Best POS Systems That Integrate With QuickBooks for 2023
This article is part of a larger series on POS Systems.
All businesses need to stay on top of their accounting, and the most efficient way to do this is to integrate your store’s point-of-sale (POS) system with dedicated accounting software—of which QuickBooks is one of the most popular choices. POS integration with QuickBooks will let you automatically keep track of transaction details; account for tips, discounts, refunds, and taxes; and assist with POS reconciliation.
If you are decided on using QuickBooks for your accounting, you’ll need to choose the best POS system for your business that integrates with this software. The best POS systems that integrate with QuickBooks are:
- Square: Best overall multipurpose POS system
- Shopify POS: Best for online selling
- Lightspeed: Best for strong inventory management
- Toast: Best for restaurants
- KORONA POS: Best for high-risk retailers
- Odoo: Best for businesses with complex operational needs
This article will focus on POS systems that integrate with QuickBooks. For more detailed information about QuickBooks itself (including plans, features, and pricing), see our in-depth reviews and guides:
Best POS Systems That Integrate With QuickBooks Compared
Best for | Monthly fee | Processing fee | Full review | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | General retail, restaurants, service businesses | $0–$69 (Custom pricing available) | From 2.6% + 10 cents | |
 | Online or multichannel businesses | From $39 + $89 Shopify POS Pro | From 2.4% | |
 | Retailers, wholesalers, dropshippers | Retail: $89–$269 (Annual pricing available) Restaurants: $69–$399 | From 2.6%+ 10 cents | |
 | Restaurants (all types) | $0–$165 (Custom pricing available) | Standard: 2.49% + 15 cents Pay-as-you-go hardware option: 2.99% + 15 cents | |
 | Liquor stores, vape shops, ticketing businesses | $59–$89 (Custom pricing available) | Depends on chosen payment processor | |
 | Retail, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and more | $0–$46.80 per user Additional pricing for extra apps/functionality | Depends on chosen payment processor | |
QuickBooks has its own POS system; however, we are not recommending it in this guide because the QuickBooks POS is scheduled to be discontinued in October 2023. The system also had a few downsides such as relatively high cost (though it can no longer be purchased), along with users being locked into QuickBooks payment processing.
Square: Best Overall Multipurpose POS System
Pros
- Flexible, multipurpose POS
- Native online store builder
- Free plan available
- Free hardware included (card reader)
Cons
- Limited or inconsistent support
- Does not process age-restricted products online
- Inventory management is not matrix or ingredient-level
- Limited customization options
Square Overview
Square is a free, multipurpose, and easy-to-use POS system; in fact, it is our most highly recommended system overall. The POS has industry-specific versions for retailers, restaurants, and appointment-based businesses. The free baseline plan will get you basic reporting and inventory management, ecommerce capability, order management and fulfillment. Affordable upgrades will unlock more advanced reporting and inventory management; floor, seat, and course management for restaurants; no-show protection for appointments; and more.
When integrating with QuickBooks, your sales transactions and item details will be captured in a sales receipt. This helps you easily account not only for transactions, but also for tips, discounts, refunds, additional fees, and even taxes. You can also review transactions before they are logged, and undo them beforehand if necessary. This also speeds up your POS reconciliation.
Square Pricing
How to Integrate Square With QuickBooks
You’ll need to follow specific procedures depending on whether you’re integrating QuickBooks via the Connect to Square app or via the Commerce Sync app, which transfers sales activity processed by your Square POS into QuickBooks.
Note that the QuickBooks Desktop integration currently does not work with Square’s multiple location feature.
Shopify POS: Best for Online Selling
Pros
- Best-in-class ecommerce platform
- Great for businesses needing a multichannel POS or online store
- Customizable mobile checkout
- Well-suited to social media selling
Cons
- Requires an ecommerce subscription; prices can add up
- Not suitable for brick-and-mortar-only businesses
- Offline mode has limited functionality
- Limited inventory features in the free plan
Shopify POS Overview
If you plan to run an online business or expand your physical store channels, Shopify is your best bet for a POS system. It has a place in our lists of best retail POS systems and top-recommended POS systems in general. The checkout process is streamlined and customizable, the POS is generally easy to use, and of course, it has outstanding ecommerce and online ordering capabilities. Shopify POS has a three-day free trial available, so you can try all these features for yourself.
Integrating with QuickBooks will let you track payments, refunds, and fees, and split receipts if necessary. You can categorize payments to simplify accounting, determine top-performing revenue channels, and get a better idea of your profits and losses at a glance.
With QuickBooks POS being discontinued Oct. 3, 2023, Intuit recommends Shopify POS as an alternative. If you are transitioning from QuickBooks POS to Shopify POS, you may be eligible for an exclusive discount.
Shopify POS Pricing
You’ll need to subscribe to a Shopify plan in order to use Shopify’s POS Lite system. Here are your options for Shopify plans:
- Shopify Basic
- Monthly: $39 per month
- Annual: $29 per month
- Shopify Advanced
- Monthly: $399 per month
- Annual: $299 per month
- Shopify Plus (for high-volume businesses): From $2,000 per month
Once you’ve subscribed, you can upgrade the POS from Lite to Pro for an additional monthly fee. You’ll get more features, including omnichannel selling, retail reports, and staff, inventory, and customer management.
- Shopify POS Pro
- Monthly: $89 per month, per location
- Annual: $79 per month, per location (billed yearly)
How to Integrate Shopify POS With QuickBooks
If you’re using QuickBooks Desktop, you can integrate this with your Shopify POS. Briefly, the steps to do this include:
- Setting up your tax preferences
- Generating an app token
- Mapping data fields and selecting a data sharing method
For a more detailed guide, review the step-by-step instructions from Shopify.
Lightspeed: Best for Strong Inventory Management
Pros
- Granular matrix inventory management
- Comprehensive reporting tools (pre-set and customizable)
- Ecommerce tools available
- Choice of native or third-party payment processors
Cons
- Higher monthly fees when using third-party payment processors
- Limited shipping integrations
- Pricey for very small/new businesses
Lightspeed Overview
While Lightspeed has many great features, its main strength is its granular inventory management system. This allows for purchase ordering, low-stock alerts, work order management, multilocation syncing, and more. This POS also offers great reporting features (especially with the highest-level subscription), a native ecommerce platform, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
This integration automates data entry, saving you time and reducing the chance of input errors. You can stay on top of daily POS reconciliation, invoices, customer and vendor details, tips, and tax tracking. You can also determine the sales volume and costs of each product you offer, letting you know which items are performing well.
Lightspeed Pricing
How to Integrate Lightspeed With QuickBooks
Toast: Best for Restaurants
Pros
- Free plan available
- Pay-as-you-go options for hardware kits (with higher processing fees)
- Restaurant-specific software and hardware
- Insightful payroll and HR tools
Cons
- 2-year contract required
- Locked into default payment processor
- Required hardware purchases
Toast Overview
Toast is the premier POS system for restaurants, boasting industry-specific features and hardware such as kitchen display systems (KDS), staff management with scheduling and tipping, digital ordering, and delivery management. It also has seamless and personalized loyalty and marketing tools, as well as customizable reporting. The pay-as-you-go options for hardware kits allow you to start operating your restaurant with all the hardware you need, without worrying about upfront costs. You could hardly ask for a better POS system if you’re running a restaurant of any size.
Toast comes with an optional xtraCHEF subscription that gives you additional features like invoice automation and costing; xtraCHEF is also what you’ll use to integrate with Quickbooks. This integration will help you manage your restaurant costs as well as see profits and losses. Cost of goods, sales taxes, and other incoming and outgoing funds become easier to track. This is especially important in a restaurant, as there is usually a lot of complex inventory, dishes, and ingredients to keep track of, not to mention tips.
Toast Pricing
- Quick-start bundle: From $0 per month
- Core: From $69 per month
- Growth: From $165 per month
- Build Your Own: Custom pricing (suggested for multilocation restaurants wanting high customizability)
Pay-as-you-go hardware options
All of the hardware kits listed below carry no upfront or monthly costs, but you’ll be paying a slightly higher processing fee: 2.99% + 15 cents. This higher processing fee is what will, over time, pay for the hardware.
- Countertop kit
- Toast Flex POS terminal
- Card reader
- Router
- Handheld kit
- Handheld POS terminal
- Wi-Fi access point
- Router
- Guest self-service kit
- Self-service terminal
- Card reader
- Router
xtraCHEF
Toast is not very transparent about the pricing for its xtraCHEF subscription (which you’ll need in order to integrate with QuickBooks). You’ll need to contact Toast for specific pricing information.
How to Integrate Toast With QuickBooks
Integrating Toast with QuickBooks involves several steps, including setting up your restaurant’s chart of accounts and updating general ledger codes and vendor lists.
Toast provides a guide with more information, as well as some benefits of integrating with QuickBooks.
KORONA POS: Best for High-risk Retailers
Pros
- Strong inventory tools including case-break functions and stock alerts
- Choice of payment processor
- Built-in settings for managing age-restricted products
Cons
- Limited ecommerce integrations
- Not the best fit for full-service restaurants
- No native subscription management tools
KORONA POS Overview
KORONA POS is tailor-made for high-risk retailers, such as those selling liquor or vape products. It comes with built-in age-verification features that prompt you to check your customers’ age before allowing the sale of restricted products. The POS has a customizable dashboard, tax categorization tools, and a native loyalty program. It is also suitable for ticketing businesses such as museums, theme parks, and amusement parks.
Integration with QuickBooks lets you import all sales data, commodity categories, taxes and payments, discounts, and the value of your inventory items. Syncing of your business’ end-of-day statements is also automated, taking one daily task off your mind and reducing errors in your accounting and reconciliation.
KORONA POS Pricing
- Core: $59 per month
- Advanced: $69 per month
- Inventory management and reporting
- Real-time tracking
- Plus: $89 per month
- Order-level optimization
- Multilocation reporting
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Customized onboarding
- Event management
- Pre-built integrations
How to Integrate KORONA POS With QuickBooks
You’ll need an existing QuickBooks Online account in order to integrate with KORONA POS; you can make the connection quickly from your POS dashboard. You’ll need to choose your organizational units, view and set up end-of-day statements and other reports, and sync inventory and stock receipts.
KORONA has provided a detailed integration guide for QuickBooks.
Odoo: Best for Businesses With Complex Operational Needs
Pros
- Free POS includes invoice and inventory functions
- Many downloadable apps for sales, CRM, accounting, marketing, and more
- Many payment providers available (Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, etc.)
Cons
- Paid Odoo integrations/apps—costs can add up fast when buying modules
- Implementation and customization are unintuitive
- No free ecommerce functions
Odoo Overview
Odoo is the top-ranking system on our list of best open-source POS software. Being open-source, the initial POS that you download is quite bare-bones (only including invoice and inventory functions), but you can choose from a large array of available add-on apps for CRM, marketing, HR, and more. You’ll also be able to choose from several payment providers, including major names such as PayPal. When you use Odoo, the name of the game is customization.
This POS integration with QuickBooks can entirely automate your accounting processes such as creation of sales orders and invoicing. You can view a wealth of data, including information about orders, customers, vendors, inventory, taxes, and more. What’s more, all recorded transactions will be synchronized across all your business’ sales channels.
Odoo Pricing
- Free plan available (for one app only)
- Standard
- Monthly: $31.10 per user monthly
- Annual: $24.90 per user monthly
- Custom
- Monthly: $46.80 per user monthly
- Annual: $37.40 per user monthly
When buying additional apps for sales, marketing, and the like, you can choose to pay for these individually. This is where things can get expensive if you start adding lots of extra features; Odoo has listed pricing details for POS apps.
How to Integrate Odoo With QuickBooks
It is possible to integrate the latest version of Odoo with Quickbooks, but because Odoo is open-source, the process isn’t as straightforward as other POS systems on this list.
You will need to integrate using a QuickBooks connector app; these are developed by third parties, each with their own procedures, user guides, and pricing (which can exceed $200). Here are two examples:
- Quickbooks Odoo Connector by Techspawn Solutions Pvt Ltd
- Odoo QuickBooks Online Connector PRO by VentorTech
How We Evaluated POS Systems That Integrate With QuickBooks
When considering which point of sale systems are compatible with QuickBooks for this list, our primary goal was to present options suitable for a variety of purposes.
We looked for POS systems that business owners could use for retail, restaurants, and service or appointment-based business models. We also looked for specific features such as tools for restricted industries, inventory management, online selling, and open-source operation. Of course, we also considered basic POS functionality such as speed and convenience of checkout, reporting, CRM, multilocation management, and overall ease of use.
Almost all of the systems here are also on our list of the best overall POS systems for small businesses.
Bottom Line
If you’re using QuickBooks for your business accounting and need a POS system that integrates with it, you have lots of options—there are choices available whether you’re running a retail shop, restaurant, service business, or online store. If you’re still undecided on which POS system to use, try Square; it has a free plan including an online store and card reader, and it works well for any business type.
