Intuit announced last spring that it was in the test phase for a service that would allow users of QuickBooks Online to accept payment in bitcoin. Sometime later, I received an invitation to sign up for the service, which Intuit calls PayByCoin. I had the opportunity to test it out recently and I have to say that I’m a little disappointed.
PayByCoin requires two things- a preexisting QuickBooks Online account and a Coinbase wallet. It doesn’t work with any other version of QuickBooks and you can’t have your payments deposited anywhere except Coinbase. I found setup to be fairly straightforward (and I’m not an overly technical guy). The PayByCoin website detects your QuickBooks Online account using your QuickBooks login and password. Then, you are shown a page with instructions on how to use the Coinbase API to connect with your wallet. I was able to complete this step in about five minutes.
Even after completing setup, PayByCoin doesn’t show up in QuickBooks Online at all, which can be confusing if you’re not sure that you completed the setup properly. The PayByCoin website displays this note in small print: “Please note that although bitcoin will not show up as a payment option when creating invoices in QuickBooks Online, your customers will see bitcoin as a payment option when paying the invoice.” PayByCoin also won’t show up on emailed invoices if you or your customer decides to print them.
The only bitcoin payments is when your customer selects “Pay Online” in an emailed invoice, which takes him or her to Commerce Network. Note that “Commerce Network” and “Intuit Payment Network” are not the same service, though both are marketed by Intuit. Confused? Me, too. As of this writing, Commerce Network was free to use as part of QuickBooks Online when you have a connected Intuit Merchant Account. Intuit charges a fee for Merchant Account access, usually 1% to 3% of the amount collected from credit cards and electronic checks depending on the transaction (Intuit does not charge for processing bitcoin payments). Adding PayByCoin generates a radio button for “Bitcoin” as an option on the pay invoice page.
When I tested this out, it seemed to work fine, but I wasn’t able to complete the payment. Even though bitcoin showed up as an option, the service didn’t display an address where I could send the payment. I tried it a few times, using different amounts on the invoice (the test invoice was originally $1.00, which I thought might be too low), but was unable to get it to work. Other users have reported success, so I can only guess that something went wrong with the API setup. UPDATE: Intuit’s tech support team says that this may be related to pop-up blocker software on my computer, so if it doesn’t work for you, you might want to give that a try.
A serious limitation of PayByCoin is that it doesn’t include any back-end help for handling bitcoin, just a way to accept it as payment through QuickBooks Online. PayByCoin shows a Coinbase receive address, clears the receivable from your books and posts a debit to your “Undeposited Funds” account in QuickBooks. Nothing more and nothing less. QuickBooks is still fairly difficult to use for keeping up with bitcoin transactions.
If you don’t have Coinbase set to automatically cash you out and you don’t manually initiate a sell order, then your bitcoins will just sit there forever. QuickBooks won’t pick up any price fluctuations or trading gains or losses in your Coinbase wallet, nor will it see if you spend bitcoins from your Coinbase wallet to cover business expenses. The only way to post bitcoin transactions other than customer payments in QuickBooks Online is to use the manual journal entries function.
Your customers may have a hard time finding the bitcoin payment option, since it isn’t prominently displayed. Of course, nothing would stop you from printing a QR code or a wallet address directly on your invoices if you chose to, but then you would have to manually match and enter incoming payments. If you have more than handful of bitcoin payments every day, this can get out of control fast.
Overall, I’m disappointed with PayByCoin. It is only useful for QuickBooks Online users who are already familiar and comfortable using the platform who also happen to have (or want) a Coinbase wallet. If you want to use the any of the desktop versions of QuickBooks or something other than Coinbase, you’re out of luck. Still, it is a step in the right direction. Intuit is very responsive to feedback on their products. If you’ve used PayByCoin and want it to get better, then you should share your experience and ideas with them.
UPDATE: After I posted this entry, Intuit’s engineering team contacted me for a detailed discussion about PayByCoin. Like I said: feedback works.