A SharpSpring form can send data wherever you need it to. Whether that’s directly into SharpSpring or to a 3rd party application, like Quickbooks Online. What we did with a SharpSpring form, was create and send an invoice in Quickbooks Online using Zapier. Pretty neat don’t you think? We think so, that’s why it’s been our most reliable automation for over 3 years!
Reduce risk by keeping it simple
Creating and sending invoices is normally done by the person who controls accounts, a book-keeper or finance manager. The unique thing at Merci, is that anyone can create and send an invoice using this SharpSpring form. The thing is, there’s always a risk of making a mistake. We reduce that risk by keeping it simple and only allowing a single line item (one Quickbooks Product/service) for this form.
Step 1: The SharpSpring form
Our example – New Invoice for Time-Based Credit
Time-based Credit is a service we offer at Merci to any business who requires ad-hoc digital support. To find out more about Time-based Credit at Merci, contact us, our details can be found at the bottom of this page.

The form fields
Your email (Merci)
Used as a reference to track which Merci team member completed the form.
The clients email who requested this
This field associates the form data with the contact in SharpSpring.
Customer name
This is the Display Name in Quickbooks, a unique identifier used to find the customer in Quickbooks and apply the invoice to their account. Because the customer name entered must be exactly the same as the Customer name in Quickbooks Online, you should think about how you can access the list of Customers for a copy & paste. Maybe a private Google Sheet?
How many hours of Time-based Credit have been requested?
Our Time-based Credit works on hours and rates, we simply enter the requested hours.
Rate option based on the hours requested
This case-sensitive field matches the Product/Service name in Quickbooks Online, which applies the rate on the line-item of the invoice.

Merci Tip
All fields apart from [1] are SharpSpring referral fields. This means the data in fields [2] – [5] is associated with the lead/customer in SharpSpring. We could trigger an automation because the lead/customer was referred on a form.
Step 2: Create the Zap
Make a copy of my Zap in your own Zapier account
You can copy my Zap by clicking the button below.
New Form Fillout Event in SharpSpring
This is our trigger step, the step which initiates the zap. When a SharpSpring form is completed, data from the SharpSpring form is made available in Zapier.

Ensure only your specific form is triggers by adding a filter
Because we can’t choose which form to trigger on in step 1, we have to filter it here before it continues. It only continues if the form name started with “Time-based”, this ensured only the Time-based Credit form would trigger the zap.
Find the Customer details in QuickBooks Online
We search for the customer in Quickbooks by picking the Customer name from the form.
Find the Product in QuickBooks Online
We search for the product name in Quickbooks by picking the Product/service option from the form.
Add a Formatter step for Numbers
We have to calculate the subtotal (amount) used in the Create Invoice step (next). Because VAT is calculated at 20% in the UK, we perform a math operation to output the amount and insert this into our Amount field in the Create Invoice step.
Using the Multiply operation to calculate “How many hours of Time-based Credit have been requested?” multiplied by “Product/Service price” – notice how the price is pulled from the Quickbooks Online step output.
Create Invoice in QuickBooks Online
Now we have all the data needed to create an Invoice in Quickbook Online, we can ahead to pick the required outputs and insert them into the fields.
Send Invoice in QuickBooks Online
We need to choose which invoice to send. We do this by inserting the Invoice ID number generated from the output of Create Invoice.
Summary
By utilising the power of other cloud-based apps and connecting SharpSpring to these apps via Zapier, we can create complex automations that fire in seconds – this simply isn’t possible to be done by a human at the same speed.
Enquire about marketing automation
Our team of data specialists, stategists and designers are here to help your business thrive in the digital world.
Let’s collaborate
Got a project?
Merci is a innovative full service digital marketing agency.
Come and meet our teams in Bourg-Saint-Maurice or Brighton.