Sync payouts to QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is cloud-based accounting software that helps churches and nonprofits keep their books organized. With Planning Center's integration, you can send Giving and Registrations payouts to QuickBooks Online as journal entries. Connect your QuickBooks company, map your funds and signups to your chart of accounts, then sync each payout to keep your books accurate and up to date.
Important
The QuickBooks Online integration is currently available to US churches only, and QuickBooks Multicurrency and Locations aren't supported at this time. Payouts that include income from outside Planning Center, or from more than one Planning Center organization, can't be synced.
Who can use the integration depends on the task to be performed.
Task | Who can do it |
|---|---|
Connect, reconnect, or disconnect the QuickBooks Online integration | Organization administrators |
Map accounts and sync payouts | Organization administrators, Giving administrators, Giving bookkeepers, and billing managers |
People who have only Registrations permissions can't view payout reports in account settings, so they can't sync payouts.
How syncing works
Planning Center sends each payout to QuickBooks Online as one journal entry, instead of one entry for each donation or payment. This matches the long-standing recommendation to record journal entries in your general ledger, not individual payments.
You sync one payout at a time.
Only payouts that have been paid out to your bank account can sync. A payout that failed or was canceled can’t sync.
You can sync each payout once. If a sync fails, you can try again. After a payout syncs, you can’t sync it again.
Syncing is manual. Planning Center doesn’t sync payouts for you automatically.
Planning Center checks for missing mappings before you sync. It can’t see some problems in QuickBooks, such as closed books, until you sync.
The integration syncs payouts only. It doesn’t sync cash and check donations in Giving batches or cash and check payments in Registrations, so you still record those in QuickBooks yourself.
Connect QuickBooks Online
An organization administrator connects your QuickBooks company to Planning Center from the Add-ons tab in account settings. You can connect one QuickBooks company to your organization, and each QuickBooks company can be connected to only one organization.
To connect QuickBooks Online:
Select the Organization page in account settings.
Select Integrations in the left sidebar.
Select the Add-ons tab.
Find the QuickBooks Online card and select Connect.
Sign in to QuickBooks and choose the company you want to connect.
Follow the prompts to authorize Planning Center.
After you authorize, Planning Center returns you to the QuickBooks Online tab on the Payments page in account settings. The tab shows the connected company, who connected it, and when. The tab appears only while QuickBooks Online is connected. A checklist on the connection card tracks your setup: Payout and fee accounts, Fund mappings, Signup mappings, and Sync payouts.
If Planning Center can't connect your company, a message explains why.
Disconnect QuickBooks Online
Only organization administrators can disconnect QuickBooks Online. Disconnecting stops payouts from syncing, but it doesn't change or delete anything already posted to QuickBooks. Your fund and signup mappings stay saved in Planning Center.
Select the Organization page in the top navigation in account settings.
Select Integrations in the left sidebar.
Select the Add-ons tab.
Find the QuickBooks Online card and select Disconnect.
Read the warning and select Disconnect to disconnect the integration.
Map your QuickBooks accounts
Mapping tells Planning Center which QuickBooks account each part of a payout belongs to. Organization administrators, Giving administrators, Giving bookkeepers, and billing managers can map accounts on the QuickBooks Online tab of the Payments page in account settings.
The fund and signup tables show a status for each row. For example:
Mapped: The fund or signup has an account.
Unmapped: The fund or signup has no account, and no payout is waiting for it.
Mapping needed: A payout that's waiting to sync includes the fund or signup, and it has no account.
Inactive account: The QuickBooks account is inactive, deleted, or merged. Payouts that use a mapping with a problem can't sync until you fix the mapping.
Mappings can be made to parent accounts and sub-accounts. Only active accounts and classes appear in the dropdowns. Planning Center gets your latest chart of accounts each time you open the tab.
If your QuickBooks company tracks classes, you can map a class to each fund, to each signup, and to your default signup account. Classes are optional. Class fields appear only when class tracking is on in QuickBooks.
Choose your bank account and fees account
Before you can sync a payout, you must set a payout bank account and a fees account.
Warning
Choose the real checking or savings account where your payouts land, not a clearing account. QuickBooks suggests a match between your bank transaction and a synced entry only when both use the same real bank account. If you choose a clearing account, you lose the suggested match and will need to reconcile by hand.
Select the Payments page in the top navigation in account settings.
Select the QuickBooks Online tab.
Under Payout and fee accounts, choose your Payout bank account. Planning Center accepts only QuickBooks accounts with the account type Bank.
Under Payout and fee accounts, choose your Fees account. Planning Center accepts QuickBooks accounts with the account type Expense or Other Expense.
The fees account receives processing fees, and fees related to disputes and direct debit failures. Planning Center uses one fees account for every payout. If your church tracks fees separately for each fund or signup, you can use the payout report to adjust the entry in QuickBooks manually.
Map your Giving funds
Map each Giving fund to a QuickBooks income account by selecting the dropdown next to each fund. Planning Center accepts accounts with the account type Income, Other Income, or Other Current Liabilities.
Map several funds to the same account if you want them to roll up together.
Leave a fund unmapped until you need it. Planning Center asks you to map it only when you sync a payout that includes it.
A fund's mapping stays in place when you hide, close, or reopen the fund. Closed funds are grouped separately, so a seasonal fund doesn't need a new mapping when you reopen it. You can change a fund's mapping at any time.
If you rename a fund in Planning Center, its mapping stays. If you rename an account in QuickBooks, Planning Center shows the new name without remapping.
Map your Registrations signups
New signups appear often, so you have a few choices for how to map them, each with different outcomes. Review the table below to decide which option is best for your organization.
Mapping option | How each signup gets its account | Can a new signup block a sync? |
|---|---|---|
Map each signup individually | Each signup has its own mapping | Yes. A signup with money in the payout blocks the sync until you map it |
Map signups to a default income account | Every signup uses the default account | No. New signups never block a sync |
Default account with exceptions | A signup uses its own mapping if it has one, and the default account if it doesn't | No. New signups never block a sync |
To use a default account with exceptions:
Select Map signups to a default income account.
Choose the QuickBooks account from the dropdown.
Select Add signup exception for each signup that needs a different account.
If you want an unmapped signup to stop a sync so you can decide where it belongs, select Map each signup individually instead.
The list shows every signup, with closed and archived signups collapsed out of view. Use the search box to find a signup. New signups appear automatically. If someone creates a signup while you're on the page, refresh the page to see it. Mappings stay in place for closed signups, so you don't need to map a signup again if it reopens.
Sync a payout
Sync a payout from its payout report in account settings. Planning Center posts the payout to QuickBooks as one journal entry. You can sync each payout once.
Warning
Planning Center doesn't check whether you already recorded a payout in QuickBooks. If you record payout deposits another way today, stop before your first sync. Otherwise, QuickBooks counts each payout twice.
Stop any bank rule in QuickBooks that automatically adds payout deposits.
Disconnect any Stripe-to-QuickBooks connector that records payouts.
Check older payouts before you sync them. You can sync payouts that arrived up to one month before you connected QuickBooks Online, so make sure you haven't already entered them by hand. Payouts from earlier than that don't have a sync option.
To sync a payout:
Select the Payments page in the top navigation in account settings.
Select the Payouts tab.
Select the date of the payout you want to sync. Be sure to select a single payout, not a date range.
Select Sync to QuickBooks Online. If the Sync to QuickBooks Online button is disabled, a message on the payout report explains why and links to where you can fix it.
Review the status at the top of the payout report. When the sync finishes, select View in QuickBooks Online to open the entry in QuickBooks.
Tip
If you work with more than one QuickBooks company, sign in to the company you connected to Planning Center. QuickBooks shows an error if you open the entry from a different company than the one you're currently logged into.
What the journal entry includes
Planning Center builds the entry from the numbers in the payout report. The entry always balances to the cent. If the debits and credits don't match, nothing posts.
Line | QuickBooks account | Amount | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Bank | Your bank account | Debit for the net payout amount, which is exactly what reached or left your bank | Planning Center payout |
Each fund | The fund's revenue account | Credit for gross donations minus refunds and disputes | Giving: [fund name] |
Each signup | The signup's revenue account | Credit for gross payments minus refunds and disputes | Registrations: [signup name] |
Fees | Your fees account | Debit for processing fees | Processing fees |
Other fees | Your fees account | Debit for dispute fees, direct debit failure fees, and other fees | Other fees |
The entry uses the date the payout arrived in your bank as the journal date. Its journal number is PC- followed by that date, such as PC-2026-08-26. If you mapped classes, each fund and signup line carries its class.
The bank line is the net payout, but each revenue line is gross. Your church received the full gift, then paid Planning Center Payments or Stripe a fee. The entry records revenue at the gross amount, the fees as an expense, and the bank at the net amount. A few other things to note:
Refunds and disputes reduce the line for their fund or signup. They don't get their own lines.
If donors covered processing fees, that money stays in the fund's gross amount, the same way it appears in the payout report.
Split donations are divided across the funds they were split between.
A negative payout posts with every line reversed, and the bank line becomes a credit.
A payout whose lines cancel out to zero still posts, so you have a record of the bank activity.
A payout report shows $693.83 for the General fund, $254.73 for the Missions fund, and $664.89 for two signups ($564.89 and $100.00). Fees are $33.45, and the net payout is $1,580.00. The church maps both signups to one account named Events and doesn't use classes. The payout arrived on August 26.
Line | Account | Debit | Credit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Chase Checking | $1,580.00 | Planning Center payout | |
2 | General | $693.83 | Giving: General | |
3 | Missions | $254.73 | Giving: Missions | |
4 | Events | $564.89 | Registrations: Women's retreat | |
5 | Events | $100.00 | Registrations: Summer camp 2026 | |
6 | Bank Fees | $33.45 | Processing fees | |
Total | $1,613.45 | $1,613.45 |
The two signups use the same account, but each signup still gets its own line so you can see which event the money came from. The $1,580.00 bank line matches your bank transaction.
Suppose a donor's $50.00 gift to the General fund was refunded. The General line becomes $643.83 and the net payout becomes $1,530.00. The refund doesn't get a separate line.
Changes after you sync
Planning Center doesn't notice changes after it posts an entry. This includes a donation you reassign to a different fund in Giving, and an entry you edit or delete in QuickBooks.
Because you sync each payout yourself, you can fix donations before you sync. For example, edit and reassign donations before you sync a payout. If you find a mistake after you sync, delete the entry in QuickBooks and enter the payout by hand. You can't sync a payout again after it's synced.
If a payout can't sync
If the Sync to QuickBooks Online button is disabled, a message on the payout report explains why. Common reasons are a fund or signup that needs mapping and an inactive QuickBooks account. Follow the link in the message to fix the problem, then return to the payout.
Some payouts can’t be synced at all, such as payouts that include income from outside Planning Center. Record those payouts in QuickBooks yourself.
If the payout shows Sync failed, fix the problem in QuickBooks and sync again.
Match the entry to your bank transaction in QuickBooks
If your bank is connected to QuickBooks, your real deposit arrives in QuickBooks as a bank transaction. Match it to the synced journal entry so QuickBooks doesn't count the money twice. QuickBooks suggests the matching entry for each deposit from Planning Center.
Here's how matching works:
QuickBooks matches the bank transaction to the whole journal entry through its bank line. This is why the bank line is exactly the net payout, and why the journal date is the date the payout arrived in your bank.
QuickBooks suggests only entries dated from 90 days before to 20 days after the bank transaction. It doesn't suggest older entries.
One bank transaction matches one entry. You can't match individual lines.
Matching works only if the entry posts to the same bank account where the money landed.
If QuickBooks doesn't suggest a match, turn off Suggested matches or filter the list to journal entries.
Find synced payouts in QuickBooks reports
Planning Center payouts post as journal entries, so they don't appear in the Deposit Detail report. That report includes only deposits. To review or reconcile your synced payouts, use one of these instead:
Account register: Open your chart of accounts, find your mapped bank account, and select View register. Every synced payout appears in date order with your other bank activity.
Reconcile: Select Accounting, then Reconcile. Synced payouts clear the same way as any other transaction in the account.
Transaction Detail by Account or General Ledger report: Filter the report to your mapped bank account. These reports show the same line detail as Deposit Detail, with the type shown as Journal Entry instead of Deposit.