Cost Codes are an essential part of syncing your BuildBook account to your QuickBooks Online account. Cost Codes work like a plug with QuickBooks's Products and Services: each Cost Code should be paired to a single, unique Product and Service.
In BuildBook, Cost Codes are grouped into Cost Categories. Price Book items are also grouped into Cost Codes.
When BuildBook pushes a bill, expense, or invoice to QuickBooks Online, it looks in your QuickBooks Sync settings to find the QuickBooks Product/Service each Cost Code is matched to. These products and services then appear on the bill, expense, or invoice in QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Online Products and Services can be pointed into different accounts in your chart of accounts.
This allows you to automate much of your bookkeeping: your budget line items containing cost codes are matched to products and services which are grouped into larger income and expense accounts. (Sometimes, these accounts are referred to as "Categories" in QuickBooks Online.)
Cost Codes should be matched between QBO and BuildBook for QBO to properly integrate your data. You will need to export your existing Cost Codes from BuildBook and import them to your QBO account.
Bills, Expenses, and Invoices with unmatched cost codes will not push to QuickBooks Online.
Below are the key steps to take to successfully match your BuildBook Cost Codes to QuickBooks Online!
Export BuildBook Cost Codes
In your BuildBook Accounting Settings click the Cost Codes tab
Click Get Started (if you've been to this page before, skip this step)
Click Export Cost Codes (if you have some matched codes already, you can export only unmatched cost codes)
Import Cost Codes to QBO
Open a new tab and log into QBO.
Click the gear icon in the top right
From Sales, select Products and Services
Click the green arrow to the right of the New button
Select Import
Choose the downloaded BuildBook CSV
Click Next
The next screen about field mapping can be skipped
Click Next
Verify that all cost codes expected to appear in the last step
The red QTY column can be ignored.
IMPORTANT: CHECK "BUY" FOR ALL COST CODES AND SET ALL TYPES TO "SERVICE"
Import into QBO
If you make a mistake during the import, we don't recommend deleting products/services in QuickBooks Online.
Instead, use the "Unmatch" button in BuildBook (under the three dots next to a matched cost code) to remove matches and use the "Override" checkbox when re-uploading into QuickBooks Online.
Match Cost Codes in BuildBook
Finally, BuildBook will look for the products and services you just uploaded and pair them to your cost codes:
Return to BuildBook and click the Automatch button
All cost codes should now have read-only values in the QuickBooks Product/Service Name column
You'll know you've completed this step when you see a blue (1) bubble on the Projects tab in QuickBooks Settings.
Any time a new cost code is added, you must return to this page and choose "Export Unmatched Cost Codes" to repeat the process of importing the new codes into QBO, returning to BuildBook, and Automatching the codes.
Archived cost codes cannot be matched and never (at this time) appear in the QBO syncing process.
Projects with archived cost codes must update those cost codes to active codes to sync with QBO (even if they were matched and synced previously)
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