dialog box and click on Next as shown below.
Selecting your Company
Step 4: Connect your QuickBooks Online Account and Power BI
Once you have successfully signed in, click on Connect to connect your QuickBooks account with Power BI as shown below.
Connected to your QuickBooks Account
Step 5: Select the Tables you want to Load or Transform on Power BI
Once you have successfully established a connection with Power BI, navigate to the Navigator Dialog Box and select the QuickBooks Tables you want to load or transform as shown below.
Navigator Box
That’s it! You have successfully set up QuickBooks Power BI Integration using the manual method!
Some of the Limitations of this Method include:
- You must have a QuickBooks Online account to use this method.
- You cannot use this method if your company is not listed on the QuickBooks Company page.
- In case your QuickBooks Online account does not have an Import capability, you cannot use this method.
To overcome these limitations and integrate QuickBooks Online and Power BI quickly and efficiently, you can use Hevo’s No-code Data Pipelines. Check out the next method to understand how Hevo can help you integrate them within minutes.
Method 2: Using Hevo Data to Set Up QuickBooks Power BI Integration
Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline helps you directly transfer data from QuickBooks and 150+ data sources to Business Intelligence tools such as Power BI, Data Warehouses, or a destination of your choice in a completely hassle-free & automated manner.
Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only loading data from your desired source but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
Hevo takes care of all your data preprocessing needs and lets you focus on key business activities and draw a much powerful insight on how to generate more leads, retain customers, and take your business to new heights of profitability.
It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. Moreover, Hevo makes it easier to analyze QuickBooks Online data with Power BI.
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Hevo focuses on three simple steps to set up QuickBooks Power BI Integration:
- Extract: Connect Hevo with QuickBooks Online and various other data sources by simply logging in with your credentials and extract information seamlessly.
- Integrate: Consolidate your data from several sources in Hevo’s Managed Data Warehouse Platform and automatically transform it into an analysis-ready form.
- Visualize: Connect Hevo with your desired BI tool such as Power BI and easily visualize your data to gain better insights.
Check out what makes Hevo amazing:
- Secure: Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
- Schema Management: Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects the schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
- Minimal Learning: Hevo, with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
- Hevo Is Built To Scale: As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
- Incremental Data Load: Hevo allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
- Live Support: The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
- Live Monitoring: Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.
Method 3: Using Excel
The steps involved are:
- The first step is to head on to on the top right corner of the report and select Export -> Export to Excel. Keep in mind the location where the exported file is saved.
- In the next step, open the Power BI Desktop, click Get Data, and open ‘your file name” exported from QuickBooks-> select Excel from the options given.
- Find your file from the list provided. Once you click on that, your exported file sets up a connection with Power BI.
- As given in the screenshot above, the data from the Excel file shows up. You can use a Power Query tool in Excel for preparing your data. Once its done, next step is to load to Power BI.
- QuickBooks interface connector when using the QuickBooks interface.
- Select Get Data on Power BI desktop. Choose QuickBooks Online (Beta), select Connect. Next, you will need to “Sign in” to QuickBooks Online.
- Using Navigator, you can select the tables you want to load. Select Load.
After this, you can go back to the Visualization view. Then, choose the Relationship view. A relationship will be formed by default by detecting like fields in each table.
PowerBI and QuickBooks Online: Business Made Simple
QuickBooks Online has become a popular cloud-based accounting service.
With Power BI content pack for QuickBooks Online, you can easily visualize your financial data and uncover new insights into cash flow, profitability, and customers.
Companies in the financial services industry use Power BI today to track the latest balance sheet and profit and loss data and gain insights into delivering the best service to their customers. Power BI helps gather rich and detailed operations data to obtain a complete view of customer behavior, all within a single tool. Staff can combine account activity data with data from customer satisfaction surveys, wait times, and more to understand and improve the customer experience. The reporting data is refreshed each night so staff can see an up-to-date view of the previous day, week, month, or year.
Additional Resources on Quickbooks Power BI
Conclusion
- This article gave you a step-by-step guide on setting up QuickBooks Power BI Integration. It also gave you an overview of both QuickBooks Online and Power BI along with their features.
- In addition, QuickBooks Online Data Analysis with Power BI will help your company to generate insights that will aid in your business growth. Because, you can make use of Power BI’s features to analyze and report better.
Overall, QuickBooks Power BI Integration can be set up using either the manual method or by using Hevo, but if time and ease of use are a parameter for you, using automated data platforms like Hevo help you to set up QuickBooks Power BI Integration seamlessly! Sign Up or a 14-day free trial
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does Quickbooks Online have a custom connector available for Microsoft Power Automate?
Yes, QuickBooks Online has a custom connector available for Microsoft Power Automate.
- How to integrate with QuickBooks API
Step 1: Sign up for a QuickBooks Developer Account
Step 2: Create an App
Step 3: Obtain API Keys
Step 4: Set Up OAuth 2.0 Authentication
Step 5: Make API Requests
Step 6: Handle Token Expiry
- Can Power BI reports be automated?
Yes, Power BI reports can be automated in several ways, for example, data refresh, report distribution, and triggering actions based on report insights.
- Can you use QuickBooks as an ERP?
No, QuickBooks cannot be used as an ERP. QuickBooks is primarily an accounting software. However, for small to medium-sized businesses, QuickBooks can be used as an ERP tool by integrating it with other software like inventory management, CRM, or project management tools.
Aakash is a research enthusiast who was involved with multiple teaming bootcamps including Web Application Pen Testing, Network and OS Forensics, Threat Intelligence, Cyber Range and Malware Analysis/Reverse Engineering. His passion to the field drives him to create in-depth technical articles related to data industry. He holds a Undergraduate Degree from Vellore Institute of Technology in Computer Science & Engineering with a Specialization in Information Security and is keen to help data practitioners with his expertise in the related topics.
