Intuit Introduces Salesforce for QuickBooks

On September 7 Intuit announced the release of a new application in the Intuit App Center that integrates QuickBooks (Windows desktop and online editions) with Salesforce.com CRM. We heard rumors about this back in March, with few details, so as someone who’s heavily involved in custom programming for both QuickBooks and Salesforce.com I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on this product.

What follows is a brief explanation of CRM, Salesforce.com, and my initial impressions of the integration.

What is CRM?

CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”. At the risk of oversimplifying, a CRM tool helps sales teams track the progress of leads through the sales funnel. Most of these tools have additional features, such as the ability to import leads, capture leads from your web site, convert leads or opportunities into orders, send emails to contacts, create reports, etc. There are many CRM tools available, many of which are web-based, and several of which integrate with QuickBooks.

What is Salesforce.com?

Salesforce is really 2 things: A CRM tool and a cloud-based development platform.

Salesforce is one of the most popular web-based CRM tools in use today, and is used by companies of all sizes (Dell, Toyota, and Prudential, just to toss out a few big names). In fact, one of the big advantages of web-based services like Salesforce is scalability; it works just as well for a large multinational company as for a small family business. Salesforce CRM is also highly customizable, allowing you to track information unique to your business, define custom email templates, create workflow and approval processes, etc.

In addition to being a CRM tool, Salesforce is also a great platform (in my opinion, the best platform) for creating custom applications in the cloud. In addition to the customization features available to non-programmers, it provides a full-featured cloud-based database (database.com) and Java-like programming language (Apex) so that developers can create just about any kind of application imaginable. It’s also possible to leave out the CRM and just use other applications, at a lower monthly cost. Custom applications can be developed for a single customer (which is where I spend a lot of my time), and there are thousands of “mass market” applications available in the Salesforce AppExchange.

QuickBooks Integration

OK, so what does the integration do? There’s a good explanation in Intuit’s App Center, but some of the essential features are:

• Visibility to Leads within both systems
• Sync Salesforce Accounts with QuickBooks Customers
• Visibility to QuickBooks Customer details (including Estimates, Sales Orders, Invoices, etc.) in Salesforce.
• The ability to create QuickBooks transactions from Salesforce data. For example, when a Salesforce Opportunity is won, it can generate an Invoice in QuickBooks.
• Sync the QuickBooks Item list with Salesforce Products.

Pricing and Free Trial

Salesforce comes in various editions depending on your needs. Salesforce for QuickBooks works with the Group and Professional editions, which are the most popular for smaller businesses. The Group edition has a promotional price of $18/month/user (normally $28) and and Professional is $60/month/user (normally $70). Salesforce without the QuickBooks integration is $15 and $65. A free trial is available without requiring a credit card, so it’s easy to sign up and start exploring.

Salesforce also has an Enterprise and Unlimited edition. So far I haven’t determined whether it’s possible to use Salesforce for QuickBooks with these editions. More on this later.

By the way, as of this writing there are 2 Salesforce integration applications from Intuit in the Intuit App Center. “Salesforce for QuickBooks” is the one you want. I have no idea where the other one came from, and it doesn’t even have a “buy” link. I guess it’s just there to confuse us.

Learning Salesforce

It’s important to note that Salesforce for QuickBooks doesn’t eliminate the learning curve needed to use either product. Even though the concept of Salesforce CRM seems pretty straightforward to me today, I did need to invest some time in learning how to use it. There’s excellent contextual help on every page, and Salesforce for QuickBooks comes pre-populated with sample data to help you explore Salesforce.

I highly recommend exploring the sample data before connecting Salesforce to your live QuickBooks file. Key areas include Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities. (You’ll find the ubiquitous Kristy Abercrombie under Leads.) Click on a tab (Leads, for example) and you’ll see records that you’ve worked with recently. If you’re just getting started, you won’t see anything, so click the “Go” button next to the drop-down list at the top (for example, “All Open Leads”) to see more records. Click on an item in the Name column to bring up the details for that record.

Several of these screens will have a “Help for this Page” link on the right side of the page, where you can get more information about that area of Salesforce. Again, you should take some time to get comfortable with Salesforce and the sample data before “going live”.

Who Should Use It?

This is where it gets interesting. We’ll have to see how this all plays out, but it seems to me that Salesforce for QuickBooks overlaps with several existing solutions. So far it appears that what Salesforce for QuickBooks does, it does very well, but you can’t create additional integration options (like employee time tracking). But if the combination of Salesforce for QuickBooks and the AppExchange meets your needs, then Salesforce for QuickBooks may be a good option for you.

There are also several other players in the QuickBooks-CRM arena. The one I’m most familiar with is Method Integration, which includes an excellent integration with QuickBooks and is highly customizable. There are several other CRM solutions that integrate with QuickBooks, and I’ve heard good things about them, but I don’t have enough knowledge about them to discuss them here. (Other CRM vendors: I welcome your comments here.)

As a developer of custom applications, I see a limation with Salesforce for QuickBooks because the Group and Professional editions of Salesforce don’t allow me to develop custom applications and customized integrations with QuickBooks. However, many customers won’t need that level of customization, so Salesforce for QuickBooks might be sufficient.

There are also several existing tools that can be used to integrate QuickBooks and Salesforce, including Dell Boomi, DBSync, and Pervasive. I’ve also developed custom integration programs for my clients, but at the moment my favorite solution is DBSync (please contact me for more information). These tools are all subscription-based, with Boomi being by far the most expensive for custom solutions, so you would have to pay an ongoing fee in addition to your setup costs and the Salesforce subscription.

Summary

I’m a big fan of both QuickBooks and Salesforce, so I don’t think you can go wrong with Salesforce for QuickBooks if you’re looking for a CRM solution that integrates with QuickBooks. But before you commit, take some time to think about whether you will want to customize Salesforce and sync other types of data with QuickBooks (such as vendor bills or employee time entries). If that’s the case, then you might need to use the Enterprise edition of Salesforce and one of the other integration tools. Method Integration might also be a good alternative, depending on your needs.