Overview
For finance teams, month-end close is often the most stressful part of the job. It’s a race to reconcile transactions, check for errors, and prepare reports for leadership and all while juggling the normal day-to-day demands of invoicing, payments, and cash flow management.
When Salesforce and QuickBooks aren’t truly connected, month-end becomes a manual nightmare. Teams spend hours exporting data from one system, manipulating spreadsheets, and manually matching records before re-entering corrections into the other system. It’s slow. It’s error-prone. And it delays critical insights the business needs.
Breadwinner changes that. By creating a real-time, two-way sync between Salesforce and QuickBooks, finance teams can cut their month-end close time in half. Instead of chasing data, they can trust that invoices, payments, and customer records are always accurate and aligned.
The Month-End Challenge
For many finance departments, the end of the month looks something like this:
- Export data from QuickBooks: all invoices, payments, and adjustments.
- Export data from Salesforce: closed deals, payment notes, and any outstanding balances.
- Manually match and reconcile: often line by line, using Excel or Google Sheets.
- Correct mismatches: chasing sales reps for missing information or correcting duplicate customer entries.
- Re-import corrections into QuickBooks or Salesforce.
- Prepare reports for leadership based on reconciled figures.
This approach causes:
- 2–4 days lost each month purely on reconciliation tasks.
- Higher error risk due to duplicate data entry and manual matching.
- Frustration for finance and sales when figures don’t align.
- Delayed reporting that slows decision-making for the business.
As one Breadwinner customer put it:
“The issue with doing manual data entry is you have to double-check it and triple-check it. Breadwinner became a key player, acting as the bridge between the two pieces of software that allowed us to quickly and simply move information that was already being developed in Salesforce; without the extra cost and hassle.”
Morgan Selph, President, PlaySpace Designs
The Breadwinner Solution
Breadwinner for QuickBooks eliminates the manual reconciliation grind by keeping Salesforce and QuickBooks in perfect sync. All day, every day.
Key Capabilities for Month-End:
- Real-Time Sync: Invoices, payments, and credit notes are updated instantly between systems.
- One Version of the Truth: Customer, deal, and payment information is consistent in both platforms.
- Automated Matching: No more manual checking. payment status updates flow from QuickBooks to Salesforce automatically.
- Controlled Visibility: Finance controls what sales teams can see, ensuring sensitive data stays protected.
Deployment is fast and as often in under a week. Meaning finance teams can see month-end improvements almost immediately.
How It Works in Practice
With Breadwinner in place, the month-end process changes dramatically:
Before Breadwinner:
- Finance exports and cross-checks two sets of data, line by line.
- Multiple email chains go back and forth to correct mismatches.
- Reports are often 3–5 days late.
After Breadwinner:
- Salesforce and QuickBooks stay perfectly aligned in real time.
- Payment status is visible in Salesforce, so sales teams proactively resolve overdue balances before month-end.
- Reports can be run in Salesforce or QuickBooks at any time, confident the data is accurate.
- Month-end close takes 1–2 days instead of 3–5.
Real-World Proof
PlaySpace Designs
- Before Breadwinner: 6–8 hours per week lost to manual data entry and corrections: much of it during month-end.
- After Breadwinner: Just 30 minutes per week spent on data input, freeing days of reconciliation time.
- Result: Month-end close completed 2 days faster.
UK Green Building Council (UKGBC)
- Reduced invoice processing time by 5 minutes per invoice.
- Freed up 20% of staff time across finance and sales, much of it during reconciliation periods.
- Result: Leadership receives month-end reporting earlier, improving decision-making.
The Business Impact
Cutting reconciliation time in half delivers more than just operational efficiency:
1. Faster Insights
Leaders get accurate month-end numbers sooner: enabling faster decision-making.
2. Reduced Stress
Finance teams no longer face the exhausting “month-end scramble” and can focus on value-added analysis.
3. Improved Cash Flow
With payment visibility in Salesforce, overdue invoices are addressed earlier, reducing aged debt.
4. Fewer Errors
Real-time sync eliminates mismatched records and duplicate entries that cause costly mistakes.
Why Not Stick With the Status Quo?
Some companies try to “work around” the problem by:
- Running nightly or weekly imports between systems (still leaves data gaps).
- Building custom integrations (expensive to build, expensive to maintain).
- Relying on manual spreadsheets (slow and error-prone).
The reality? These workarounds still require time-consuming reconciliation every month and they fail to provide the always-accurate financial picture that Breadwinner delivers.
Beyond Month-End
Once finance teams see how Breadwinner accelerates reconciliation, they often expand its use to other areas:
- Daily cash flow reporting directly in Salesforce.
- Real-time aged debt tracking for sales and account managers.
- Instant invoice creation from closed deals.
- Automated revenue recognition workflows.
Lessons Learned
Customers who have transformed their month-end close with Breadwinner all share the same takeaways:
- Reconciliation shouldn’t be a major project every month and it should be built into daily operations.
- Real-time visibility bridges the gap between sales and finance, reducing end-of-month surprises.
- The time saved can be reinvested into strategic, profit-driving activities.
About Breadwinner for QuickBooks
Breadwinner is the leading Salesforce integration for QuickBooks, designed for businesses that want:
- Real-time, two-way sync between Salesforce and QuickBooks.
- Accurate, consistent records across sales and finance.
- Fast deployment: live in days, not months.
- Scalable automation without custom code or ongoing IT maintenance.
Trusted by companies across SaaS, professional services and e-commerce, Breadwinner helps teams close the month faster, with less stress, and more accuracy.