Eco Systems CRM & More

Feature

QuickBooks job spend, inside Autodesk Build.

Every construction firm running both systems ends up with the same gap: the real numbers live in QuickBooks and the budget lives in Autodesk Cost Management, and somebody bridges them by hand at month end. This closes it. The bookkeeper keeps coding in QuickBooks exactly as she does today; an hourly job lands each purchase on the mapped Autodesk project as an Expense for the PM to classify against the budget.

01 — The failure mode

Two ledgers, one job, nobody reconciling until it's too late

  1. The PM's budget is always stale

    Cost Management shows committed and forecast numbers. Actuals sit in QuickBooks until someone exports them. By the time the overrun shows up in Autodesk, the concrete is poured.

  2. Double entry is where coding goes to die

    Ask a bookkeeper to code a bill in QuickBooks and then re-enter it in Autodesk and one of the two will be wrong. Usually the one nobody audits.

  3. Nobody trusts a number they didn't watch arrive

    A spreadsheet import that silently skips ten transactions is worse than no import. The PM stops believing the budget and goes back to asking the office.

02 — How it works

The bookkeeper's existing coding is the only input

No new workflow for the office. No new screen for the PM. The bridge runs on its own, every hour.

  • She codes it once, in QuickBooksA bill, an expense, or a card charge — assigned to the customer:job and tagged with a class, the way your chart of accounts already works. That's the whole input.
  • An hourly job picks up new and changed purchasesNot a nightly batch you find out about the next morning. Changed transactions are re-read, so a re-coded bill doesn't stay wrong on the Autodesk side.
  • It lands as an Expense in Cost ManagementOn the Autodesk project mapped to that QuickBooks customer — unclassified, on purpose, so the PM classifies it against the right budget line inside Autodesk where the budget actually lives.
  • Idempotent on the QuickBooks transaction idThe sync ledger is keyed on the source transaction. Re-running the job, replaying a week, or recovering from a failed pass cannot create a second Expense for the same purchase.
  • One-way, alwaysNothing is written back to QuickBooks. Nothing is classified in Autodesk for you. The two systems each keep the job they're good at, and the sync stays a courier.
  • Unmatched transactions are shown, not droppedA purchase coded to a customer with no linked Autodesk project sits in a visible queue and posts itself the moment the job is linked. Silence is the bug we designed against.

03 — Mapping

A job is one QuickBooks customer and one Autodesk project

Everything downstream depends on that pair being right, so we don't guess it. A scan pulls your Autodesk project list and your QuickBooks customer list and auto-pairs them on a normalised name — the same job written “Wickham Rd Phase 2” in one system and “Wickham Road – Phase II” in the other gets paired without anyone retyping it. Where a name could plausibly match two projects, it becomes a suggestion you approve, not a link that was assumed. Ambiguity is a UI problem, not a coin flip.

You can also go the other direction. Jobs can be imported straight from Autodesk — pick the projects you want, and the jobs are created here already mapped, no QuickBooks customer required first. Archived projects are listed but left unticked, because a firm's project list accumulates ten years of finished work and you don't want it in your job board.

And a new job created here, with an address on it, can be pushed into Autodesk as a project — job number carried from the job's code, dates and address filled in, mapped the moment Autodesk returns the id, and idempotent so pressing the button twice makes one project.

04 — What's honest about the setup

Two things you should hear before the demo, not after

01

Creating Autodesk projects needs account:write

Needs one reconnect

Listing and importing projects works on a read-only connection.

If your Autodesk connection was authorised with read-only scope, pushing a new project will fail with a permissions error until an Autodesk account admin disconnects and reconnects Autodesk once, granting the write scope. We ask for it on the connect URL now, but a token already issued can't grow new scopes. One person, one reconnect, once.

02

Your APS app has to be approved in your Autodesk account

Diagnosed for you

A valid token with no hubs is an approval problem, not a code problem.

Autodesk hands back an empty hub list — not an error — when the integration hasn't been approved under Account Admin → Settings → Custom Integrations, or when the authorising user isn't a member of the account. That silent empty answer has eaten entire afternoons elsewhere. Our connection check names the cause and shows the client id an account admin needs to approve, so the fix takes minutes.

05 — The other direction

Invoices, mirrored read-only

Spend flows one way; invoices flow the other, and just as carefully. An hourly pull mirrors your QuickBooks invoices into the job record keyed on the QuickBooks invoice reference, so the Invoices tab shows what was actually billed per job without becoming a second place to bill from. It's a read-only mirror — manual entry only exists for firms that haven't connected QuickBooks at all. There is exactly one system of record for an invoice, and it's your accounting file.

Spend needs coding to be useful, which is why the categories and classes behind it are first-class here too: the printed chart of accounts becomes the category list, and vendor rules map “Lowes”, “Home Depot”, fuel and rental chains to a category automatically, longest match winning. That machinery is shared with field receipt capture — a receipt snapped in a truck is coded by the same rules as a bill keyed in the office.

If you're weighing this against a full construction ERP, read the honest version on the construction solutions page: we are not replacing your accounting system or your Autodesk subscription. We're the operations layer that stops your team retyping between them, alongside site check-in and travel pay.

06 — Questions

Straight answers.

Does this change how my bookkeeper works in QuickBooks?

No. She codes spend the way she does today — a bill, an expense, or a card charge, assigned to the customer:job and tagged with a class. That coding is the input. There is no second system for her to key into.

Can the sync write back into QuickBooks?

No. The spend sync is one-way: QuickBooks to Autodesk. It never edits a QuickBooks transaction and never classifies anything inside Autodesk on the PM's behalf. Expenses land unclassified so a human decides which budget line they hit.

What happens to a purchase that has no matching Autodesk project?

It is surfaced as unmatched in the Integrations tab and retried once the job is linked. Nothing is ever silently dropped, and nothing is guessed onto the wrong project.

Can Eco Systems create Autodesk projects, not just read them?

Yes, but honestly: creating a project requires the account:write scope. Listing and importing existing projects works with a read-only connection, so if your Autodesk connection was authorised read-only, an account admin has to disconnect and reconnect Autodesk once before project creation works.

07 — Next step

Bring a job and we'll trace it end to end.

Twenty minutes: a real purchase coded in QuickBooks, the hourly pass, the Expense landing on the Autodesk project, and the unmatched queue. Plus an honest read on what your Autodesk account admin will need to do.

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Construction is quoted per site and headcount · no contracts