Intuit QuickBooks Online

When AuctionFlow processes a settlement after an auction closes, the integration creates the full set of accounting entries in QuickBooks without manual intervention. For each winning bidder payment: a sales receipt with line items for hammer price (mapped to consignor trust account or sales revenue), buyer premium (mapped to buyer premium revenue account), shipping charges (mapped to shipping revenue), and applicable sales tax (mapped to the appropriate tax liability account). For each consignor payout: a bill payable with the net settlement amount (hammer price minus commission, minus fees) mapped to the consignor payable account. For the auction house: commission revenue entries and fee income entries posted to the appropriate revenue accounts. This automated entry creation eliminates the manual journaling process that is the primary source of settlement accounting errors and delays.

Each consignor payout in AuctionFlow creates a bill and bill payment in QuickBooks, building a complete payment history per consignor (modeled as a QuickBooks Vendor). At year end, the accumulated consignor payments in QuickBooks provide the data needed for 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC reporting — auction houses must report consignor payments above the IRS threshold ($600) on Form 1099. The QuickBooks integration maps consignor tax IDs (collected during consignment intake in AuctionFlow) to QuickBooks Vendor records, and QuickBooks' built-in 1099 reporting generates the required forms from the payment data. This eliminates the manual 1099 preparation process that auction house bookkeepers dread every January.

AuctionFlow's QuickBooks integration separates the revenue components of each auction transaction — buyer premium revenue, consignor commission, and ancillary fees (cataloging, photography, insurance) — into distinct QuickBooks revenue accounts. This separation enables accurate revenue reporting in QuickBooks: the auction house can run Profit & Loss reports showing buyer premium revenue versus commission revenue versus fee income, broken down by auction event, category, or time period. For auction houses seeking financing or preparing for sale, clean revenue separation in QuickBooks demonstrates the business's revenue mix and margin structure to lenders and acquirers.

Auction houses selling to buyers in multiple states face sales tax nexus obligations. AuctionFlow calculates the applicable sales tax based on the buyer's shipping address (destination-based) or the auction house location (origin-based, depending on state law) and includes the tax amount in the winning bidder's invoice. The QuickBooks integration maps these tax amounts to the appropriate QuickBooks tax codes and liability accounts, producing the tax collected data needed for state sales tax filings. For auction houses with tax obligations in multiple states — common when online bidding attracts buyers nationwide — this automated tax tracking replaces the manual spreadsheet process of allocating tax collections by state.