What’s the best way to integrate this into my existing FileMaker solution?

How you go about integrating the functionality from the fmAccounting Link (QuickBooks Online Edition) file is entirely up to you – as the file is completely unlocked you get to go behind the scenes to learn how to handle the authentication, uploading, downloading etc and then recreate that in your existing FileMaker solution. Based on feedback from customers all around the world there have been three main ways they have approached the integration:

• Linking – this involves using the fmAccounting Link file as a ‘interface’ or front-end file to your existing FileMaker file. This is a relatively quick way to get up and running – you relink the table occurrences to reference the matching tables in your existing FileMaker file and then update the layouts and add any new fields (such as the ‘QuickBooks ID’ fields). You also need to update any field references in scripts and create any new value lists.
• Use the fmAccounting Link file as a Controller File – this involves pushing data to the fmAccounting Link file from your existing FileMaker file and use that to handle the uploading/downloading of data with QuickBooks. This is also a relatively quick way to get up and running – you simply write scripts in your FileMaker solution to push Customers, Invoices etc across from your file to the fmAccounting Link file and use that to handle all the uploading of FileMaker data to QuickBooks. To prevent duplicate Customers from being created you would create a ‘QuickBooks ID’ field to store the QuickBooks Customer ID value, otherwise everything else happens in the fmAccounting Link file. You could then do an upload once a day of all Invoices generated that day etc.
• Embedding – this is the most complex and time consuming type of integration as it involves recreating the required functionality from the fmAccounting Link file in your existing FileMaker solution. Our integration guide covers the high level steps that you need to take and the order in which to complete them. Most of the code can be copied and pasted, however you will need to manually create some relationships, table occurrences and valuelists. You can typically be up and running with authentication and uploading a Customer/Invoice in around 4 – 8 hours depending on the complexity of your existing FileMaker solution.

If you do decide to use the fmAccounting Link file you will have to create and manage any required FileMaker Accounts and Privilege Sets.