Both ways means the payment comes back.
Invoices, credit notes and supplier bills go out to QuickBooks. Payments read back, match the invoice and flip it to paid. Container and air waybill milestones land on the shipment, and a document can be read into fields for a person to check.
Three things sit behind this switch and they are not the same kind of thing. One is a two-way connection, one reads in and never writes back, and one is not a connection at all. The page says which is which.
The payment is entered once, in the place the bookkeeper already works.
Out is the easy half and every system does it. The half that decides whether anyone keeps using it is what happens when the money arrives — and what happens when the money arrives without saying which invoice it belongs to.
Paid is a fact, not a checkbox.
While an invoice is past terms, the delivery order for that customer is locked. That lock is only worth having if the moment the customer pays, this side finds out. Reading the payment back is what makes the rest of the credit control reliable — otherwise somebody has to remember to unlock it, and sooner or later somebody does not.
The books stay in QuickBooks
There is no chart of accounts here, no bank reconciliation and no month-end close. This system knows what it billed and what it was paid. The accountant keeps the ledger where it is already kept.
Connected is a word used here for one thing only.
Most integration pages describe a downloaded file and a paste-in screen with the same verb they use for a live two-way link. The buyer then finds out in week three. Each of the three items here is therefore given the verb it has earned.
QuickBooks
Documents out, payments back, and the invoice on this side changes as a result. This is the only thing on the page that writes to another system and reads from it.
Tracking
Container and air waybill milestones arrive and land on the shipment. Nothing goes the other way. The credentials behind it are held once for the server, so this is not a place where each company on the server signs in with its own carrier account.
Document reading
A file is read into fields for a person to look at. Nothing is queried, nothing is subscribed to, and no other company is involved. Describing it as an integration would overstate it.
The connections that are not here.
A payment flipping an invoice, shown live.
An invoice is raised on a demonstration shipment, sent to a QuickBooks sandbox and paid on that side, and the balance on this side can be seen going to zero without anybody touching it. The unmatched list is then shown, because that is the part the office will live with day to day.