The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Quickbooks MCP listing page.
An MCP server for QuickBooks Online — built for bookkeepers, CFOs, and accountants who use AI assistants in their daily workflow.
Ask your AI assistant to pull a P&L report, create a journal entry, or investigate an account balance — using plain language, not API payloads.
Intuit provides an official MCP server that's a solid starting point for developers exploring the QuickBooks API. This server takes a different approach: it's designed for financial professionals working in production books.
Intuit's server requires QuickBooks internal IDs for every reference — you need to look up a vendor's ID before creating a bill. This server resolves names automatically:
This is the only QuickBooks MCP server with report tools. Pull a P&L, Balance Sheet, or Trial Balance — broken down by month, department, or class — without leaving your AI conversation.
Every create and edit operation defaults to draft/preview mode. You see exactly what will be written to your books before committing. No accidental journal entries or misclassified expenses.
Instead of separate search tools for each entity type, a single SQL-like query tool works across all QuickBooks entities. AI assistants write SQL naturally, and QuickBooks validates it — no field whitelists to maintain.
Store credentials locally for personal use, or in AWS Secrets Manager for shared environments. OAuth tokens refresh automatically and persist across sessions.
| Intuit Official | This Server | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | Developers exploring the API | Bookkeepers, CFOs, accountants |
| Name resolution | Requires internal QB IDs | Resolves names automatically |
| Financial reports | None | P&L, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance |
| Write safety | Executes immediately | Draft preview by default |
| Query approach | Entity-specific search tools | SQL-like queries across all entities |
| Credentials | Local .env file | Local file or AWS Secrets Manager |
| Distribution | Clone from GitHub | npx quickbooks-mcp |
Choose the setup that fits your use case:
| Setup | Best For |
|---|---|
| NPM Install | Quick setup, using your own QuickBooks app |
| Local Checkout | Development, customization |
| AWS Mode | Shared/production environments |
The simplest way to get started. Credentials are stored locally on your machine.
https://developer.intuit.com/v2/OAuth2Playground/RedirectUrlAdd to your project's .mcp.json:
Create ~/.quickbooks-mcp/credentials.json:
Once Claude Code is running, use the qbo_authenticate tool:
qbo_authenticate with no arguments to get an authorization URLcode and realmId from the redirect URLqbo_authenticate again with the authorization code and realm IDYour OAuth tokens will be saved and automatically refreshed.
For development or customization.
Follow the same steps as Option 1 above.
Add to your project's .mcp.json:
Create ~/.quickbooks-mcp/credentials.json with your client credentials (same as Option 1), then run qbo_authenticate to complete the OAuth flow.
For shared or production environments. Stores credentials in AWS Secrets Manager.
Create the secret in Secrets Manager:
Store Company ID in SSM Parameter Store:
Create a .env file in the quickbooks-mcp directory:
Note: Due to a known Claude Code bug, environment variables from
.mcp.jsonare not reliably passed to MCP servers. The.envfile workaround is required.
The server needs these AWS permissions:
By default, large responses (reports, query results) are written to /tmp files and the server returns a file path. This works well for Claude Code in terminal environments but breaks in Claude Desktop and plugin environments where the model cannot read from /tmp.
Set QBO_INLINE_OUTPUT=true to return all responses inline instead.
Option A — via .env file (recommended for local checkout):
Create a .env file in the quickbooks-mcp directory:
Option B — via .mcp.json env block (recommended for NPM install):
Note: Due to a known Claude Code bug, environment variables from
.mcp.jsonare not reliably passed to MCP servers in some configurations. If Option B doesn't work, use the.envfile workaround.
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
QBO_CREDENTIAL_MODE | local | Credential storage: local or aws |
QBO_CLIENT_ID | - | QuickBooks app Client ID (local mode) |
QBO_CLIENT_SECRET | - | QuickBooks app Client Secret (local mode) |
QBO_CREDENTIAL_FILE | ~/.quickbooks-mcp/credentials.json | Custom credential file path. A leading ~ is expanded to your home directory, so it works in an MCP client's JSON env block where no shell is present to expand it. |
QBO_INLINE_OUTPUT | false | Return responses inline instead of writing to /tmp files. Required when using Claude Desktop or plugin environments where file-based output is not accessible to the model. |
QBO_SANDBOX | false | Use QuickBooks sandbox environment. Also switches the "View in QuickBooks" deep links to app.sandbox.qbo.intuit.com so they cannot open the production company. |
AWS_REGION | us-east-2 | AWS region (aws mode) |
QBO_SECRET_NAME | prod/qbo | Secrets Manager secret name (aws mode) |
QBO_COMPANY_ID_PARAM | /prod/qbo/company_id | SSM parameter path (aws mode) |
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Setup | |
qbo_authenticate | Set up OAuth credentials (local mode only) |
get_company_info | Get connected company information |
| Query & Reports | |
query | Run SQL-like queries against any QuickBooks entity |
list_accounts | List chart of accounts with filtering |
get_profit_loss | Profit & Loss report (by month, department, class, etc.) |
get_balance_sheet | Balance Sheet report |
get_trial_balance | Trial Balance report (flags: true adds a close-review pass for wrong-side and uncategorized/suspense balances) |
get_report | Any of 24 other QuickBooks reports — A/R and A/P aging, customer and vendor balances, transaction lists, general ledger, journal, sales by customer/item/class/department, cash flow, and the detail variants |
query_account_transactions | All transactions affecting a specific account (13 posting entity types, paginated, optional sub-account rollup; see docs/entity-coverage.md for limits) |
account_period_summary | Period summary for an account (opening/closing balance, debits, credits, count) |
| Journal Entries | |
create_journal_entry | Create a journal entry (validates debits = credits; lines take entity_name/entity_type) |
get_journal_entry | Fetch a journal entry by ID |
edit_journal_entry | Modify an existing journal entry |
| Bills | |
create_bill | Create a vendor bill (lines take customer_name) |
get_bill | Fetch a bill by ID |
edit_bill | Modify an existing bill |
| Expenses | |
create_expense | Create an expense (Cash, Check, or Credit Card; payee may be a vendor, customer, or employee) |
get_expense | Fetch an expense by ID |
edit_expense | Modify an existing expense |
| Sales Receipts | |
create_sales_receipt | Create a sales receipt with item lines |
get_sales_receipt | Fetch a sales receipt by ID |
edit_sales_receipt | Modify an existing sales receipt |
| Invoices | |
create_invoice | Create an invoice with item lines (customer required) |
get_invoice | Fetch an invoice by ID |
edit_invoice | Modify an existing invoice |
| Deposits | |
create_deposit | Create a bank deposit (lines take entity_name/entity_type) |
get_deposit | Fetch a deposit by ID |
edit_deposit | Modify an existing deposit (lines take entity_name/entity_type) |
| Vendor Credits | |
create_vendor_credit | Create a vendor credit (lines take customer_name) |
get_vendor_credit | Fetch a vendor credit by ID |
edit_vendor_credit | Modify an existing vendor credit |
| Bill Payments | |
create_bill_payment | Pay bills and apply vendor credits (the QBO "check" / pay-bills flow) |
receive_payment | Record a customer payment against open invoices (A/R counterpart to create_bill_payment); each line defaults to the invoice's open balance |
create_transfer | Move money between two of the company's own accounts (bank↔bank, credit-card paydown) |
get_bill_payment | Fetch a bill payment by ID; flags unapplied amounts |
| Delete | |
delete_entity | Delete any transaction (journal entry, bill, invoice, deposit, sales receipt, expense, vendor credit, bill payment) |
Every write tool that can attribute a line or a header to a name list accepts a
name and resolves it to an ID, the same way account_name and
department_name do. Which parameter you get depends on what QuickBooks will
actually store there:
| Parameter | Where it applies | Accepts |
|---|---|---|
entity_name + entity_type | create_deposit / edit_deposit lines, create_journal_entry / edit_journal_entry lines, create_expense / edit_expense header payee | Vendor, Customer, or Employee. entity_type defaults to Vendor. |
customer_name | create_bill / edit_bill, create_expense / edit_expense, create_vendor_credit / edit_vendor_credit lines | Customer only — QuickBooks stores a CustomerRef on these lines and has no vendor or employee option. |
vendor_name | create_bill, create_vendor_credit, create_bill_payment headers | Vendor only. |
customer_name (header) | create_invoice, create_sales_receipt | Customer only. Their item lines have no per-line entity. |
Each also has an _id form (entity_id, customer_id) if you already know the
internal ID. On edit tools, the rule for line parameters is:
line_id keeps the entity it
already has;entity_name: "") and it is cleared.See docs/quickbooks-api-limitations.md
for the underlying QBO field shapes, which are not uniform.
Arguments are checked against the schema each tool advertises, before anything
runs. An unknown parameter is an error that names the closest valid one, a
missing required parameter is an error, and an edit_* call with no field to
change is an error rather than a write that reports success.
The alternative is silence. A handler reads the parameters it knows about, so a misspelled one is simply absent: a create call that puts the date under the wrong key posts on today's date, an as-of report asked for a date range returns today's balances, and an edit whose fields are all misspelled comes back "updated successfully" having changed nothing. None of those raise anything for the caller to notice.
Relatedly, when QuickBooks accepts an update without advancing the record's
SyncToken — meaning the payload matched what was already stored — the edit
tools report no change instead of success.
The server automatically refreshes OAuth tokens on each request and persists them back to your credential store (local file or AWS Secrets Manager).
Tests live in tests/, mirroring src/. They are TypeScript, compiled by
tsconfig.test.json into dist-test/ and run by Node's built-in test runner —
no test framework dependency. Type errors in a test are build failures, so a
test referencing a renamed export fails loudly rather than silently skipping.
Anything needing a QuickBooks client passes a hand-written stand-in covering
just the calls under test, so the suite runs offline with no credentials.
Run the qbo_authenticate tool to set up OAuth credentials (local mode only).
Authorization codes are only valid for a few minutes. Start the OAuth flow again.
qbo_authenticate.env file has QBO_CREDENTIAL_MODE=aws