Keep store stock in sync with QuickBooks

Inventory sync keeps your storefront quantities in agreement with QuickBooks’ quantity on hand. It acts on products mapped to a QuickBooks Inventory item, which is the only item type QuickBooks tracks a quantity for.

QuickBooks is the source of truth

TruSync watches for quantity-on-hand changes in QuickBooks — from TruSync’s own transactions, manual inventory adjustments, bills, or other tools you use — and pushes the resulting quantity out to your connected storefronts. Order sync itself never writes storefront inventory directly; every inventory update flows through this one path, so quantities stay consistent across every store mapped to the same QuickBooks item, not just the store an order came from.

Your QuickBooks items have to track quantity on hand

Inventory sync follows quantity on hand, so it only acts on products mapped to a QuickBooks Inventory item. QuickBooks tracks quantity on hand for Inventory items only — Non-inventory and Service items have no quantity for TruSync to read or push.

If none of your QuickBooks items are Inventory items, inventory sync does nothing, even though it’s running. Your storefront quantities are left exactly as they are. This is normal if another system owns your stock levels, or if you sell something that isn’t stocked.

To check, open Products and services in QuickBooks and look at the Type column. If you want TruSync to manage a product’s quantity, that product’s QuickBooks item has to be an Inventory item.

Changing an item’s type in QuickBooks sets an inventory start date, and QuickBooks then refuses transactions on that item dated before it. Talk to your accountant before converting items that already have sales history.

What TruSync tells you when nothing is sent

When you press Sync All Inventory (or Fix All on the Inventory Mismatches panel) and TruSync has nothing it can send, it says why instead of reporting a bare count.

If every product is mapped to a Non-inventory or Service item, the result reads: “Nothing was sent to your store. All 227 products are linked to QuickBooks items that are Non-inventory or Service items. Those don’t hold a quantity on hand, so there is nothing to sync.” That comes from how the items are set up in QuickBooks. It isn’t a fault, and pressing Sync again won’t change it.

If some products synced and others didn’t, the result lists how many were skipped and the reason for each group — for example “3 linked to a QuickBooks item that doesn’t track quantity (Non-inventory or Service)”.

Turn inventory sync off for one store

Inventory sync is on by default. To stop TruSync setting the quantities on one store, untick Sync inventory adjustments in Settings → Sync for that store.

With it unticked, TruSync doesn’t write any quantity to that store’s products — not from a QuickBooks change, not from Sync All Inventory, not from Fix All or Use QBO on the Inventory Mismatches panel, and not right after you map a product. Sync All Inventory tells you the setting is why: “Inventory sync is turned off for this store (“Sync inventory adjustments” in Settings → Sync), so no quantities were sent to your storefront.”

The setting is per store. Another store that maps the same QuickBooks item keeps getting its quantities. It only controls what TruSync writes to the storefront: orders still post to QuickBooks and still count against quantity on hand there, and Use Store still posts an adjustment in QuickBooks. A quantity you ask Trudy to set on your storefront is still applied, because you asked for that one specifically.

Tick it again and quantities start flowing from then on. TruSync doesn’t catch up on the changes made while it was off — press Sync All Inventory to bring the storefront in line with QuickBooks.

How TruSync’s own inventory adjustments look in QuickBooks

When TruSync changes a quantity in QuickBooks it posts an Inventory Quantity Adjustment, and every one it writes says where it came from. Open Transactions → All transactions in QuickBooks, or the item’s own transaction history, and you’ll see:

• A memo naming TruSync, the store, and what caused the change — for example “TruSync inventory sync — Shopify - Fine Teas — bulk inventory sync”. There are three reasons you’ll see: bulk inventory sync (a Fix All, or a row fixed from the Inventory Mismatches panel), requested in chat (you or Trudy changed it on purpose, with your own note if you gave one), and storefront product update — which is Wix only, because Wix is the one storefront that tells TruSync a product’s quantity changed. On every other store, a quantity you change in the storefront reaches QuickBooks through a bulk inventory sync instead.
• A document number starting with TruSync-INV-. QuickBooks numbers documents from one company-wide counter, so without this, TruSync’s adjustments would take numbers out of your own sequence.

An adjustment with no such memo wasn’t written by TruSync. That’s the quickest way to tell one of ours from a manual adjustment someone made in QuickBooks, or one left behind by a tool you used before TruSync.

Where the value of an adjustment posts

Changing a quantity changes what your inventory is worth, so the difference has to go somewhere in your books. By default QuickBooks decides, and on a standard chart of accounts that’s Inventory Shrinkage, a cost-of-goods-sold account.

That’s fine for a correction downward. It reads oddly for one upward — TruSync’s adjustments go both ways, and finding more stock than QuickBooks expected isn’t shrinkage.

If that matters to you, choose the account yourself: Settings → Account Mapping → Inventory Adjustment Account. Leave it unset and nothing changes — QuickBooks keeps using its own account, exactly as before. Adjustments already posted aren’t moved; the setting applies from then on. See Mapping settings.

What this means day to day

• Selling an item on one connected store updates QuickBooks, which then pushes the new quantity to every other store mapped to that same QuickBooks item.
• A manual inventory adjustment in QuickBooks propagates to your storefronts the same way an order-driven change does.
• Inventory sync runs automatically for every connected, mapped product whose QuickBooks item tracks quantity on hand — there’s no separate setup step to turn it on. It’s on by default for every store; Sync inventory adjustments in Settings → Sync turns it off for a store.

FAQ

Why did my storefront quantity change without a matching order? Check QuickBooks for a manual inventory adjustment, bill, or other transaction on that item — inventory sync reflects QuickBooks’ quantity on hand, not just orders TruSync created.

How do I tell a TruSync inventory adjustment from one someone made by hand? By its memo. Every adjustment TruSync writes carries a memo naming TruSync, the store, and the reason — and a document number starting with TruSync-INV-. An adjustment without those wasn’t ours.

Why did an increase in stock post to Inventory Shrinkage? Because QuickBooks books inventory quantity adjustments to its own adjustment account unless you choose one, and on a standard chart of accounts that account is Inventory Shrinkage. Pick a different account in Settings → Account Mapping → Inventory Adjustment Account and adjustments from then on use it. Ones already posted aren’t moved.

If I sell the same product on two stores, does inventory sync between them? Yes, as long as both stores map that product to the same QuickBooks item.

Does inventory sync only run for products with mapped orders? It runs for any product mapped to a QuickBooks Inventory item — the quantity update comes from QuickBooks itself, not from a specific order.

Inventory sync is on, but my storefront quantities never change. Why? Two things to check. First, Sync inventory adjustments in Settings → Sync must be ticked for that store — unticked, TruSync doesn’t write quantities to it. Second, the Type of your items in QuickBooks. TruSync pushes quantity on hand, and QuickBooks only tracks quantity on hand for Inventory items — not for Non-inventory or Service items. If your items are Non-inventory or Service, there’s no quantity for TruSync to push, so nothing happens. That’s expected, and it’s common when another system manages your stock. Sync All Inventory tells you which of the two it is.

How do I stop TruSync from changing my storefront quantities? Untick Sync inventory adjustments in Settings → Sync for that store. TruSync then writes no quantities to it. Other stores are unaffected, and you can tick it again whenever you want syncing back.

I pressed Sync All Inventory and it says nothing was sent. Is something broken? No. The message names the reason. “Non-inventory or Service items” means your QuickBooks items don’t hold a quantity, so there is nothing to send; “Sync inventory adjustments … is turned off” means the store’s setting is off. Neither changes by pressing the button again.

Some products were skipped because TruSync “couldn’t confirm whether your store’s quantity had changed”. What does that mean? A full inventory sync reads your QuickBooks quantities once at the start and can take a while to work through a large catalogue. If an order comes in partway through, TruSync has to know about it, or it would write the older quantity back over the newer one. For those products it couldn’t establish that, so it left them alone rather than risk sending a stale number. Nothing was written to your store for them. Press Sync All Inventory again and they’ll be picked up.

Sync All Inventory wouldn’t start and asked me to try again shortly. Why? TruSync only runs one inventory sync per store at a time, so two runs can’t write different quantities to the same products. When it can’t confirm that no other run is already going, it declines to start rather than risk a second one. Wait a minute and press it again.

My Amazon FBA products show as skipped. Is that wrong? No. Amazon manages the stock it holds in its own warehouses, so TruSync doesn’t write quantities to FBA listings — only to the ones you fulfil yourself. Those products are now reported as skipped rather than counted as sent, which is the more accurate of the two.