Method Community

I have a client who is gearing up to use Method as a Membership database for CRM.  I am trying to have my client only enter the Billing Address info in Method, and not make any edits in QuickBooks to the Customer info.  Their Members have a 5 line address consisting of:

BillAddressAddr1 = Full Name

BillAddressAddr2 = Title/Position

BillAddressAddr3 = Employer's Name

BillAddressAddr4 = Street Address

BillAddressAddr5 = City, State, Country, Postal Code

I am finding that I can't use this format because of the way QuickBooks tries to reassemble the City, State, and Postal Code data and put it on BillAddressAddr4, and puts the Country on BillAddressAddr5. (not all 4 fields together on line 5 as I had hoped)  I need the full 41 characters on each line in order to be able to fit all of this information in without insanely garbled abbreviations.

I need a way to get the 5 lines entered into Method to stick in QuickBooks

I've tried these scenarios:

1- If I enter a 5 line address into Method manually using the 5 fields listed above, I get a sync conflict that says “QuickBooks returned an error when adding/modifying a accEntity record. The error was: There was an error when composing an address in "". QuickBooks error message: There is not enough address lines to compose the address. Please rearrange the individual fields, so that they can fit in the 5-lines block”

2- If I enter the 5 address lines into the first 4 BillAddress fields, and enter the City, State, Country, and Postal Code into their respective individual fields, QuickBooks puts the City, State, and Postal Code components together in BillAddressAddr4 (wiping out the street address data) and puts the Country in BillAddressAddr5. It takes two sync passes for this to show up in Method (i.e. the data goes from Method to QB, gets changed in QB, then comes back to Method.)  There is no conflict generated, it registers as a legitimate change, so the "Method Wins" setting doesn't come into play.

3- If I enter the 5 lines into QuickBooks first, it puts the City, State, Country, Postal Code into the separate fields. (Livable, but the client doesn't want the address entry to have to originate in QuickBooks!)  And future address changes in Method will likely follow scenario #1 above.

The issue is that the Accounting Staff will send out invoices from QuickBooks, and they don't have access to Method.  I realize that using Method to send out the invoices would solve the problem, but I'm still looking for any work-arounds that will let the client send invoices with correct addresses from QuickBooks.  The goal is to be able to print and mail an invoice generated by QuickBooks with a properly formatted address without the extra step of mailing labels to get a correct address.  And also to be able to store the correct address in QB for reference by the Accounting staff since they don't have access to Method.

Any ideas or tips?

Thanks!

-Mary
 

Hi mlongacre,

Through some customization in QuickBooks and Method you can achieve what your client is looking for. I've tested it out and although the layout isn't exactly to the customer's specifications I'm sure you can get what they want by spending a little bit more time customizing. What I did was create two new custom fields in QuickBooks under the Additional info tab when editing a customer; I created the BilltoAddress and ShiptoAddress fields. I then customized the stock Invoice template to include the data of these two fields. Once the QuickBooks customization was complete it was time to perform a Full Sync in Method and start customizing there. After the Full Sync the new custom fields were available in the Customer table so I made a copy of the Edit Customer screen, added the two fields and created a new action in the Copy Address button (if you go this route you should consider doing the same for the NewCustomer screen as well). Tested and confirmed the data is transferred to and from QuickBooks without issue. Please see the screenshots below.

Customized QuickBooks Invoice Template: http://i.imgur.com/BriOX.png?1
This is what the customer's Address Info tab in QuickBooks looked like after editing the customer in Method: http://i.imgur.com/nW7am.png
This is what the customer's Additional Info tab in QuickBooks looked like after editing the customer in Method: http://i.imgur.com/ubVVl.png
Method Edit customer view: http://i.imgur.com/u52yi.png

Remember, first I customized what I wanted in QuickBooks, then I created this customer in Method and edited the data.

- Ashur

Hi Ashur - I ended up doing something similar to what you suggested.  We are stealing some lines of the ShipTo Address and moving it to display directly underneath the BillTo address on the invoice so that we can get two more lines.  I considered custom fields, but they only allow 30 characters instead of 41 and have other issues.  We weren't planning to use the ShipTo address for anything else.

Thank you for posting your reply! 

Mary -

You might want to read this forum post too, on the API forum:

http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/t/3588.aspx

There's a lot in there, but net result is that addresses in QuickBooks are weird, buggy, and frankly quite strange.......and we are all at their mercy in terms of how they are implemented.  I think you should be okay the way you are doing it...but just keep the forum post http://www.methodintegration.com/cs/forums/t/3588.aspx in mind in case issues come up.

Paul