During development of a recent point-of-sale / e-commerce package, I started researching ways of exporting data from a web-based application into QuickBooks. A decent tool called Web Connector allows QB to connect with a web source and share information, and there’s even what appears to be a very thorough PHP class for interfacing.

However, Web Connector is Windows-only. My client runs a Mac.

Disclaimer: Prepare to be disappointed.

My next choice was to use the Intuit-Interchange Format (IIF) files that QuickBooks has supported for importing/exporting data for years. It’s drawbacks include the need to manually export the files, reduced stability/security that comes with using text-based files, and the need to manually link various transactions once inside QB.

Having so many drawbacks isn’t a good start, and when I thought about how much manual work would be involved for the client if they wanted shipping, payments, sales, and customers all connected, I decided it would not be a good solution.

As expected, I found thousands of forum posts of people looking for some solution in PHP with IIF. To my surprise, there seemed to be absolutely no class, package, tutorial, or any proof that anyone had ever used PHP to generate IIF. I know folks have done it, but no one shared their code.

If I were to generate IIF, I’d have write the class from scratch.

Seeking some solution, any solution, I posted my own question on Stack Overflow, and even Twitter, and got exactly what I feared. More IIF, and more advice to avoid it. Intuit even recommends avoiding IIF because of how poor it is.

I have been unable to find any solution that works well. I’ve had to advise the client that the best option is to move to QuickBooks on Windows – running Windows in BootCamp/Virtualization mode on Mac. I’m not sure how this will turn out, because that’s an extra expense of Windows, and maybe a new QB license.

Intuit has released no information regarding porting web connector to Mac. QB was always a Windows-first-then-port type software package, so it’s not surprising.

If anyone has a solution, let me know.

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