How does Project Insight Match and Link to QuickBooks Desktop Customers and Jobs

Overview

Project Insight syncs with QuickBooks Desktop by matching records using exact name comparisons — it maps QuickBooks customers to Project Insight companies, and QuickBooks jobs to Project Insight projects. Any discrepancy in naming between the two systems will cause a match failure, even if the records are otherwise identical. Project Insight maintains a "link" record for each company successfully mapped to a QuickBooks customer, and checking for that link is the fastest way to confirm whether the integration is working for a given record.

Prerequisites

• An active QuickBooks Desktop integration with Project Insight must be configured.
• The QuickBooks Web Connector must be installed and set up on the workstation where QuickBooks runs.
• Administrative access to both QuickBooks and Project Insight is required.

Instructions

Step 1: Confirm naming consistency between systems

1. Open QuickBooks and navigate to the Customer Center to review your customers and their associated jobs.
2. The top-level Customer name in QuickBooks (e.g., "Hargrove Institute of Technology") must match the Company Name in Project Insight exactly, including spacing, punctuation, abbreviations, and capitalization.
3. The Job nested beneath a Customer in QuickBooks (e.g., "Network Infrastructure Support") must match the Project Name in Project Insight exactly.
4. Do not rely on abbreviations or shortened versions of a name in one system if the other uses the full legal name. Standardize on one format across both systems before syncing.
5. Note that the integration does offer the option to match projects and jobs via the use of a custom field in QuickBooks Desktop.

Step 2: Verify the company link in Project Insight

6. Log in to Project Insight and click the three-bar menu icon in the upper-left corner to open the main navigation menu.
7. Scroll to the bottom of the menu and click Admin.
8. On the Admin page, click the Companies tile.
9. Click on the name of the company you want to inspect.
10. On the company detail page, scroll to the bottom and click the Links tab.
11. After the Web Connector has been run, if the company has been successfully mapped to QuickBooks, a link record will appear on that page. If the Links section is empty, the company has not been mapped and the sync will not work for that company or any of its child projects.

Notes

• A linked company is a prerequisite for any of its child projects to sync. If the company link is missing, associated projects will not sync regardless of whether the project names match.
• Abbreviations are a common source of mismatch. For example, "HIT" in QuickBooks will not match "Hargrove Institute of Technology" in Project Insight. Always use the full, consistent name in both systems.
• QuickBooks enforces a character length limit on certain fields. If a full legal name exceeds this limit, shorten it consistently in both systems so the match is preserved.
• It is best practice for the team responsible for entering new customers and projects to confirm naming conventions before saving records in either system.

Troubleshooting

• A customer or project is not syncing: Confirm that the company name in Project Insight and the customer name in QuickBooks are character-for-character identical. Copy the name from one system and paste it into the other to eliminate manual entry errors.
• The Links section is empty for a company: This confirms the company is not yet mapped. Correct any name mismatch between the two systems, then run the Web Connector to trigger a new sync attempt.
• The company link exists but the project is still not syncing: Once the company link is confirmed, investigate the project-level name match. Navigate to the specific project in Project Insight, click Edit Project, and verify that the project name matches the QuickBooks job name exactly.
• The job-level record is not syncing even though the customer syncs: If the parent company is not successfully matched, Project Insight will not attempt to match any of its child jobs. Resolve the company-level mismatch first, then re-run the sync.