How To Sync With Quickbooks or Xero

Back On Stage is booking-centric software, meaning that our focus is to make all the logistics and paperwork around gigs, much easier for bandleaders and musicians. Although BOS tracks your client income, musician payouts and any other expense transactions you choose to record inside individual bookings, your music business will still need more robust accounting software to manage the rest of your day-to-day operational transactions. 

For your accounting needs, we're happy to recommend Quickbooks, which we have used ourselves for over a decade. Xero is also a popular option.

If you're not already using an accounting software, you can try Quickbooks today with our referral link and save 50% on your first 6 months:

Get Quickbooks and Save 50% for 6 months

This was the old way bandleaders paid musicians:

1. Musician sends invoice to bandleader
2. Bandleader enters the bill details into Quickooks (QB) or Xero
3. Bandleader writes a check (cheque) 
4. Bandleader records a bill payment in QB or Xero
5. Bandleader delivers the check to the musician
6. Bandleader waits and waits and waits, until...
7. Musician deposits the check
8. Bandleader downloads the transaction details from their bank into QB or Xero
9. Bandleader matches the musician bill to the bank transaction inside QB or Xero

This is the new way bandleaders pay musicians in BOS:

1. Bandleader turns on auto-pay for the booking
2. Bandleader matches the musician bill to the bank transaction inside QB or Xero

Imagine paying a 10-piece band the old way - that's 90 steps! Your new BOS workflow reduces that to just 11 steps total and saves most bandleaders 30-60 minutes per gig.

Exciting!

But before we can use this simplified workflow, we need to configure a few things first. The 3 steps outlined below, will take you an hour or so to set up, but that's a one-time effort. Once you're up and running, you'll be saving hours, if not days, of work each month!

STEP 1: DECIDE HOW YOU'LL SEND MUSICIAN INVOICES TO QB OR XERO

Once you pay your musicians, BOS will automatically generate paid invoices for each musician payout transaction. So the question now, is how to get those invoices synced into your Quickbooks or Xero account.

Since BOS does not have a direct integration with QB or Xero, we'll use Hubdoc as a bridge between BOS and the final destination. The process looks like this:

1. BOS sends the invoices to Hubdoc
2. Hubdoc extracts the information from each invoice
3. Hubdoc creates a new bill inside QB or Xero and attaches the invoice to it

If you are a Xero user, Hubdoc comes free with your Xero plan, but if you use Quickbooks, you'll need to sign up for Hubdoc here. 

Note for Quickbooks users: if you do not wish to pay for Hubdoc, you can be the bridge yourself by sending BOS payout invoices directly to your own email, then forwarding them to Quickbooks manually. Quickbooks can process the the invoices and extract the data for you, without the need for Hubdoc. However, you'll need to configure your receipt forwarding address in Quickbooks first and you'll need to remember to forward each invoice from BOS to to your email, then to QB yourself. If you choose this option, skip step 2.

STEP 2: CONFIGURE AUTOSYNC BEWEEN HUBDOC AND YOUR BOOKKEEPING SOFTWARE

Once you've signed up for Hubdoc, just set up your unique email address for emailing documents to Hubdoc. Save this email address. We'll use it in the next step.

Next, you'll need to sync Hubdoc to your Quickbooks or Xero account so that it can sync invoice data to your desired bookkeeping software..

NOTE for beginners: if you're new to Hubdoc, make sure you understand the publishing basics between Hubdoc and Quickbooks or between Hubdoc and Xero. 

Lastly, set up autosync on Hubdoc, for each of your musicians, so that when BOS sends musician invoices to Hubdoc, they will be processed and synced to QB or Xero automatically. This process can be a bit tedious, but you only have to do it once! Once it's done, it will be a HUGE time saver!

STEP 3: CONFIGURE PAYPAL & AUTO-PAY INSIDE BACK ON STAGE

Now that we have the bridge and destination set up, the last step is to get the source working.

You can completely automate the process of sending musician payouts inside Back On Stage with the "Auto-Pay" function. You specify the time you want payments to be sent, then you just turn it on inside any booking you want, and BOS handles the rest.

To use auto-pay, you must:

1. Link your business PayPal account linked to Back On Stage
2. Configure your auto-pay and payout settings inside Back On Stage

First, navigate to Company Settings > Details, and open "PayPal Settings". Follow the steps listed there to connect your PayPal account.

Make sure you "Enable PayPal" under "PayPal Master Switch", then save and close.

Next, we'll click on "Auto-Pay & Payout Settings".

Here, you set the time at which payouts will be sent to your musicians and to whom you will send the auto-generated payout invoices. Note that these are global settings, but to use auto-pay on any booking, you still need to explicitly turn auto-pay on inside each individual booking you with to apply it to (see below).

In the above example, we have configured Back On Stage to pay our musicians the day after the gig, at 9:00AM. And once each musician is paid, Back On Stage will auto-generate a paid invoice and send a copy to the musician, Full Admins and...Hubdoc!

Okay, remember that unique Hubdoc email address we grabbed in step 2? Enter it in the "Send to email addresses" field on this page. Now, Back On Stage will send your musician payout invoices to Hubdoc for you.

NOTE: If you do not wish to use PayPal for musician payouts, you can manually log payouts from within each booking and elect to have your auto-generated musician invoices sent to Hubdoc at that time. 

You can learn more about how to pay musicians and the fees associated with PayPal payouts here.

With Auto-Pay and PayPal set up, here's what your new musician payout workflow will look like:

STEP 1. 

Sometime before the gig, open the booking, navigate to the finances tab and hit the "Check All" button above the Auto-Pay column

1. BOS triggers your PayPal payouts at the time you specified
2. BOS sends the payout invoices to your Hubdoc email address
3. Hubdoc extracts info from each invoice and syncs to QB or Xero

STEP 2. 

Match each invoice inside QB or Xero to its appropriate bank transaction.

At this point, we're assuming you already have your PayPal account (or the bank account that you used to pay your musicians) connected to your accounting software so that bank transactions are already being downloaded into QB or Xero automatically. Need help with that? Learn how to connect bank accounts to QB or connect bank accounts to Xero.

Navigate to wherever you process your downloaded bank transactions inside your bookkeeping software. In Quickbooks, you go to Banking > Banking. From there, you should see that QB has already downloaded the payout transactions from PayPal and matched them with the invoices that were just synced from Hubdoc.

All you need to do is click "Match":

And that's it! 

Your two-step process for paying your musicians AND doing all the bookkeeping is complete!

Can I Sync Client Invoices From BOS To Quickbooks or Xero?

Unfortunately not. However, if having client invoices attached to income transactions inside your bookkeeping software is important to you, manually attaching them is easy.

Whenever your client makes an invoice payment, you'll receive an automated email from BOS containing the paid client invoice in PDF format. You can simply save the PDF, open QB or Xero and attach it to the appropriate bank transaction.

That said, most companies do not find this necessary as Back On Stage keeps clean records of when all your client payments were received and makes finding client invoices easy. 

Instead, what works best for most companies is to simply set up "Rules" inside QB or Xero that automatically categorize "money in" (or income) transactions in applicable bank accounts as "Services" income by default. If you need to charge GST, VAT or other sales taxes in your area, just configure those as defaults for any income transactions in the "Services" category. That ensures that all your client income gets recorded and reported properly for tax time.

Why Should I Sync My Musician Invoices To QB or Xero?

Most live music companies (bands) are set up as small corporations or sole proprietorships that hire subcontractors (musicians) for one-off engagements. If this is your structure, it is paramount that you keep airtight records of every musician payout you make. 

In the event of an audit, your tax agency could ask you to provide invoices or receipts to back up any of the expense items you claimed during a previous tax year. If you can't provide this proof, you may be required to pay more tax and you may even face fines. 

Avoid that possible catastrophe by keeping all your musician invoices attached to their matching bank transactions so that every expense you claim for your business will have the paper trail it needs.