Acrobat and Intuit QuickBooks® Blog

Adobe Systems, Inc. has improved Acrobat by adding a QuickBooks® interface to Acrobat 9.0. QuickBooks® software is Intuit's excellent accounting program; its many forms tied to a robust database are exactly what accountants need. 

But you can't have everybody take QuickBooks® with them on the road.   It’s a huge improvement to have a portable document format, so that forms can roam while your QuickBooks® software stays safe at the office.  Adobe's PDF is the world's standard portable document, a clean way to bring Acrobat and QuickBooks® software together is a win for everyone!

Accountants will need Acrobat 9 Pro or Pro Extended English, French, or German installed alongside QuickBooks®.  Remote users don't need QuickBooks® but may use Adobe Reader 7.0.8 or greater for form fill in.  Accountants and Remote Users use Acrobat 9 and QuickBooks® together effectively via these tasks:

                . Accountants use Acrobat to open a predefined Acrobat QuickBooks template.  Each Acrobat QuickBooks template emulates the operation of a familiar QuickBooks® form.  If you don't see the QuickBooks® form you want, you can always create your own Acrobat QuickBooks templates from scratch.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to populate the Acrobat QuickBooks template with content extracted from QuickBooks®.  The menu item “Forms > QuickBooks > Prepare QuickBooks Template for Distribution...” shows a Wizard which steps you through the process of establishing a connection to QuickBooks® and extracting the content.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to distribute a populated Acrobat QuickBooks template to remote users for fill-in.  The Acrobat 9.0 form distribution engine is fully leveraged, you can distribute via email, network folder, or via Acrobat.com.  The new Acrobat.com website is an especially compelling Acrobat 9.0 feature!

                . Remote users use Adobe Reader 7.0.8 or greater to fill in forms and return them to the Accountant.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to collect filled in forms to a portfolio.  The attractive Acrobat 9.0 portfolio is fully leveraged; newly received forms are automatically collected to the portfolio.

                . Accountants use Acrobat to synchronize a portfolio of filled-in forms to QuickBooks®.  Acrobat will examine the portfolio and send to QuickBooks® only newly returned forms; forms which have already been synchronized to QuickBooks® will not be processed.  Old filled-in forms may be deleted from the portfolio.

The QuickBooks® interface is implemented using the Adobe's Dynamic XFA technology.  Robust and stable dynamic XFA allows you to achieve a high degree of usable form customization using Adobe's Live Cycle Designer.  The full power of Dynamic XFA script is available.

In this blog I will attempt to:

                . List bugs found since Acrobat 9.0 release.  Full information about limitations and workarounds will be posted.

                . Give Information about how to customize QuickBooks® templates or create them from scratch.

                . Provide solutions to problems found by customers.

                . Help with Acrobat QuickBooks template dynamic form scripting.

Please provide lots of feedback and comments about how Acrobat's QuickBooks® interface is working!  What is your favorite feature?  Are there any bugs or limitations you have noticed?

Thanks for reading and please check back often!