QuickBooks Connect 2016 - Building a global app: understanding the Global Tax Model and Multicurrency
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This document provides an overview of a presentation on global app development for QuickBooks Online. The presentation covers: 1. The key differences between global and US app development including tax models, currencies, character encoding and more. 2. Getting started with global app development including enabling global sandbox companies and allowing connections from global QuickBooks Online. 3. An overview of the global QuickBooks Online tax model and multicurrency features. 4. Steps for taking an app global like meeting requirements, publishing to international app stores and customizing for different regions.
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QuickBooks Connect 2016 - Building a global app: understanding the Global Tax Model and Multicurrency
- 1. Aaron Gourley – IDG Partner Solutions Jarred Keneally – IDG Developer Relations Building a global app: understanding the Global Tax Model and Multicurrency WiFi: QBConnect Password: not required#QBConnect
- 2. 2 Today’s speakers Aaron Gourley IDG Solutions Engineer, Intuit Canada @Gourleyman14 Jarred Keneally GPM – Intuit Developer Relations @JarredKeneally #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 3. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QuickBooks Online Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 5. 5 Small Business Cloud Adoption ”It’s Here, It’s Now” #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 6. 6 Just a few of the applications that are enabled globally Find many more at apps.intuit.com #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally And many, many more!
- 7. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QuickBooks Online Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 8. 8 • All regions using sandbox/trial • Data in/Data out • Sales tax enabled/disabled • Multicurrency enabled/disabled • Shipping enabled/disabled • Character encoding • Customer Support • Regionalize App Card • Publish on Apps.com • Charging for app in Foreign Currencies • Tax Model • Multicurrency • QBO API differences • Character encoding: US=ISO-8859-1, Global=UTF-8 • Understand the market • Regulatory requirements • Time zones • Common currencies • Language / Localization Design Development TestLaunch How does global app development differ from US app development? #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally Things to consider …
- 9. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QuickBooks Online Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 10. 10 Getting started Build an app on the Intuit Developer Platform #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally https://developer.intuit.com/getstarted
- 11. 11 • Each developer account can support up to 5 sandbox companies • Each sandbox is a copy of a production instance with certain features disabled. • Each sandbox comes with sample data to use immediately. Getting started Turning on global sandboxes in your account Account Settings::Sandbox #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 12. 12 https://developer.intuit.com -> My Apps -> Hello World -> Production -> Settings • Apps may choose to accept connections to companies in any of the 220+ countries supported by QuickBooks Online • Or Apps can specifically only allow access from one of the 5 main countries. Getting started Enable connections from global QuickBooks Online companies #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 13. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QuickBooks Online Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 14. 14 Tax Agency • Federal/provincial tax collector Used in Tax Rate definitions Tax Rate • Defines the tax rates of an individual tax agency • Used in Tax Code definitions Tax Code • Comprised of one or more tax rates • Applied to each taxable line of sales and expense transactions e.g. QuickBooks Online Tax Model #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally KEY TAKEAWAY: Tax Codes contain both Sales and Purchase tax rates for sales and expense transactions respectively.
- 15. 15 Must be enabled in the QuickBooks Online UI to use sales tax. Once sales tax is turned on: • It can’t be turned off • Extra fields, columns and more are added to QuickBooks Sales Tax Center #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally KEY TAKEAWAY: The Sales Tax Center can be found in QuickBooks Online left nav menu. The menu label varies based on country.
- 16. 16 Tax Codes in Transactions Global: Tax code assigned to line items. US: Tax code assigned to transaction, items are marked as taxable or non-taxable #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 17. 17 • Used when bank accounts, customers, or vendors/suppliers don’t use the company’s home currency. • Exchange rates can be overridden for transactions. If you don’t specify one it will use a default value of 1. • Exchange rate can be looked up or updated in the Currency Center UI or via the ExchangeRate API endpoint. • Once configured, the currency associated with a bank account, customer, or vendor/supplier can’t be changed. Multicurrency #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 18. 18 Must be turned on in the advanced company settings. Once multicurrency is turned on: • It can’t be turned off • Company’s home currency can’t be changed once set initially • Extra fields, columns and more are added to QuickBooks Note: Feature not available in Simple Start version of QuickBooks Online. Multicurrency #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 19. 19 Contains a list of active currencies and their exchange rates • Currencies referenced in customer objects, vendor objects, or accounts are added automatically. • Additional currencies can be added manually through the UI or API Currency Center #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally KEY TAKEAWAY: Exchange rates are relative to the home currency
- 20. Apps can use the Preferences API endpoint to determine if sales tax/multicurrency are enabled. Apps should behave gracefully whether sales tax/multicurrency are enabled or not.
- 21. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QBO Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 22. How does global app development differ from US app development? Getting started Understanding global QBO Global Tax & Multicurrency API Demo Taking your app global Agenda
- 23. 23 You’ve created and tested your app with sandbox account(s) Your app meets local tax, currency, language and other requirements for all supported regions and meets requirements for regulated industries You’ve enabled connections to your app from global QuickBooks Online companies You’ve got your production keys, switched to production API endpoints, and tested with production (e.g. trial) QuickBooks Online accounts. Taking your app global The road so far … #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 24. 24 The app can connect to the designated country-specific QuickBooks Online company and can disconnect from within the app. Customer, Vendor, and Employee objects must accept legitimate addresses appropriate to that country. Define currencies your app supports: home currency, vendor currency, customer currency, employee currency. Transaction objects implement legitimate tax structures. Localized text versions of your documentation and terms. Character sets: • US editions of QuickBooks Online support ISO-8859-1 (extended ASCII) character encoding. • Non-US editions of QuickBooks Online support UTF-8 character encoding. Taking your app global Verify typical global requirements #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 25. 25 Here is a list of items we recommend customizing per country: • Pricing plans • Support info, FAQs • Phone numbers • Company URL, Legal URLs • App Screenshots and feature descriptions Taking your app global via QuickBooks Appstore Customize your app card marketing content per country #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 26. 26 Taking your app global via QuickBooks Appstore Customize your app card marketing content per country #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally
- 27. 27 Submit the app card to trigger the review process and get listed on apps.com once you’ve: • Completed the app card for each country • Technical and security requirements are not country specific • Your app will be tested with a non-US version of QuickBooks Online Taking your app global via QuickBooks Appstore Submit your app card(s) for review #QBConnect | @IntuitDev | @Gourleyman14 | @JarredKeneally KEY TAKEAWAY: You don’t have to publish your app in all regions at the same time. You can incrementally add support for more regions and publish when you’re ready.
- 28. Questions?
- 29. Thanks for coming! We’d love your feedback. Before you head out, take a minute to rate this session in the QuickBooks Connect mobile app. Keep the conversation going developer.intuit.com/hub/quickbooks-connect Access Session Slides Engage with Speakers and Fellow Developers Get Questions Answered
Editor's Notes
- AARON: Hi everyone, thanks for coming to this breakout session. Today we’re going to show you what it takes to build a global app. Among other things we’ll highlight some important details to help you understand the Global Tax Model and Multicurrency support available in QuickBooks Online.
- AARON: My name is Aaron Gourley, and I’m a Solutions Engineer focusing on Partner Integrations with the Intuit Developer Group. I am based out of Intuit’s Mississauga/Toronto office in Canada, primarily working with partners in Canada to help them build awesome apps and experiences for our mutual customers. I’ve worked directly on apps that are now live in Canada, Australia, the UK, and the US. JARRED: My name is Jarred Keneally and I am the GPM for Developer Relations. I have been working with developers on QuickBooks for the last 15 years. Did you know the first QuickBooks SDK came out in 2001?
- AARON: As far as the agenda goes, we’re going to start off by talking about things to consider when building an app for a country outside of the US. From there, we’ll cover some essential steps required to get you started. Specifically we’ll explain how to enable connections from global QBO companies and turn on global sandboxes for development & testing. After that we’ll take a bit of a step back and look at some core QuickBooks features that you’ll need to understand to effectively build your global app: the Global Tax Model and Multicurrency This will be followed by a demo of important API considerations where we’ll get our hands dirty. Finally, we’ll wrap things up by going through what you need to do to effectively launch and publish your shiny new global app on the QuickBooks App Store. But before we get into all of that, it’s survey time!
- JARRED: Can we get a show of hands of how many people have built an app for QuickBooks Online before? Now, keep your hands up if you’ve built an app, but only for the US market? Conversely, how many have built for a country other than the US (Canada? UK? Australia? India? France? Brazil?)
- JARRED: …...... [A few words about how this statistic should make you want to build global apps] …...... QuickBooks Online has over 1.5 million paid subscriptions and it is growing 40% year over year. IT Spending for small business on SaaS software for 2017 will increase 186% according to Gartner Intuit is focused on CA, UK, AU, IN, and FR by providing those specific app store experiences, but QuickBooks online works with over 220 different countries today. Try it today by going to http://global.intuit.com/
- JARRED: Many of our partners and developers started out in the US only and then enabled their applications to work world wide.
- AARON: Now, let us introduce how global app development differs from US app development. It’s important to understand that you look at the everything involved in building and launching an app, as there’s a lot more to it than writing code.
- AARON: This slide gives a good overview of the kinds of things that need to be taken into consideration during the end-to-end development process. Even before a line of code is written it’s important to understand the market that you are developing an app for. Time needs to be spent learning about any relevant regulatory requirements applicable to that region, as well as geographic and political factors such as time zones, common currencies, and language differences. We’ll cover development in more detail in the next few minutes, but a few development considerations are listed here. On the testing side your app needs to be tested using both sandbox and production trial accounts for all countries that you intend to launch in to ensure compliance. This will also help ensure that you aren’t going to mess up peoples books, which can waste the valuable time of small business owners and accountants – or worse – get them in trouble with the government. It’s also worth testing with accounts having different preferences set up since the state of preferences like sales tax, multicurrency, and shipping can fundamentally change the way some aspects of QuickBooks works. Prior to launching your app, it’s important to consider what comes next once your app is in production, such as possible around the clock customer support and operational monitoring. A bit later, Jarred’s going to tell you a bit more about publishing on the QuickBooks App Store so that you can easily get in front of over 1.5 million QuickBooks Online users globally.
- JARRED: Sub-sections: Enabling connections from global QBO companies Turning on global sandboxes
- Every application goes through the standard software development lifecycle. Additionally IDG has provided developers with tools specifically for global development.
- First, Global Sandboxes. Every Intuit Developer Account comes with 5 sandboxes, and you can create them for the US, Australia, the UK, India, Canada and France. Each sandbox comes with sample data already added to it so you can immediately start testing with it.
- While Intuit has a global app store that focuses on the countries I just mentioned, your application can accept connections from any country that QuickBooks Online supports. That is something you need to configure your application for in the settings. If you want to only allow connections from one of the 5 geos just check that off, if you want to allow connections from any country check the box that says all of the above and the rest of the world. In summary, where you choose to market your application is a different set of settings from which countries you accept connections from.
- AARON: Now I’ll discuss some of the fundamental differences between US and non-US versions of QuickBooks Online itself: the tax model and multicurrency (which isn’t technically different, but is certainly used more often outside of the US).
- AARON: First, let’s talk about QuickBooks Online’s tax model. It has 3 fundamental constructs: Tax Codes, Tax Rates, and Tax Agencies. A Tax Code is a container for one or more tax rates. It is used to group tax rates into a single record so that they can be easily attached to transaction lines in a 1-to-1 fashion. A Tax Rate defines an individual tax rate that is collected by a government revenue agency, which we represent using a Tax Agency object. Tax rates are linked to one or more tax codes as either “Sales” tax rates or “Purchase” tax rates. Sales tax rates are applicable on income generating items such as goods sold or services rendered. Purchase tax rates are applicable on expense items such as the purchase of materials required to run the business. You might ask why do we need to differentiate between tax collected on sales and paid on expenses. The answer can vary depending on the country, but typically is because businesses can claim a credit for some or all of the taxes paid on purchases to lower their overall tax bill. In order for us to help them reconcile this and file their tax remittances it is essential that we provide this distinction for them. Examples: - In Canada, businesses that paid sales tax on goods and services used in making taxable supplies can recover it by claiming it on their tax return. In Australia, businesses can claim a credit for any GST included in the price of any goods and services purchased for the business.
- AARON: It’s worth noting that in order for a sales tax integration to work properly, the Sales Tax Center must be enabled in the QuickBooks Online company’s UI. Since your app won’t be able to guarantee this state, we do have an API call which I’ll show later that will allow you to check the state of this setting so you can handle both the enabled and disabled cases gracefully. Once sales tax is turned on it can’t be turned off, and it can’t be turned on via any API call.
- AARON: The most important difference between the US and Global tax models is how taxes are applied to transactions. In global, tax codes are assigned to line items – and multiple tax codes can be referenced in this way in a single transaction. Also, transactions can be marked as inclusive of tax, exclusive of tax, or out of scope of tax. In US, a single tax code is assigned to the transaction and individual line items are marked as taxable or non-taxable. These differences are the single biggest API-level difference between US and global app development.
- AARON: Next we’ll take a quick look at QuickBooks Online’s multicurrency support and Currency Center. Multicurrency is used when a business has one or more accounts, customers, or suppliers that don’t use the company’s home currency. Rates can be managed via the API and can be overridden from the API default of 1 when transactions are created or updated. It is recommended that you first look up the exchange rate for the appropriate date using the ExchangeRate API, then add that exchange rate to the API request when creating transactions. A word of caution though to be careful when overriding exchange rates, as issues can arise when too many digits of precision are used.
- AARON: Like Sales Tax, this feature must be enabled before use. The setting can be found in the advanced company settings which can be found under the gear icon in the QuickBooks Online UI. It’s enabled or disabled state can be looked up but it can’t be enabled via the API.
- AARON: QuickBooks Online allows the user to manage their supported currencies and exchange rates in the currency center, which can be found under the gear icon. As mentioned earlier, these currencies and exchange rates can also be managed through the API. For convenience, any currencies referenced in customers, vendors, or accounts are added automatically. All exchange rates are relative to the company’s home currency.
- AARON: A quick reminder that apps can use our Preferences API to determine the enabled/disabled state of various QuickBooks features, and you should ensure that you test with different permutations of these settings to make sure your app behaves well for all users.
- AARON: Now that that’s out of the way, we’re ready to dive deeper into the APIs. Note of course that we have SDKs available in many programming languages to help out with this, but to boil things down to a common language we’ll be using our new Postman collection to make API calls directly. ------- Invoice 3. Open the 'Invoice-Create - US Starting Point' request. Demonstrate that it fails and explain why. 4. Edit the request, replacing the tax codes with 5 and 9 to get 'Invoice-Create - CA Basic' 5. Add TxnTaxDetail to the request to get 'Invoice-Create - CA Tax Override' 6. Starting from 'Invoice-Create - CA Basic', add GlobalTaxCalculation and offset the unit price/amounts to get the same total invoice amount Expense 1. Go through ‘Purchase-Create CA Basic’ test case, illustrating the use of Purchase tax rates Multicurrency 1. Create CA customer using “Customer-Create CA" 2. Create UK customer using “Customer-Create UK" ExchangeRate 1. Go through "ExchangeRate-Read", highlighting that you can specify the date 2. Go through "ExchangeRate-Query", highlighting that you can query multiple exchange rates in a single request 3. Go through "Invoice-Create - CA Multicurrency Basic” and "Invoice-Create - CA Multicurrency Override ExchangeRate" Deposit 1. Go through ‘Deposit-Create CA w/ Tax’, highlighting the inclusion of the CurrencyRef, ExchangeRate, TaxCodeRef, TaxApplicableOn, TxnTaxDetail, and GlobalTaxCalculation
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