Business Analysis with QuickBooks®

Chapter 11. Using the QuickBooks Software Development Kit

IN THIS CHAPTER

• An Example QuickBooks SDK Application

• Arranging for the Dynamic Link Library

• Exploring the CustomerQuery Request Code

• Exploring the CustomerQuery Response Code

A software development kit, whether it's for QuickBooks, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, or any of a long list of popular applications, is a set of tools you can use to extend the application's reach. The software development kit (SDK) for QuickBooks is comparatively easy to use, but learning how to use it is another matter. I'll try to improve that situation in this chapter.

In the previous paragraph, I said that an SDK can help extend an application's reach. That's an ambiguous statement, but the ambiguity is deliberate: It's very difficult to define crisply just what the SDK can do for you. The best I can do is to cite some examples of how I've used it:

• To calculate inventory valuation and the cost of goods sold according to FIFO (first-in, first-out) order, and to automate the use of a different method of calculating average cost than QuickBooks uses.

• To create donor acknowledgment letters for nonprofits (which Intuit wrongly implies that its QuickBooks nonprofit edition can do).

• To enable the batch entry of sales receipts, so the user need not fill out a separate sales receipt for each sales transaction.

• To create bills of materials and where-used lists for assemblies.

I use the SDK for various other purposes. The point is that if you want to do something ...