QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Setting Up an Integrated Application

Integrated applications don’t read data from exported text files; they actually access your company file to get info. To protect your data from programs that shouldn’t read your company file, you have to tell QuickBooks which programs you do want digging into your financial data.

Letting programs access your data is something you set up with preferences. Choose Edit→Preferences→Integrated Applications, and then click the Company Preferences tab, shown in Figure 24-5. Here, you can turn on the “Don’t allow any applications to access this company file” checkbox to keep all programs out. But if you’re reading this section, you probably want at least one program to access your QuickBooks data.

Figure 24-5. Initially, only the QuickBooks administrator can give programs access rights, but the administrator can grant other users that same power (page 654). If you want to find applications that work closely with QuickBooks, click the QuickBooks Solutions Marketplace link on the Integrated Applications Company Preferences tab. The box on page 609 explains other ways to find third-party applications.

As long as the “Don’t allow any applications to access this company file” checkbox is turned off, when a program tries to access your company file, QuickBooks displays an Application Certificate dialog box. If you’re the QuickBooks administrator or someone else ...