This is Part 2 of a 2 part series about SmartVault. Part 1 outlined how to use SmartVault for online document storage, so you may want to read it first.
In Part 1, we talked about using SmartVault to upload and manage documents, and how to map a drive so that you can access your online documents through Windows Explorer or the Mac’s Finder.
Today I’m going to run through integrating SmartVault with Quickbooks and using a scanner, in my case a Fujitsu ScanSnap, to scan directly into a Quickbooks entry.
Add Company File To SmartVault
Assuming you have a Quickbooks company file set up and the SmartVault Desktop software downloaded and installed (see Part 1 for more info on that), integrating SmartVault with Quickbooks is pretty easy.
When you first start Quickbooks, it will ask you if SmartVault can access your company file. You want to, of course, say yes, and check “Yes, always; allow access even if QuickBooks is not running”.
Once you do that it will ask you to link a Vault in SmartVault with a Quickbooks company file.
New SmartVault Toolbar
Now you’ll have a brand new SmartVault toolbar to the right of your Quickbooks screen.
Attach An Existing Document To A Quickbooks Entry
Let’s say that you already have a document that you want to attach to an entry.
First, load up the entry (in this example an invoice) in Quickbooks.
Then on the SmartVault Toolbar, click the Attach button.
Then it asks you where you want to get the document from. If you have a TWAIN scanner (which the ScanSnap is not), you can select your scanner and scan from there. Otherwise you can browse your computer or attach it from the SmartVault Inbox (more on the Inbox later).
In our case we are going to click Browse, find the PDF that we want to attach, and hit Accept.
Now you can see there is one attachment associated with this invoice.
When you click it, you can see the attachment and Open, Save, Print, etc.
If you wanted to, you could see that same document either online in your SmartVault Portal or on your SmartVault Drive (see Part 1 for more info on using those two). Here’s an example of where it sits in the Portal.
Scan To SmartVault Using The Fujitsu ScanSnap
Great, so you can attach an existing document to a Quickbooks entry. What if you have a paper copy and want to scan it to Quickbooks?
If you have a scanner other than a ScanSnap, it is probably TWAIN compatible which means you can choose it in the document source as I outlined earlier.
If you have a ScanSnap, they have thought ahead and provided ScanSnap integration.
You have two choices for using your ScanSnap with SmartVault: Scan to a specific Quickbooks entry, or scan to your SmartVault Inbox.
Scan To A Quickbooks Entry Using Your Fujitsu ScanSnap
The first thing you want to do is add the SmartVault Toolbar App to your applications in ScanSnap Manager. To do that open up ScanSnap Manager, create a new Profile (call it, for example, SmartVault Quickbooks), and on the Application tab hit Add or Remove.
Then navigate to the subfolder called “Fujitsu ScanSnap Profile Applications” under the folder where you installed SmartVault. In this case, you want to choose the application called “SmartVault Toolbar App For ScanSnap”.
Once you do that, create the rest of your profile using whatever settings that you prefer.
Now that you have your ScanSnap Manager profile set up, it’s time to scan to Quickbooks. Yeah!
Flip to Quickbooks and open an entry. Make sure that your new SmartVault Quickbooks profile is selected.
Put your document in the scanner and hit the scan button. You’ll then get a popup showing the document and asking you to Accept the attachment to this entry (in my case, invoice 138).
Once you hit Attach, the document will be attached to the Quickbooks entry, uploaded to SmartVault, and you’ll be able to see on the SmartVault toolbar that it has one attachment.
Scan To SmartVault Inbox Using Your Fujitsu ScanSnap
If you don’t want to scan to a specific entry quite yet (maybe you want to scan a bunch first and do your attaching later), you can scan to the SmartVault Inbox for this company. Then all your documents will be there ready for you to attach later.
The instructions for setting that ScanSnap Manager profile up are the same as setting it up for scanning to Quickbooks, but when you are choosing the Application, you want to choose “SmartVault Inbox App For ScanSnap”.
Once you set that new profile up and scan to it, your documents will be in the SmartVault Inbox. To access the Inbox, either choose it as a document source when clicking the “Attach” button for an entry, or click on the SmartVault Inbox link from the SmartVault Launchpad (see Part 1 for information on the SmartVault Launchpad).
If these instructions for setting up the ScanSnap Manager profiles are a bit vague, SmartVault has a video that runs through how to do it:
So there you go. You can use SmartVault to store and manage your documents, you can map a drive to it, you can attach files to Quickbooks entries, and you can integrate it all with your ScanSnap or other scanner.
If you’re a SmartVault and/or Quickbooks user, let us know in the comments how you like it or if you have other good Quickbooks document management tips.
