I am frustrated with Quickbooks Online Import invoice functionality. I'm trying to save time by importing many invoices into Quickbooks Online using the Import Invoices via CSV function.
Within QB Online I've created products that include the following variables: NAME, SKU, DESCRIPTION, CATEGORY. The output to CSV from my other system contains the same variables with exact match data as compared to what's found in QB.
The problem is that despite having exact match data, importing invoices fails due to the message: "These products/services don't exist in QuickBooks."
The reason for the above appears to be:
Products saved in QB Online contain fields for Name, Description, Sku, Category among others. To import an invoice, QB Online MAP FIELDS component is used to map relevant fields to each other (from CSV to QB) and includes mapping NAME and DESCRIPTION fields; but not SKU or CATEGORY fields.
To make matters worse, once a user Maps the 2 accepted fields (NAME / DESCRIPTION), the process fails due to the error message noted above when NAME field contains exact match data. Items only map properly if the NAME field within the CSV File contains data of type:"CATEGORY:NAME". In other words, a product with the name "Refried Beans" will only be matched properly if the imported invoice contains a product named "Beans:RefriedBeans". This makes absolutely no sense; the likelyhood of any exported data containing a product name in that format is remote to say the least.
It would make much more sense if the MAP FIELDS component simply had additional drop downs allowing users to map for CATEGORY or SKU instead of asking users to create a fake product name. My preference would be to be able to MAP Fields simply by SKU alone, disregarding NAME, DESCRIPTION, CATEGORY altogether; given I already have the products in QB.
I recognize that I can certainly match products by taking my CSV and manually amending it to add category into the product name however that is a time consuming process and entirely defeats the purpose of importing in the first place.
Am I missing something? Please fix the import function.
