Chapter 12. Managing Reports Using the QuickBooks Software Development Kit

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • Deciding to Run Reports through the SDK

  • An Overview of a Report Message

  • Examining a Report Message's Code

Chapter 11 explains in some detail the construction of queries that you can submit to QuickBooks via the Software Development Kit, or SDK. Sometimes you request the information from QuickBooks because it's intrinsically interesting; perhaps it forms the basis for an analysis that you want to run but that you can't coax out of QuickBooks directly.

And sometimes you want the information because it's necessary to accomplish some other objective. A good example is the edit sequence number, which you have to submit to QuickBooks as part of a request to edit existing information. Without first querying QuickBooks for that edit sequence number, you would not know the value to send to QuickBooks along with the modification you have in mind.

These messages, as the SDK calls them, have to do with queries for information, and with the modification, addition, and deletion of records from QuickBooks. There is another kind of message termed a report, and you're right, it has to do with QuickBooks reports.

In the QuickBooks user interface, when you click the Reports menu, you see a list of between 15 and 20 (depending on your QuickBooks version) classifications of reports you can run. Most of these reports are what QuickBooks refers to as preset reports. That is, their characteristics have already been prepared ...

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