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Comment by leftnode | Hacker News Reader

We just launched this and I can answer questions if anyone is interested.

MajorApi is a RESTful wrapper around QuickBooks. QuickBooks is notoriously difficult to work with. Yes, they do have some REST APIs you can use with their IPP platform, but for developers making custom QuickBooks integrations you're almost stuck using WebConnector.

WebConnector requires you to write your own SOAP server which is not fun. We've written a nice REST service on top of this, so all you have to do is download the WebConnector software from QuickBooks and install the .qwc file we provide, and you can start sending customers and invoices to QuickBooks in under 5 minutes.

Let us know if you have further questions. Thanks!

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As a developer and Texas-licensed CPA, this makes me so giddy. Is there an API for logging time yet? I'm working on a web app in that space and would love REST integration instead of a csv middleman

No time logging yet. We focused on what we perceived were the two biggest use cases: customers and invoices. Prioritizing our integrations next, we'll look into time clocking.

Similarly to aarondf, we have a bunch of CPA's who will want time clock, task, and projects in the API. We don't need realtime.

How are you recommending deployment of MajorApi for applications needing to read from Quickbooks? I've written a Quickbooks integration web service using the desktop SDK, not web connector, and ultimately we had to abandon any reads from Quickbooks in favor of essentially mirroring the data in a SQL database. Can the combination of MajorApi and web connector handle real-time QB reads under moderate load?

Right now when you create a new MajorApi QuickBooks Application, it reads in your items and sales reps so they can be references in invoices you create.

Then we have a database in the middle of the two because you can't have real time reads from QuickBooks with the WebConnector.

Edit: So to answer your question, there's no such thing as real time reads using the WebConnector. You have to send an XML query to QuickBooks which returns the data. We plan on integrating with QuickBooks online soon which will allow real time reads.

Thanks for making this. Is there a pricing structure or the like? If not how do you plan on making money?

Sure thing! We don't have one yet, and we're hoping to use this initial beta launch to determine best how to launch it.

I (and I'm sure many others) wrote something ugly in this space years ago in php and have spent much time since attempting to drown the remaining relevant neurons in whiskey. Good luck!

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