When establishing the connection between Katana and QuickBooks Online (QBO), you'll be given two main choices for how you want the connection to be established. The option you choose depends on what works best for your accounting principles and how you use Katana with Quickbooks Online.
Simple accounting vs. Accounting with inventory
Simple accounting
This option uses a revenue account for invoices created from Sales orders (SO) and an expense account for bills created from Purchase orders. With Simple accounting, you can choose to use both invoicing and billing or only one of them. This setup won't update the inventory balance in QuickBooks Online Online. All purchases sent from Katana to QBO will be put into the chosen expense account in the income statement.
Accounting with inventory
With this option, you can choose an inventory account for purchases, a revenue account for invoices, and an expense account for the cost of sales. Bills created from Purchase orders in Katana use the chosen inventory account, so purchases increase the balance of inventory account. When an invoice is created for a delivered SO, a journal entry for the cost of this sale is also sent from Katana to QBO. This journal entry credits the inventory account and debits the expense account. If the invoice is created for a SO that isn't fully delivered, the journal entry is pushed to accounting when the SO status is marked Delivered in Katana.
Who should decide which option?
There are both positives and negatives for either option depending on your workflows and accounting principles. When making the choice we recommend discussing it with your business' accountant.
NOTE: The integration doesn't yet have the functionality to send operation costs of manufacturing and Stock adjustments from Katana to QuickBooks Online. You can still record journal entries periodically in QBO based on Katana data to update your stock. Read more about how to do that.