Nemo WorksHow it avoids booking an order twice
Before it creates an invoice, payment, credit memo, refund or deposit, NemoWorks Sync checks whether QuickBooks already has it. These are the rules.
Finding an order that is already in QuickBooks
1. Candidates. It asks QuickBooks for invoices that carry the order’s number:
- as the invoice number, when invoices are numbered after the orders, or
- in the P.O. No. field, when QuickBooks numbers the invoices (Settings, Orders).
2. Is it this order? A candidate must be dated between 10 days before the order and 60 days after it (14 days after, when QuickBooks numbers the invoices and the search is by date). Within that window it goes on to step 3 if it belongs to the order’s customer, or its total is within $1.00 of the order (or of the order less the card fee). Anything else is left alone.
The “or” is on purpose: bookkeepers often type web orders under one general customer (“Web Sales”, “Walk-in”), so an invoice with the order’s number and the order’s total is taken as the order whoever it is filed under. The cost: an unrelated invoice that has this order’s number, falls in the window and has the same total would be taken too. With the order number in the invoice number or P.O. field, that is very unlikely, but it is the case to know about.
3. Does it match to the cent? Before any payment is added, the invoice’s total must equal the order, or the order less the card fee when “Take the card fee off each invoice” is on (Settings, Payments). When it does, the log says:
Invoice 4826 (Dana Whitfield) is already in QuickBooks for this order; using it.
and only a missing payment is added. A payment already there is used too:
Payment for this order is already in QuickBooks (264.54 to Undeposited Funds).
When it does not, the order stops with both amounts and nothing more is written:
Invoice 4826 for this order is already in QuickBooks with 250.00, but the order is 272.75.
Nothing more was written. Correct the invoice in QuickBooks (or check that it is this
order), then retry; or skip this order if that invoice is right.
Case by case
| Situation | What it checks | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| The order was typed in by hand | Steps 1 to 3 above | That invoice is used; only a missing payment is added |
| An invoice has the same number but another customer and another total (a phone order QuickBooks numbered next) | Step 2 fails | Never taken over. With order-number invoices the order stops: “QuickBooks already has invoice 4827 for … Nothing was written.” With QuickBooks numbering it gets its own invoice |
| An unrelated invoice’s P.O. equals the order number (a business buyer’s own P.O.) | Steps 2 and 3 | Left alone when its customer and total differ; taken only if it passes both steps |
| A run stopped halfway, or QuickBooks’ answer was lost | The invoice, payment, credit memo or deposit it was making | The next run finds what was written and carries on from there |
| You fixed something in QuickBooks and pressed Retry | Customer, items and invoice, all looked up again | Nothing remembered from before the fix is reused |
| A refund | A credit memo with the refund’s number (the order number plus R1, R2…) | Used if found; otherwise one credit memo and one refund |
| A payout | A deposit into the payout account, dated 5 days before to 20 days after the payout, whose memo holds the payout’s ID (NemoWorks Sync writes it there) | That deposit is used; no second one is made |
The number prefix
If QuickBooks already uses the numbers your orders will have (hand invoices numbered 4827, 4828…), set a number prefix in Settings, Orders, for example WEB-. Order 4827 then becomes invoice WEB-4827 and is looked up as WEB-4827.
Set it before going live. Orders already booked keep the numbers they were booked with. An order sent again by hand after the prefix changed is looked up under its new number, so that lookup can miss its original invoice and make a second one. After changing the prefix, don’t send already-booked orders again without checking their invoices in QuickBooks first.
What it changes in QuickBooks, and what it doesn’t
- Invoices, credit memos and deposits are never changed or deleted once they are in QuickBooks.
- Payments are never deleted. The one change ever made to a payment is its account, in a past-payout fix you approved on the Audit screen: it moves the payment into Undeposited Funds so it can go on its payout’s deposit.
- Items are changed only by the catalog push, for the items you ticked.