Use the QuickBooks tab on the Affiliate Setup screen to define some of the settings that are needed for Keystone to be able to directly post closing fee and mortgage payments as well as donations to QuickBooks Pro.
Use the Company File field to enter the location of the QuickBooks file that both Keystone and QuickBooks will use. Click the button and locate the file.
If QuickBooks and the Company File are used by a single computer, simply locate the file on that computer. If your affiliate uses QuickBooks on more than one computer and plans to use Keystone on multiple computers to post to your Company File, set the location of the file using a computer-independent path. See the Preparing to Share Keystone Files on a Network section for more information.
Use the Accounts pane to define for Keystone the accounts you have set up in QuickBooks to receive Keystone data. You only need to enter the accounts you plan to use with Keystone. If you are only going to post mortgage payments from Keystone and not donations, you only need to enter the mortgage accounts.
Before you enter the QuickBooks accounts into this Accounts pane, you need to enter them into QuickBooks if you haven’t already. Every transaction you post to QuickBooks requires two QuickBooks accounts, a Deposit account and a Clearing account.
The Deposit account can be your affiliate bank account into which you deposit funds, or it can be a Current Asset type account in which you hold funds until you make the deposit. Bank and Current Asset are QuickBooks account types.
QuickBooks generates an Undeposited Funds account that it uses for invoicing. This account cannot be used for your Keystone Deposit account. If you plan to post to an undeposited account, you will need to create one specifically for this purpose.
If you plan to use an undeposited account, name it Undeposited Homeowner Payments.
Since closing fees and mortgage payments are both monies that belong to homeowners, they can both use the same Deposit account. Donations, on the other hand, belong to your affiliate and need to use a separate Deposit account.
If you are going to have an undeposited account, name it Undeposited Donations.
Closing fees, mortgage payments, and donations should have their own clearing account (“Closing Fee Clearing Account”, “Mortgage Clearing Account”, and “Donations Clearing Account”). The closing fee and mortgage clearing accounts should be the same type as your mortgage receivable account. The donation clearing account should be an Income account. All of these accounts should be cleared to the appropriate asset, liability, and income accounts at the end of the month.
When you enter accounts into QuickBooks they are preceded by an account number. When you enter them into the Accounts pane on the QuickBooks tab, you should enter the name only and not the account number.
In order to establish the link between Keystone and QuickBooks, you have to initialize the connection from the QuickBooks tab. Click the button on the QuickBooks tab to begin this process.
When you click this button, a small screen appears where you can choose to initialize Closing Fees, Mortgage Payments, or Donations for QuickBooks posting. After you have selected the type of payments you want to initialize, click the button.
All previous payments entered into Keystone for the selected types will be set so that they will not be posted. Payments entered after you run the initialization will be posted to QuickBooks by Keystone.
You should click the button before you try to post any payments directly to QuickBooks from Keystone. See the Keystone/QuickBooks Direct Posting Setup section for more information.
When you click the button, Keystone will start QuickBooks (if it is not already running), open the Company File, verify that the accounts listed in the Accounts pane exist, and then close QuickBooks. Keystone then informs you about whether the verification was successful.
If you have a multi-user copy of QuickBooks and someone has opened QuickBooks in Single-User Mode, Keystone will not be able to open QuickBooks.
If you ever have doubts about whether the interface between Keystone and QuickBooks is working, the easiest way to check it is come to this tab and click the button.