Please Note that This is a different integration from the invoice-level QuickBooks sync. If your marina syncs individual invoices and payments, see Dockwa - QuickBooks Online Integration: Complete Setup Instructions instead. Some mapping steps differ between the two. Both integrations are set up from the same Accounting page (Marketplace → QuickBooks).
If your Accounting page shows Item Mapping, Revenue Mapping and Sync Details tabs instead of Manage, Mapping and Export, your marina uses the invoice-level sync and this article doesn't apply.
The major steps to complete your integration setup is to do the following:
Connect your QuickBooks Online account
Establish which accounting basis you are following for your reservation and contracts revenue - Accrual or Cash
Create (if necessary) and map a default “Guest Customer” to enable the integration
(Optional) parse down the eligible Ledger Accounts to make mapping easier
Map your Ledger Accounts to Dockwa’s Accounting Fields and Items
Establish your Accounting Basis
Dockwa provides two options to select from:
Accrual Accounting - this means you will want Accounts Receivable and Unearned Revenue journal entries to be included in your export, and that you will recognize revenue on reservations and contracts sold across their service lengths (e.g. not recognized immediately upon payment).
Cash Accounting - this means you will only want your journal entries to reflect payments you received and the income accounts that are affected on those payments. This also means that all revenue is recognized immediately upon payment.
Note: Accounts Receivable journal entries will not be included in your exports with Cash Accounting selected.
Map a default Guest Customer
Create a Customer in Quickbooks dedicated for Dockwa.
Click Refresh Configuration on the Setup page, and
Select the newly created customer in the Dockwa Customer field.
Because of how the current integration works, you’ll need to set up a default “customer” to attribute the journal entry exports. We recommend marinas create a customer called “Dockwa Integration” or “Dockwa Customer” in their Quickbooks account to map to this field.
After creating a Quickbooks customer for the integration, you’ll need to hit the Refresh Configuration button to get it to show up in the picklist for the Dockwa Customer selection.
Map your Ledger Accounts
The mapping section is what will associate Dockwa items and categorized accounting items with your preferred Ledger Accounts. This association will be used not only for journal entry exports, but also for Dockwa’s financial reports to summarize your key financial account balances and sales revenue streams.
First, click Import Accounts at the bottom of the Setup section.
Note: If the button says “Resync Accounts”, you can skip this step.
Once you see that Accounts were successfully imported, proceed to the Mapping section.
Start mapping the Dockwa Accounting Fields to the appropriate Ledger Accounts.
Below are definitions of each Dockwa Accounting Field:
Accounts Receivable: The primary Asset account that tracks what you are owed by customers via invoices created within Dockwa. Typically, marinas map their default A/R account or a dedicated Dockwa A/R subaccount to this field.
Deposit Liability: This serves as a failsafe for any deposit items created in Dockwa that are not mapped individually already. Deposit Items are created for the purpose of charging boaters a fee that is assumed to be given back to them after their boat storage service is completed (e.g. a Security Deposit). This is generally mapped to a liability account since these types of deposits are not recognized as revenue.
Unearned Revenue: Unearned revenue represents revenue that has been invoiced but is before the service start date. For example, a contract can be signed and monthly invoices generated, but those invoices in the future will populate Unearned Revenue. Please map the appropriate Deferred / Unearned Revenue account to this field.
Tax Liability: This is where you will map your tax liability account.
Dockwa-Processed Payment Receipts: This bucket will include all payments processed by Dockwa through our payment processor Stripe. This will exclude any manual payment method transactions, and will reduce A/R.Depending on your reconciliation process, it may be advantageous to map a temporary holding account to the Dockwa-Processed Payment Receipts field, so that you can move any funds to your primary operating account only after being reconciled.
Processing Fees: Processing Fees field represents the cost for processing payments (e.g. by card or ACH) via Dockwa, and is taken out of your gross earnings before the Bank Transfer to you. Therefore, you should map this to an Expense account representing your bank charges or merchant fees.
This is different from the Convenience Fees that you may pass along to your customers when they pay by Credit Card. Convenience Fees or any related fees configured and charged to customers are in the Items page of the Mapping section.
Cash Receipts: This bucket will include all cash transactions. Please map this to an operating account or equivalent Asset account.
Check Receipts: This bucket will include all check transactions. Please map this to an operating account or equivalent Asset account.
Offline ACH Receipts: This bucket will include all Offline ACH transactions (considered a manual payment method on invoices). Please map this to an operating account or equivalent Asset account.
External Transactions: When processing a payment through Dockwa, you can elect to categorize the transaction as “external”, meaning that it’s not processed through Dockwa at all. This is used when payments are already represented in their ledger accounts already - thus, this mapping can be ignored.
Once your Accounting Items are mapped, proceed to the Items section of the Mappings page to associate the items you sell in Dockwa to the appropriate income accounts in your Ledger.
This will be used in your journal entries to balance your payment receipts (for Cash basis accounting users), or to recognize revenue properly over time on sold services (for Accrual basis accounting users).
In the Other page of the Mapping section, you’ll see three more categories of Items that serve as failsafes to map Ledger Accounts to any new items created that are left unmapped. It’s recommended, but not required that you map these categories to Ledger accounts.
(Optional) Parse Down your Ledger Account Picklist
If you have a large number of Ledger Accounts in your QuickBooks instance that won’t be necessary to map within Dockwa, you have the ability to hide Ledger Accounts from the picklist of options shown in the Mapping section.
Proceed to the Manage section.
All Ledger Accounts are toggled to Show in the picklist by default, which means the toggle buttons will be to the right.
Go through the list and click the toggle to hide any irrelevant Ledger Accounts. You’ll notice the toggle button will shift to the left for each Ledger Account you hide.
Tip: If you have an extensive list of Ledger Accounts in QuickBooks, but are only using a small number of accounts in your list for the Mapping portion, it may be faster to Hide unmapped ledger accounts and manually go through the list of accounts to toggle ON the accounts you need before proceeding with the Mapping section.
Using the Journal Entries Integration
How to Export Journals to Quickbooks
You will need to navigate to the Export section.
Select your Start and End Dates of Dockwa financial data to export to Quickbooks.
Click Export to Quickbooks.
Best Practices for Managing your Exports
If you’re planning to use journal reports in QuickBooks to analyze financial performance per day, we recommend doing daily exports.
If you only plan on using journal reports in QuickBooks to analyze financial performance monthly or quarterly, we recommend the following procedures:
Depending on how often you receive payouts, you should align export date ranges to be from the day after a payout through the day of the following payout. That way, the Dockwa-processed Payment Receipts balance change from the exported entry should match the amount of your Dockwa bank transfer, and makes bank deposit reconciliation more straightforward.
Example Scenario: Say you get paid out from Dockwa weekly on every Wednesday, and the last three Wednesday payouts in August fell on the following dates: 8/14, 8/21, 8/28.
Recommendation: make your Date Ranges for the export 8/8 - 8/14, 8/15 - 8/21, and 8/22 - 8/28.
If you’re looking to easily identify how much revenue was earned in a financial period (like a month or quarter) in addition to making bank deposit reconciliation more straightforward, you should export the journals that include payments processed across changes in the month or quarter into two separate exports to cleanly attribute journal entries to the desired financial period you're analyzing.
Example Scenario: Say you get paid out from Dockwa weekly on every Wednesday. The upcoming two Wednesday payout dates are the following: 8/28, 9/4.
Recommendation: make your Date Ranges for the export 8/22 - 8/28, 8/29 - 8/31 (to keep August activity from blending into September activity), and 9/1 - 9/4.