Connections & Integrations
What Kantivo links to, how the link actually functions, and why your accounting records stay on your own hardware regardless.
Overview
Because Kantivo installs on your machine rather than running in a browser, people expect a manual experience. In practice your bank activity turns up by itself, clients settle invoices by card, contractor filings are submitted electronically, and an entire QuickBooks history can be carried over in a single operation.
The distinction from web-based accounting is which way information travels. External data comes inward. Your ledger does not go outward.
The Mechanics
Worth knowing before you decide what to link:
- Requests originate on your side. Kantivo goes out and asks for data. Nothing external opens a connection to your computer, and no router configuration is needed.
- Sign-ins happen at the provider. Linking a bank sends you to your bank's own authentication screen. Those details are never entered into Kantivo, never retained by us, never routed through our infrastructure.
- Only the activity returns. Dates, amounts, descriptions and balances come back and are written into the PostgreSQL database on your drive.
- The books never travel. Entries, reports, client records and invoices remain in that local database. No vendor holds a mirrored copy of your accounts.
Live Connections
Everything in this section ships in the current release. If something isn't here, it isn't available yet — check Still Being Built.
Bank Activity
Attach your operating account, savings and business cards and let each day's movements appear without you going to fetch them. Kantivo proposes a category and the matching account for every line, so the task becomes approval rather than typing.
Setup steps, rule creation and diagnostics are covered in Bank & Statement Import.
Getting Paid Online
Put a payment button on your invoices so clients can pay by card or through PayPal. Kantivo does the bookkeeping: the receipt is applied to the invoice, the processor's commission is posted to an expense account, and the net figure agrees to what actually reaches your bank.
That separation matters more than it sounds. Businesses that take payments outside their accounting system routinely record income net of fees, which quietly understates both revenue and expenses on the profit and loss.
To configure: ⚙️ Company Settings → 💳 Payment Gateway → Add Gateway. Paste the API keys from your processor account, nominate the deposit account and the fee expense account, then run Test Connection before you switch it on for real customers.
Contractor Filings
Kantivo already holds what you paid every contractor during the year. The 1099 tool builds the forms from those figures and transmits them through our electronic filing partner, removing the January ritual of retyping totals into separate tax software.
You review every amount on screen before submission. Contractor identification comes from your supplier records, so maintaining tax IDs and addresses as you go makes filing season dramatically shorter.
Moving In From QuickBooks
Carry over your accounts, customers, suppliers, staff records and historical transactions from either QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online. Kantivo proposes a mapping for each field and waits for your confirmation before committing anything.
Reading Statement Files
Where you would rather not maintain a live link, or the institution isn't supported, hand Kantivo the statement. CSV, spreadsheet and PDF formats are all accepted, and PDFs are properly interpreted into transactions rather than filed away as an attachment.
A meaningful share of customers work this way indefinitely, keeping no standing bank connection whatsoever.
Payroll Results
Continue processing payroll with whoever handles it now. Export the register from Gusto, ADP or any provider that produces one and import it, so gross pay, deductions and employer contributions reach the right accounts.
Shopify
Link a Shopify store and its takings, refunds and settlements are written into your books for you. The first move happens on Shopify: install BizBooks Pro from the Shopify App Store, pick the store you want linked, and approve it there. Shopify hands you a short connection code once that is done.
Return to Kantivo, open ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations, press Connect on the Shopify card, and type in the code. Nothing else is needed — your store address never has to be entered by hand, and approval happens a single time. Codes stay valid for 72 hours; should one lapse, reopen the app from your Shopify admin to be given another.
Nominate your accounts first
Nothing is written until Kantivo knows where it should go. Press Accounts on the linked card. We propose accounts from the chart you already have, but nothing takes effect until you confirm — an error here misstates income quietly rather than raising an error, so it earns a moment's attention.
- Product takings and delivery charged to customers — income accounts
- Sales tax collected — a liability, never income
- Shopify processing costs — an expense account
- Clearing account and the bank account settlements arrive in — explained below
The reason a clearing account exists
Shopify settles as one payment covering many orders, less the cut it kept. Recording the orders and the settlement would count the same income twice. Orders therefore land in a clearing account which the settlement then empties:
- Per order: clearing is debited with everything the buyer paid, apportioned across takings, delivery and tax.
- Per settlement: your bank is debited with what genuinely arrived, the platform's cut is expensed, and clearing is credited with the gross.
After everything settles the clearing account sits at zero — which turns its balance into a standing check on the whole arrangement. A balance that will not clear is telling you something.
Refunds
Full and partial refunds are written as separate entries that unwind the sale and hand the tax back to the liability account. They travel through clearing too, since Shopify recoups the money from a later settlement rather than lifting it from your bank.
Anything not written up
Where an order contains something Kantivo cannot account for with confidence, it declines to record it instead of guessing. A held order is a question you can settle; an incorrect entry is a damaged ledger. Typical causes:
- Tax was taken but no tax liability account is nominated
- The order is denominated in a currency your books do not use
- A gratuity, duty or adjustment appears with nowhere assigned for it
- The figures do not reconcile to what the buyer paid — usually gift cards or store credit
Held items are listed on the Shopify card with the reason and can be retried once the cause is dealt with. Glance at this now and then: quietly absent orders are the one thing capable of making your books wrong without complaint.
Square
Linking Square writes each completed ticket, refund and deposit into your books. It is a normal Square login: under ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations press Connect on Square, approve Kantivo in the Square tab that appears, then return and press Finish connecting.
Account choices Square needs that Shopify does not
Press Accounts on the linked card. A counter business collects money in ways Square will never deposit, so two extra accounts appear alongside sales, tax and fees:
- Cash on hand — cash tickets go here directly and bypass clearing entirely. No Square deposit will ever come for them, so parking them in clearing would leave a balance that never clears.
- Money taken outside Square — for "Other" tenders such as a cheque or a rival terminal. Optional; a ticket paid this way waits until you say where the money went.
- Gratuities — owed to staff, so kept clear of sales. Pick a liability account, or income if tips are the owner's.
- Service charges — income if retained, liability if passed through.
A ticket settled half by card and half in cash produces a single entry debiting both accounts.
Deposits and processing costs
Square itemizes the fee on every deposit, so the expense is exact rather than estimated. The deposit entry debits your bank for what arrived, debits fees, and credits clearing for the gross. A deposit that nets negative because refunds outran sales is written as money leaving the bank.
Refunds
Refund by item in Square and the return carries its own tax, so sales and tax reverse precisely. Refunding an entire ticket reverses it in its original proportions. A partial refund keyed as a plain amount cannot be split between revenue and tax truthfully; it goes to a refunds and allowances account if you have set one, otherwise it waits for you. Cash handed back credits cash on hand rather than clearing.
Held rather than recorded
- Open or voided tickets — no money yet; the completed ticket follows.
- Sales in a currency other than your books'.
- A gratuity, service charge, cash or "Other" tender with no account chosen for it.
- A deposit arriving without its breakdown — retried, because the fee cannot be known.
Each held item is listed under Skipped on the Square card with its reason and can be retried once resolved.
Jobber
Linking Jobber brings your invoicing, the money collected against it and the jobs behind both into the ledger. Under ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations press Connect on Jobber, approve Kantivo in the Jobber tab that appears, then return and press Finish connecting.
Traffic runs one way. Kantivo reads from Jobber and never writes to it, which is why none of the usual sync complaints apply — no client matched to the wrong name, no argument over invoice numbering, no tax code that has to be created before anything will go through. Those problems come from one system pushing records into another's ledger, and we do not do that.
What a job actually earned
A job is the thing a field business plans, staffs and argues about, so it is what we label entries with. Your first sync creates a category named Jobber Job, and anything arriving from a job wears it — written the way it reads on the schedule, for instance #1042 Spring cleanup. Narrow the Profit & Loss to that value and the number is the truth for that job: billing out of Jobber, materials from purchase entries made here, against the number the crew already uses. Where one invoice spans several jobs we leave it unlabelled on purpose — handing all of it to whichever job came first would be worse than leaving the gap visible.
Running it: open Reports → Income Statement, choose the job in the Filter by Jobber Job box among the report settings, and press Refresh Report. Cash and accrual both honour the filter. Costs only count toward a job when they carry its label, so when you key a supplier bill or a journal entry for that work, pick the job in its Jobber Job field — an untagged bill still reaches the company-wide figures, just not that job's.
Choosing the accounts
Press Accounts on the linked card. Everything follows from one answer: are card payments taken through Jobber Payments?
- They are — card money rests in a holding account until Jobber's settlement sweeps it out, and the processing charge is booked at the figure Jobber states.
- They are not — money is banked directly and no holding account is set at all. Insist on one for a business paid by cheque and it never returns to zero, which will look like a reconciliation fault for as long as you keep the file.
Plenty of firms do both, so the route is chosen payment by payment from the method Jobber records, rather than fixed once for the whole company.
Money handed back
Jobber will only reverse card transactions it handled itself. Refund a cheque or cash and you deal with the client directly, then follow Jobber's own advice and set the original payment there to $0.00. Kantivo spots the change and books the difference: the debt is owed again and the funds leave your bank, dated the day you altered it rather than the day of the original receipt, so a period you have already closed stays closed. The first entry is left untouched, keeping the trail of what was recorded and when. A figure keyed incorrectly and put right later travels the same route.
Clients
People already on your books are recognised rather than duplicated. A matching email is enough, as is a matching name and postcode; anything weaker waits under Contacts on the card for your ruling. Nothing stalls while it waits — the money is booked regardless and the entry joins the client record once you have decided.
What stays out, and the reason
- Unissued drafts — nobody has been billed, so there is nothing to owe.
- A deposit against a quote — no debt exists to reduce, and inventing one would push the balance below zero.
- Jobber's internal ledger line for an invoice, which looks like a receipt but is not money in.
- Anything billed in a currency your books are not kept in.
- Records removed in Jobber before we reached them.
Whatever is held shows under Skipped on the Jobber card, written in words rather than codes, and can be run again once the cause is dealt with.
Changing an invoice that came from Jobber
Traffic runs one way, so amending a mirrored invoice here will not reach Jobber. Jobber remains where your invoicing lives; change it there and the correction follows through.
WooCommerce
Install the plugin on your WordPress site and switch it on. Its page under WooCommerce → BizBooks Pro displays a ten-character connection code. In Kantivo, under ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations, press Connect on WooCommerce and key it in. You never type your shop's address, and no Kantivo credentials are kept inside WordPress.
From that point the plugin transmits each order the instant it is paid, again whenever its status moves, and each refund as it is granted. Anything sent while your computer is off is kept by our connection service for up to 30 days and written in when Kantivo next opens.
Why accounts are chosen per payment method
WooCommerce is only the shopfront. Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments or whichever gateway you run takes the money and deposits it on its own timetable, less fees WooCommerce never sees. The mapping therefore asks, for every gateway on your store, where does this method's money end up?
- Card gateways (Stripe, PayPal, WooPayments, Square) — a clearing account. When that gateway's deposit shows on your bank feed, match it to the clearing account with the fee broken out and the balance returns to nil.
- Cash on delivery, cheque, direct transfer — your bank or cash account outright; it is yours the moment the order is marked paid.
- Fallback — something like Undeposited Funds for gateways you have not listed. With no fallback, an order from an unlisted gateway is held rather than assumed.
Merchandise, shipping charged, added fee lines and tax each have their own account; coupons can appear as a separate discount line or be netted into sales.
Refunds
A refund credits whichever gateway account the sale originally debited. Line-item refunds reverse goods, shipping and tax exactly. A whole-order refund keyed as one figure reverses in the order's own proportions. A partial refund keyed as one figure lands in a refunds and allowances account if set, and waits for you if not — refunding by line item in WooCommerce sidesteps the question.
Reinstalling, or a new computer
Neither reinstalling the plugin nor connecting from a different machine duplicates anything already written. Ask the plugin page for a fresh code and connect again.
Clio
Link Clio and every bill you issue, plus every payment Clio logs against it, is written into your books. Under ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations press Connect on Clio, sign in on the Clio tab that opens, then press Finish connecting. The access we request is read-only: nothing in your Clio account is ever created, altered or removed.
What an issued bill becomes
Once a bill leaves draft, receivables are debited for the full amount and its components are kept separate as your accountant and your regulator expect: fee income, costs recovered from clients, tax on services as a liability, interest where charged, and any courtesy discount either shown on its own line or netted into fees. Should the components fail to reconcile to the total — a credit applied at issue, for instance — the bill is held with both numbers rather than written incorrectly.
Client payments
A payment from the client's own pocket debits your operating account and retires the receivable, dated as Clio dated it. Multiple payments on one bill are each written once, however many times Clio notifies us about that bill.
How the distinction is actually made is worth knowing. Clio's payment record looks the same whether the money came from trust or arrived as a cheque; the difference only shows in the bank ledger behind the bill, where the withdrawal from the trust account is tied to that specific payment. Kantivo reads that ledger. Where a connection cannot reach it, no payment is written at all until it can — holding an ordinary cheque for you to key in beats moving a client's trust balance into your operating books unannounced.
Clients and matters
Ahead of posting, the bill's client is reconciled to your customer list by email and then name. A definite match links; a clearly new client is created; anything uncertain is queued under Contacts on the Clio card for you to settle — the bill posts regardless and attaches once you do. The matter is tied to a Kantivo matter, created from Clio's matter number if you have none yet, making matter-by-matter profitability a plain filtered report. A bill covering multiple matters is written but left untagged rather than pinned to the wrong one.
Stripe Takings and Deposits
Not to be confused with the Stripe card button on your invoices, which lives under Payment Gateway Settings and books itself. This link captures the rest of what your Stripe account collects — site checkout, recurring plans, a shop running on Stripe — together with the deposits that settle it. Under ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔌 Integrations press Connect on the Stripe Revenue & Payouts card, approve Kantivo in the Stripe tab, then press Finish connecting. Stripe's approval screen describes the broad permission it grants every connected app; Kantivo only ever reads your charges, refunds and payouts, and never creates a payment or moves money.
The entries
- A charge debits a Stripe clearing account for the gross and credits sales. Where the charge sits on a Stripe invoice, or came via Checkout with Stripe Tax, the tax share goes to your sales-tax liability rather than income. A bare charge has no tax detail, so the whole amount is income; if you tax plain payments, ask us about the invoice route.
- A refund unwinds the sale and its slice of tax and credits clearing — one entry per refund, so a second partial refund never re-records the first.
- A deposit debits your bank for the net, expenses fees exactly as Stripe's balance records state them, and credits clearing for the gross. Once everything settles, clearing sits at nil.
Held rather than recorded
- Authorised-only, pending or failed charges — no money has moved.
- Charges in a currency other than your books'.
- A charge carrying invoice tax when no tax account is chosen.
- A deposit arriving without its balance records — retried, since the fee is unknown.
Zapier and Make
Wire Kantivo to thousands of other tools with no code. Nothing is entered into Kantivo, and revoking the key in Kantivo cuts the tool off within minutes.
Connecting Zapier
- Open our app on Zapier. Follow this invitation link while signed in to Zapier. It is a one-time step that puts the app in your Zap editor; until you do it, searching for us returns nothing. Inside Zapier the app carries our BizBooks Pro name — same software, same company.
- Make an API key. In Kantivo go to ⚙️ Company Settings → 🔑 API keys and create one — read suffices for triggers, add write for actions. Copy it immediately; it is displayed once and begins
bb_live_. - Build the Zap. Add BizBooks Pro as your trigger or action and paste the key when asked to connect an account. A working connection displays the key's name and permissions, such as Zapier (read,write).
Make will follow the same pattern — create a key, add the module — once its review clears.
Triggers
Invoice raised · Invoice settled · Payment in · New customer · New vendor · New bill — each delivering the record as your books hold it.
Actions
Add customer · Add vendor · Raise invoice (with line items) · Enter bill (with line items), plus Get action result to read back the outcome.
Limits on what an action can do
Precisely what the key permits. A read key drives triggers and lookups but every create is refused; a write key can add the records listed and nothing more. Actions from Zapier or Make pass through the same allow-list as direct API calls — there is no side entrance.
Currency Rates
Bill international clients in their own currency from fifteen supported options, with the rate retrieved for the date the transaction occurred. A converter is built in for quick checks, and your home-currency reporting is reconciled behind the scenes so the statements remain accurate.
Privacy Position
Specifically:
- Card numbers never enter our software. Payment capture uses the processor's own hosted fields, which is what keeps you outside PCI scope.
- We do not hold banking credentials. Authentication occurs at your bank via the connection provider.
- Sensitive stored values are encrypted with a key belonging to your installation alone, created on first launch and never shared.
- Your ledger is not transmitted. Connections pull information in; they do not push your records out.
More detail lives in Bank Connection Security.
Still Being Built
The following are under development and not usable today. They are listed for transparency about direction, not to suggest availability.
- Sector-specific links — Buildertrend and Procore for construction, dotloop for brokerages, Donorbox for charities.
Square is live from version 2.0.290, Stripe Takings from 2.0.299 and Clio from 2.0.305. WooCommerce, Zapier and Make are finished and documented above; WooCommerce and Make activate when their marketplace listings are approved, and Zapier already works by invitation. The developer API and event hooks are live now — see the developer reference.
Asking For One
What we build next is decided by what customers request. If your essential tool isn't covered, submit it via the form on the Integrations page and it enters the priority list. Submissions are read by a person, not a queue.
When Something Breaks
A linked account stopped bringing in transactions
Banks force periodic re-authentication, especially after a password change or a security update on their side. Re-link the account from the bank feed screen — transactions already imported are untouched.
Test Connection won't pass
Check that the key pair matches the mode: sandbox keys with test mode, production keys with live mode. Mixing those is far and away the most frequent cause. Also make sure the key was pasted in full without a trailing space.
Payments post but no fee appears
A fee expense account has to be nominated in the gateway configuration. If it is empty, set it under ⚙️ Company Settings → 💳 Payment Gateway and subsequent payments will split properly.
An import created duplicates
Almost always either the same period was imported twice, or an account has a live feed and a manual import overlapping the same dates. Review that range, remove the duplicate batch, and settle on one method per account.