Method Community

I am having the exact same problem, most often with international orders. Here's the current process:

1. Item ordered on our website
2. Pulled into QB via ECC/Webgility connector as SalesOrder
3. Sync to Method
4. Unable to sync back

Even when fields are manually cleared in Method, when attempting to sync back to the desktop, the empty fields are being IGNORED by QuickBooks. Example:

Acme Inc
ATTN: John Doe
123 Fake Street
Widgets Department
City, State 12345 USA

I edit the address in Method to eliminate the ATTN: Line, pull "123 Fake Street" to Addr1 position from position 2, move "Widgets Department" up to Addr2 from position 3 and leave position 3 blank. The resulting address in Quickbooks is:

Acme Inc
123 Fake Street
Widgets Department
Widgets Department
City, State 12345 USA

When looking at errors under QUICKBOOKS >> RESOLVE CONFLICTS (when there is a conflict) I'm looking at the XML being sent from Method to Quickbooks. Lo and behold, when a field is EMPTY, it doesn't even ATTEMPT to send the empty field to QuickBooks!!

This is obviously very frustrating. As you have mentioned, the synchronization process has nothing to do with the API. Based on what I'm seeing here, there is a flaw in the Method synchronization engine in that it does not even attempt to replace valid data in Quickbooks with NULL or EMPTY values.

What I am wondering here, obviously, is simply HOW do I initiate a synchronization with QuickBooks where previously non-null values in QB can be replaced with NULL or EMPTY values. Does this have to be done with an API call? I don't get why this would be the case when API calls have nothing to do with Quickbooks synchronization.

Thanks in advance!!

Hi Nick-

I can't address the SDK or API question, but it's important to understand how QuickBooks uses Addr4 and Addr5.  Thos e fields are essentially "reserved" to hold information from City, State, Zip (Addr4) and Country (Addr5).  As Paul pointed out, QuickBooks parses the info in these fields and copies it back and forth between the two sets of data.  When you put non-conforming information in the Addr4 and Addr5 fields, QuickBooks will attempt to fit it into the City State Zip Country format and you can get some ugly resuilts and truncated data.   I find it best to consider the fields for Addr4 and Addr5 in both the Bill To and Ship To addresses as unavailable for use in Method.  Just let QuickBooks have its way with them.

-Mary Longacre

Well, here's the problem--I am TRYING to only send Addr1-Addr3 + City, State, Zip, but Quickbooks is throwing a sync error due to some fields already being populated with information on the QB side. I'm assuming it's either Addr4-Addr5 and/or AddrNote. We all know that QB pretty much does whatever it wants with the data that you put in those five lines. Half the time, for international orders, I see it place city, state and zip in the AddrNote field, or in the CITY field... there does not appear to be any consistency, ESPECIALLY for Non-US addresses. Apparently Quickbooks/Intuit runs on the assumption that the United States is the only country in the world even though half their staff are stationed in South Asia. Funny! Like Joe Pesci funny...

My intended solution:

was to place the Addr1-3, City, State, Zip fields in Method in temporary variables, then send BLANK data for Addr1-5 + City, State, Zip, Country, and AddrNote, force a desktop push, then update the fields with Addr1-3, City, State, Zip, and force a second push to eliminate any possibility for error. But this is not working because Method apparently does not send blank fields to QB in the XML. I checked myself in the sync error log... when attempting to send blank fields, Method just ignores it when constructing the XML so OF COURSE Quickbooks is not going to accept it. It's like wondering why someone never got your letter when it's sitting right there on your desk!

The question remains... how am I supposed to accomplish the clearing of all Addr fields before syncing back the proper data to eliminate any margin for error? The only solution I've found is to blank out the Bill-To & Ship-To addresses directly in QB then push the data from Method immediately after. Everything works this way, but our goal is to eliminate Quickbooks altogether except for accounting reports so this is not an option for us.

Please advise...

Can you send a space ( ) instead of a null value to clear the fields?

Tried that too, and no, it appears that Method trims spaces before sending the XML or Quickbooks still refuses the data. Still looking for an answer to this. Paul & David appear to have had some success, but still have not received any solid answers from anyone as to HOW this was accomplished.

I would very much like to know if there is a solution to this yet. The idea that there is NO WAY to send blank data to QuickBooks is preposterous. I've been told repeatedly for the last six months that the dev team is working on this yet still no solution. Are the devs really not capable of solving this issue? Or, is it simply not a priority?

Also, to confirm, I have tried this through Method CRM as well as Method API. Neither option clears the data. I've tried every possible non-printing ASCII character, decoded HEX, HTML characters and special characters... nada. Nothing. I am very interested to know how Paul and David actually accomplished this as mentioned on the first page of this thread. Love you guys, but seriously!! Come on... :)

Hey furrywombat,

Thanks for the post -- unfortunately, I"m going to have to be a bit of a disappointment as this hasn't been implemented site-wide yet. As Paul mentioned, this is ultimately at the behest of the Quickbooks SDK. We're phasing in a new sync engine now, though, so fingers crossed we can get that in soon.