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Get started with QuickBooks Front Office
QuickBooks Front Office automatically texts your field employees when a job wraps up, turns their reply into a ready-to-review invoice draft, and so you can invoice as soon as the job is done — with no extra app or login for your team.
If you run a field service business — landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cleaning, and similar trades — Front Office closes the gap between a job getting done and an invoice going out. Connect your team's job calendar, add your field employees, and QuickBooks does the rest: it texts the employee who did the job, turns their reply into a draft invoice, and lets you review it before it's sent.
Note: Front Office is currently in beta on QuickBooks Online.
What you'll need
Before you set up Front Office, make sure you have the following.
QuickBooks Online.
[Optional] A Google Calendar with your team's job schedule already on it. If you don’t use Google Calendar, you can skip this step and manually enter your schedule.
Your field employee's names and phone numbers
Your field employees' consent to receive job-related text messages — you'll confirm this as you add them.
You can find QuickBooks Front Office in your bookmarks on the left hand side menu.
Connect your Google Calendar
Front Office reads your team's job schedule from Google Calendar so it knows when a job is expected to finish.
Open Front Office in QuickBooks Online via email or your bookmarks.
Select Connect calendar.
Sign in to the Google account that holds your team's job schedule, then allow QuickBooks Online to view it.
Choose the calendar with your team's job schedule, then continue.
You can revisit your calendar integration later in Manage settings -> Calendar integration.
Add your field employees
Add each employee you want QuickBooks Online to text when their jobs finish. Only the assigned employee is texted for a job — admins aren't copied on these texts in this version.
Select Add field employees.
For each employee, enter their name and US mobile phone number. Email is optional.
Confirm each field employee's consent to receive job-related text messages.
Save your changes.
Your schedule
You can manage your schedule on the Job Schedule page. Here you can create new jobs, assign them to field employees, and add details, including customer and product/service.
You can see how many jobs need to be assigned to a field tech, how many invoices are ready to review, and if there are any unmatched employee notes.
How the text-to-invoice flow works
About 10 to 15 minutes after a scheduled job ends, QuickBooks Online texts the assigned employee asking how the job went, who the job was for, and what work they completed. If they don't reply, QuickBooks bundles any outstanding jobs into a single summary text later in the day.
When an employee replies that a job is complete, QuickBooks updates the job with the relevant details (customer name and product/services performed), then drafts an invoice. You'll be notified via morning SMS and emails to review the draft before it's sent to your customer — QuickBooks never sends an invoice on its own.
Note: the end of day text message is sent at 5pm in the time zone the company is in.
Unmatched employee notes
Unmatched employee notes are where messages from field techs come in that couldn’t be mapped to an existing job. You are able to match these to existing jobs, or create a new job if one doesn’t exist yet.
Review and send an invoice draft
When you're notified that a new invoice draft is ready, open it from Front Office.
Review the customer, job details, line items, and price.
Edit anything that needs it.
Send the invoice to your customer as you normally would.
If there are items that QuickBooks was unable to resolve, we will notify you with what needs to be addressed before you send or save the invoice.
Admin Notifications
You’ll be notified each morning via SMS and email of outstanding actions: Invoice draft ready, Incomplete assignment, Unmatched field note, and Field tech unassigned. Links will be provided for you to complete the action.
Result
Your field employees are set up to text in job updates, and you'll start receiving invoice drafts ready for your review as soon as a job is marked complete.
What Front Office doesn't do yet
Keep these limits in mind while this feature is new.
Only the assigned employee is texted for a job — admins aren't copied on the text thread yet.
Recurring invoices and estimates don't work with Front Office yet.
Front Office doesn't yet support employees who work across more than one company file.
All-day jobs, and multi-day jobs are not yet supported.
Front Office texts US mobile numbers only.
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