Intuit and QuickBooks are registered trademarks of Intuit Inc. used with permission.
When you use the BQE CORE–QuickBooks Online integration, every CORE client, project, and phase corresponds to a customer or sub-customer (also called a job) in QuickBooks Online. This structure applies to every company that uses the integration, and it cannot be changed, bypassed, or configured differently. Phases are a required part of it: they must exist in QuickBooks Online for invoices, payments, vendor bills, and other transactions to transfer, even if you do not use them there.
In this article, send means creating a record in QuickBooks Online from CORE, map means linking a CORE record to one that already exists in QuickBooks Online on the Record Mappings tab, and get means bringing records from QuickBooks Online into CORE.
How CORE records correspond to QuickBooks Online records
| CORE record | QuickBooks Online record |
| Client | Customer |
| Parent project | Sub-customer under the customer |
| Phase | Sub-customer under the parent project's sub-customer |
| Project without phases | Sub-customer under the customer |
In the following example, client Mario INC has a parent project, 2026 014 - Main with Phases, with three phases: P001, P002, and P003 in CORE. In QuickBooks Online, Mario INC is a customer, the parent project is a sub-customer under Mario INC, and each phase is a sub-customer under the parent project. If a phase has its own phases (sub-phases), each one becomes a sub-customer one level further down.
QuickBooks Online shows each project and phase as its Project ID followed by its Project Name, regardless of the Project Display As setting in CORE.
Phases are required
In CORE, time, expenses, and billing are recorded at the project and phase level, so every phase must be sent or mapped along with its parent project. A transaction cannot be sent until the project or phase it belongs to exists in QuickBooks Online:
- Invoices: every project and phase on the invoice, and the client, must be sent or mapped first. Otherwise, the invoice is not sent.
- Payments: the invoice that a payment is applied to must be sent first.
- Vendor bills: lines associated with a CORE project that does not exist in QuickBooks Online will not be displayed under the corresponding sub-customer.
If you only use projects without phases, each project must still be sent or mapped before its transactions can be sent.
QuickBooks Online Projects are not supported
QuickBooks Online has a separate Projects feature, which QuickBooks Desktop does not have. QuickBooks Online Projects are not supported by the integration: CORE projects and phases are always sent or mapped as sub-customers. This also means a CORE client can be mapped only to a QuickBooks Online customer, not to a sub-customer or a QuickBooks Online project.
If you use QuickBooks Online Projects, track the work you integrate with CORE as customers and sub-customers instead. If you are moving from QuickBooks Desktop, see Migrating Integration Links from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, which recommends turning off QuickBooks Online Projects before you migrate.
For other differences between the QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online integrations, including naming rules, see Comparing QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online integrations in CORE.
If your QuickBooks Online company already has data
QuickBooks Online lets you create invoices, payments, and other transactions directly against a customer, without sub-customers. CORE records everything at the project level, so if your company has managed its work at the customer level in QuickBooks Online, CORE projects cannot be mapped to those customers. The integration does not support mapping CORE projects directly to QuickBooks Online customers, or leaving parent projects or phases out.
To set up the integration with existing QuickBooks Online data, follow this order:
- Map each CORE client to its QuickBooks Online customer.
- Map each CORE parent project to its QuickBooks Online sub-customer. If a parent project has no matching sub-customer, send it to QuickBooks Online instead.
- After the clients and parent projects are mapped, send the phases. CORE creates them as sub-customers under the parent project's sub-customer.
For the steps to map records on the Record Mappings tab, see BQE CORE-QuickBooks Online Integration.
Always map clients and parent projects before you send phases. If you send a phase first, CORE creates a new customer and sub-customer for its client and parent project, which can duplicate the records you already have.
When you get customers and sub-customers from QuickBooks Online, customers come into CORE as clients, sub-customers as projects, and sub-customers under another sub-customer as phases. Get customers first: a sub-customer is skipped if its customer is not in CORE yet. QuickBooks Online projects are not brought in.
If this structure does not fit how you use QuickBooks Online, you can build your own integration that meets your requirements using the CORE Public APIs. Check out the CORE API documentation to get started.