Help & SOPs
How to use TicoQuickBooks without guessing.
This page is the working operating guide for the major TicoQuickBooks pages. Use it to understand what each page is for, what a normal workflow looks like, and what to do when the app asks for help before it posts to QuickBooks.
Quick Start
TicoQuickBooks is the shared finance operations layer for receiving supplier documents, preparing QuickBooks bills, reviewing business financials, generating payroll, and posting reconciliation Journal Entries.
Use Bills when a supplier invoice, PDF, or image needs to be reviewed and turned into a QuickBooks bill.
Use Financials to see open balances and P&L snapshots. Use Reconciliation to review daily sales and settlement Journal Entries.
Payroll pulls HIOPOS timesheets, calculates pay, creates proof files, creates paystubs, and previews or posts payroll Journal Entries.
Businesses, QuickBooks connections, CAByS mappings, and reconciliation settings live under Admin.
Bills
The Bills page is the inbox for supplier documents. It shows documents that need attention at the top and processed documents below. The goal is to get each valid supplier invoice into the correct QuickBooks company with the right vendor, account, class, tax handling, and attachments.
Best employee flow: ask vendors for a Costa Rican Factura Electronica whenever possible. For tax purposes in Costa Rica, this is the cleanest document because it includes the Hacienda XML. Have the vendor send the factura electronica to the right company inbox: facturas@encuentronosara.com, facturas@beachblendcoffee.com, or facturas@wellnosara.com. Then forward it to facturas@ticosync.com. The app reads the XML and prepares the QuickBooks bill automatically.
How an employee should submit a bill
- Ask the vendor for a Factura Electronica when possible. A proper factura electronica usually arrives by email with XML and PDF attachments.
- Forward the vendor email to facturas@ticosync.com. Forwarding the original email is better than taking screenshots because the XML stays attached.
- Open quickbooks.ticosync.com/bills. The same credentials used for operations.beachblendcoffee.com should work.
- Look for the bill in Bills needing attention if it needs help, or Bills already addressed if it was already posted or linked to QuickBooks.
- If the app needs help, open the bill and resolve the missing business, vendor, CAByS mapping, account, class, or PDF extraction review.
What happens automatically
- Factura electronica XML is parsed into supplier, receiver, date, totals, tax, and line-item data.
- The receiver cedula is used to assign the bill to the correct business when possible.
- The supplier cedula is used to find or create the correct QuickBooks vendor mapping.
- Known CAByS codes and saved mappings are used to suggest QuickBooks accounts and classes.
- Vendors configured in Admin > Bills can require manual CAByS/account selection on every bill, even when a saved mapping exists.
- Clean bills can be sent to QuickBooks with the original source PDF/XML attached.
PDF and image support
PDF and image parsing is being added so documents without XML can still be reviewed. Those records may stop in Needs PDF review because OCR is less reliable than Hacienda XML. Treat PDF-only extraction as a review workflow, not as strong as a real factura electronica.
Bill Detail
The Bill Detail page is where one document gets fixed, reviewed, and sent to QuickBooks.
If the bill is unassigned, choose the business that received the invoice. This is normally automatic from the receiver cedula, but PDF-only documents and bad supplier data may need manual help.
Use the supplier/vendor controls to choose or create the QuickBooks vendor. When possible, use a human-readable vendor name and keep the supplier cedula associated with the mapping.
Each invoice line needs a QuickBooks account and usually a class. Saved CAByS mappings should make repeated supplier lines faster over time.
Use the Attachments section to open the original PDF, invoice XML, accepted Hacienda XML, source email, or other supporting files.
Normal send flow
- Confirm the business, supplier, issued date, currency, and total look right.
- Resolve missing vendor or CAByS/account/class mappings.
- Review line items and attachments.
- Click the send action only when the bill is ready. Duplicate protection should prevent double-posting, but do not click repeatedly while a send is in progress.
- After posting, the status link should open the QuickBooks bill.
Financials
The Financials page gives a live QuickBooks snapshot by business. It is mainly for quickly understanding open exposure without opening each QuickBooks company.
- Choose the date range at the top. Last week means the most recently completed Saturday-Friday business week ending on the last Friday before today.
- Use the business summary to see open invoices, unpaid bills, and the current balance picture.
- Open a business P&L directly from the summary. The P&L respects the selected date range and can be linked directly.
- Top-level P&L headings are grouping rows; the meaningful numbers are on the account rows beneath them.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation is where daily sales, bank settlements, processor evidence, and QuickBooks Journal Entries come together. For HIOPOS businesses such as Encuentro, the app reads stored HIOPOS sales data plus BAC/ONVO settlement evidence and builds a balanced Journal Entry.
What the page is for
- Review the source evidence for a business date.
- Generate or review the draft Journal Entry.
- See QA issues before anything posts to QuickBooks.
- Open a direct link to the QuickBooks Journal Entry once posted.
Status meanings
- Draft ready: the app has enough source data and QA passed.
- QA failed: the Journal Entry should not post until the issue is addressed.
- Posted with follow-up: the Journal Entry posted, but there is a small or allowed variance that should be reviewed later.
- Needs update: new source evidence arrived after a previous QuickBooks post, so the posted JE may need to be reviewed or overwritten.
Slack alerts
QA failures and outside-tolerance postings are sent to the finance Slack channel. Red QA alerts need attention before posting. Yellow outside-tolerance alerts are worth a look when there is time.
Payroll
Payroll is a guided workflow for pay periods. It pulls HIOPOS timesheets, lets an operator review hours, handles adelantos, generates deliverables, previews the QuickBooks Journal Entry, and stores completed payroll history.
Payroll subpages
The primary workflow page. Select the business and pay-period ending date, then work through the numbered steps.
Formerly Setup. Maintain employee names, departments, rates, bank details, email addresses, tip eligibility, QuickBooks mappings, and adelanto balances.
Find completed payroll runs, proof workbooks, combined paystubs, employee paystub PDFs/JPGs, and posted QuickBooks JE links.
Completed payroll days show payroll totals such as employee count, taxable payroll, CCSS withheld, service charge, propinas, adelantos, and total net pay.
Workflow steps
- Hours Review: pull HIOPOS timesheet rows and review regular, overtime, and vacation hours. Rows or specific fields highlight when something looks low or high.
- Adelantos: review active employee advances and decide the deduction for this pay period. Start new adelantos from Employees so balances carry across periods.
- Holiday and OT: review national holiday and overtime calculations. Overtime should be time-and-a-half.
- Deliverables: generate bank transfer details, CCSS/proof workbook, paystubs, and employee paystub download links.
- QuickBooks JE: preview the payroll Journal Entry and send it to QuickBooks when ready.
- Summary: confirm the final totals and use historical download links later.
Admin
Admin is where the app is configured. It is organized like the Payroll area, with a top-level Admin header and subpages.
Configure each business, cedula, routing aliases, notification recipients, QuickBooks connection, source workers, banking sources, and reconciliation settings.
Map Costa Rican CAByS codes to QuickBooks accounts, classes, and tax behavior. These mappings make future supplier bills faster and more consistent.
Choose vendors that should always stop for manual CAByS/account selection instead of automatically using saved CAByS mappings.
Open the reconciliation admin view for business/date review and source-data workflows.
If a business cannot fetch accounts, classes, bills, or post entries, check its QuickBooks connection on the Businesses page first.
Troubleshooting
Confirm the email was forwarded to facturas@ticosync.com with attachments. If it was PDF-only, it may appear as Needs PDF review. If it had no usable bill attachment, it may be ignored or sent to DLQ for review.
Open the bill detail page and look for missing business, vendor, account, class, CAByS, tax code, currency, or attachment issues.
Open the direct reconciliation link from Slack or the page. Read the QA reason first, then check source evidence and settlement selection before posting.
Use the in-app download buttons from Payroll History. They generate fresh download tokens each time instead of relying on old S3 links.