QuickBooks Online is the system of record for many small businesses and fractional CFO practices — but owners, boards and lenders still expect Excel. The monthly ritual of exporting the P&L or open invoices, pasting them into last month's file and re-checking the totals does not scale when you look after ten or twenty client companies.
Ilka closes that gap: connect each client's QuickBooks company with read-only access, design the pack layout once, and let every delivery copy the figures straight from the books into a real .xlsx — with a Source check sheet proving the totals match.
When QuickBooks → Excel automation makes sense
- You rebuild a P&L pack or AR aging from exports every month
- Each client gets a slightly different file depending on who built it
- Your reviewers re-add columns because they do not fully trust pasted ranges
- Clients want an Excel file they can filter and forward, not another dashboard login
Ilka is not a BI tool — it produces the same reviewed workbook every month, then delivers it by email, client portal, SharePoint or webhook.
Step 1 — Add the client and connect QuickBooks
In Client packs, add the client, then choose QuickBooks Online as the data source. You sign in with Intuit and pick the client company; Ilka only asks for read access.
Choose what to pull:
- Profit and Loss report for a period (for example the last 90 days)
- A transactions list — Invoices, Payments, Purchases, Bills or Deposits
Connect each client company separately so every pack stays tied to the right books.
Step 2 — Design the pack once
Describe the pack in one sentence, for example "Receivables by customer with overdue amounts first, then every open invoice". AI proposes the layout — which columns, groupings, totals and chart — from the column headers and a few sample rows.
You then see the pack filled with the client's real numbers before anything is scheduled. Remove columns you do not need, redesign if necessary, and lock it.
Good starting points:
Step 3 — Schedule delivery
Pick the day — the 1st of the month, the 5th after close, or every Monday — and the recipient:
- Email with the
.xlsxattached, under your firm's name on the Firm plan - Client portal link with optional password and expiry, no Ilka account needed
- SharePoint folder or webhook for your own automation (webhook docs)
Send the first packs to yourself, then switch the recipient to the client.
Why the numbers can be trusted
After the layout is locked, the model never touches a figure. Each delivery copies and adds up the amounts in code, straight from QuickBooks. The last sheet of every workbook, Source check, recomputes each total with live Excel formulas and shows the difference with the source — 0.00 when it ties out.
If a column disappears in QuickBooks, the delivery stops with a clear message instead of sending a wrong number.
Example: AR aging every Monday
Pull open invoices → group by customer with days overdue → email the credit-control lead every Monday at 8:00
See the AR aging workflow for a checklist.
Limits to plan for
- Pulls are capped at 500 records per delivery for transaction lists — use a date window for busy companies
- QuickBooks Sandbox and Production companies need separate connections
- Deliveries go out within about 15 minutes of the scheduled time
Related resources
- QuickBooks integration
- For fractional CFOs
- For accounting & bookkeeping firms
- Monthly close from Google Sheets
Get started
- Build a pack free with sample data, then connect one real client
- Move to Pro for three clients or Firm when you run packs for ten or more
- Firm subscribers can book a setup call for their first clients