Repairing QuickBooks Point of Sale Financial Exchange

By far the most common QuickBooks Point of Sale support call that I get is for a broken financial exchange. So I decided to post these instructions to help you correct the problem yourself, should you find yourself in this situation.

In these instructions I’ll refer to QuickBooks Point of Sale as “POS” and QuickBooks financial software (Pro, Premier and Enterprise) as “QB”. These instructions are based on version 10 of POS and the 2011 version of QB, but should apply just as well to the last several versions of both products.

Experienced users will note that there’s more than one way to fix a broken financial exchange. Here I’ve tried to include a complete set of instructions that covers 99% of the cases that I encounter. If you’re not experience with setting up financial exchange, it’s best to perform the instructions exactly as written.

By the way, this discussion does not cover Remote Data Sharing, which I never use. If you are using RDS I’d encourage you to try this method instead.

How POS communicates with QB

First a brief review of how POS talks to QB. It’s important to understand that POS does not connect to your QB data directly. POS actually talks to the QB software on your POS server, which in turn connects to your QB data file, wherever it is located on your network. This is true regardless of whether you have QB open.

This also means that if you have your QB data on a computer other than your POS server (such as in the back office), and you only have 1 QB license, you’ll need to close QB on the back office computer in order to follow these instructions, and also whenever you run End of Day.

Initial Troubleshooting

Before doing anything with POS, we need to verify that you can run QB on your POS server. Start QB on the POS server and log in as admin. If you have more than one QB company file on your network make sure you are connected to the right one. An easy way to do this is to look at your check register to make sure all the latest transactions are there.

If you’re unable to open QB with the correct company file, contact your bookkeeper or IT service provider for assistance. This must be fixed before we can get POS financial exchange working.

If QB opens normally, stay logged in for now. After financial exchange has been repaired you should no longer need to start QB in order to run End of Day or to update QB from POS.

Remove the Old Connection

This is not required in all cases, but can prevent problems under certain circumstances. These steps are performed in QB, and are only necessary if POS has previously connected to this QB file. This will not affect any POS data that was previously sent to QB.

1. You’ll need to be in single-user mode for the following steps, but for normal operation leave QB in multi-user mode. You can make this change under the File menu.
2. Select “Preferences” under the “Edit” menu. Click “Integrated Applications” on the left, then the “Company Preferences” tab ontop. Highlight “QuickBooks Point of Sale” and click “Remove”.
3. In rare cases QuickBooks Point of Sale may be listed more than once, so be sure to remove all instances.
4. Stay logged in to QB on the POS server for now.

Establish a New Connection

1. Log in to POS as sysadmin
2. Click “Financial Center” under the “Financial” menu. Click “Show Advanced Options”, then “Set up QuickBooks Connection Now”.
3. If you have previously connected to QB you may see a screen asking whether you want to “Continue to use this company file” or “Let me choose a new company file”. I always select “Let me choose a new company file”, because I’ve seen cases where the other option just doesn’t work. Note that choosing “new” does not affect your data in any way.
4. You will be prompted to start QB. You should already be logged in as admin, so click “Next”.
5. If all goes well, you’ll see a “Congratulations” message. Click “Finish”, then “Close”.

At this point you can send POS data to QBF by running End of Day or by selecting “Update QuickBooks” from the “Financial” menu.

NOTE: If connecting an establish POS system to an established QB file for the first time

I recommend connecting POS to QB as soon as you start using it, but some people prefer to take things one step at a time and set up the automatic financial exchange later. After 30 years in the software business I’ve learned that this is good advice in other scenarios, but in the case of QuickBooks Point of Sale if often causes more trouble than it’s worth.

If you have a lot of data in POS that has not been sent to QB, and you’ve been entering sales data into QB manually, then the first time you run a financial exchange you’re going to get all of the historical POS data sent to QB, which could result in duplicate or redundant entries.

In order to avoid this, you should create a “dummy” QB file and run your first financial exchange into that. This could take a while if there’s a lot of history in POS, so I prefer to do it when the store is closed. Then set up a connection to your “real” QB file and do the following in POS:

1. Click “Financial Center” under the “Financial” menu.
2. Click “Show Advanced Options”
3. Click “Recover Data Now”
4. You will be prompted for a date range. The Start Date should be the first date for which you did NOT enter sales data manually into QB. The End Date is usually today’s date.
5. Follow the rest of the instructions that are displayed and the selected data will be sent to QB.

I hope you find this information useful. Please submit comments or contact me directly with any questions or suggestions.

Filed in: QuickBooks, QuickBooks Point of Sale