What AI Agents Can Do with QuickBooks Desktop: Prompts and Use Cases (MCP)

Conductor's hosted MCP server at https://mcp.conductor.is/ connects QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise to AI agents. Here is what AI agents can do with QuickBooks Desktop: answer questions about customers, invoices, bills, and inventory; run reports; create and update records; check a month-end close; and find overdue invoices.

Most AI tools connect in 3 to 5 steps: add that URL in the tool's MCP settings and sign in to Conductor in the browser. Microsoft Copilot Studio takes 6 steps with an API key and https://mcp.conductor.is/mcp. QuickBooks and the Web Connector must be running on the Windows computer connected to Conductor.

QuickBooks Desktop AI agent use cases at a glance

An AI agent connected to a company file through Conductor handles five kinds of work from a plain-English prompt: answering questions about records, running reports, creating and updating records, month-end close checks, and collections. The table lists the records behind each use case and the access it needs.

Only the writes need full access. Every prompt that only reads runs on the read-only URL, https://mcp.conductor.is/read-only.

Before you connect an AI agent

An AI agent needs four things in place before it can read or write a company file:

• A Windows computer with QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Enterprise and the QuickBooks Web Connector, both running while the agent works. The computer has to be powered on, connected to the internet, and signed in to Windows as the user that runs QuickBooks and the Web Connector.

• A supported edition: QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions (any version or year), QuickBooks Premier (Plus) 2018 or later, QuickBooks Desktop Pro (Plus) 2018 or later, or QuickBooks Accountant Desktop (Plus) 2018 or later.

• A Conductor account from the dashboard, with the company file connected to a project. The QuickBooks user connects the file once: download a config file, open it in the Web Connector, and authenticate.

• An AI tool that supports MCP.

QuickBooks Desktop for Mac is not supported, because it has no Web Connector.

Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, and VS Code connect by signing in to Conductor in the browser, so there is no key to copy. Signing in adds a key such as "MCP (Claude)" to the Conductor project's API Keys page, and deleting that key revokes access. Copilot Studio connects with an API key from the project's MCP tab and the URL https://mcp.conductor.is/mcp.

Conductor costs $49 per company file per month in production, with no platform fee and no monthly minimum. The Trial tier is free and includes 1 connection for testing and development. Connections to QuickBooks sample company files are also free, so every prompt below can be tried on sample data before it touches real books.

Check that the agent can reach your company file

To check that an AI agent can reach the company file, ask it Show the 5 most recent invoices using my most recently successful QuickBooks Desktop connection. If the agent returns real invoices, the connection works.

A "connected" indicator in the AI tool proves only that the sign-in or config worked, because the key is checked on first use.

Answer questions about your QuickBooks data

An AI agent answers questions by reading the company file, so every prompt in this section works on a read-only connection at https://mcp.conductor.is/read-only.

Customers and invoices

The agent can list customers by open balance, find an invoice by its number, filter invoices by customer, date, and payment status, and total what was invoiced in a period.

• Which customers have an open balance over $5,000? filters customers on their total balance, which includes their jobs' balances.

• List every unpaid invoice for Acme Construction, oldest first. filters invoices by customer and by paid or unpaid status.

• Find invoice 10482 and show its line items. looks the invoice up by its reference number and includes its lines.

• How much did we invoice last month, and how much of it is still open? pulls invoices by transaction date and adds up the balance remaining on each.

Bills, vendors, and payments

The agent can read open bills with their due dates, a vendor's unused credits, customer payments with the invoices each one paid, and spending by vendor.

• List the unpaid bills due in the next 14 days, grouped by vendor. filters bills to unpaid ones and sorts them by due date.

• Which open bills and vendor credits do we have with Harbor Supply? reads that vendor's bills to pay, which lists its open bills and available vendor credits together.

• Show the customer payments received this week and the invoices each one paid. reads each received payment and the invoices it was applied to.

• Which vendors did we spend the most with last quarter? runs the QuickBooks expense by vendor summary report.

Inventory

The agent can read quantity on hand, reorder point, average cost, and the quantities on purchase orders and sales orders for every inventory item. With QuickBooks Enterprise and an Advanced Inventory subscription, it can also read the quantity at each inventory site.

• Which inventory items are at or below their reorder point? compares each item's quantity on hand with its reorder point.

• Which items are below their reorder point but already on a purchase order? adds each item's quantity on purchase orders to the check.

• How many units of WIDGET-200 are on hand at each warehouse? reads the quantity at each inventory site.

• Run the inventory valuation summary for today. runs the QuickBooks report of the same name.

Reports

The agent can run the reports built into QuickBooks for a date range or a period such as last month, including the profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance, A/R and A/P aging, sales by customer or item, expense by vendor, general ledger, and open invoices. The profit and loss, balance sheet, and general ledger can run on a cash or accrual basis.

• Compare last month's profit and loss with the same month last year. uses the previous-year comparison version of the profit and loss.

• Show the balance sheet for the last day of last quarter. runs the standard balance sheet for that date.

• Run a profit and loss by class for this year to date on a cash basis. splits income and expenses by QuickBooks class.

• Which 10 customers bought the most from us this year? runs the sales by customer summary report and ranks the rows.

Create and update records

With full access, an AI agent can create and update customers, vendors, items, invoices, bills, received payments, estimates, sales orders, purchase orders, and journal entries. Every prompt in this section needs the full-access URL, https://mcp.conductor.is/ (https://mcp.conductor.is/mcp in Copilot Studio).

• Create an invoice for Acme Construction: 12 hours of Installation at $95 an hour, dated today. creates the invoice with one line for the Installation item.

• Enter a bill from Harbor Supply for $1,180 to the Job Materials account, due in 30 days. creates a bill with one expense line on that account.

• Record a $2,400 payment from Acme Construction and apply it to invoice 10482. creates a received payment applied to that invoice, which reduces its balance.

• Change the email address for Bayside Dental to billing@example.com. updates one field on the customer record.

Use customer, item, and account names as they appear in QuickBooks so the agent matches the right records. An update needs the record's current revision number, so the agent reads the record first. If someone changed the record in between, QuickBooks returns an error.

Writes land in the company file as soon as the agent runs them, so ask the agent to show what it will create and to wait for your approval when you want to review a change first.

An agent with full access can also void or delete transactions such as invoices, bills, checks, and journal entries. A delete is permanent. Voiding an invoice sets its amount to zero and keeps a record of it in QuickBooks. Customers, vendors, and items cannot be deleted through Conductor, so an agent retires one by marking it inactive, which hides it from most views and reports in QuickBooks.

Run month-end and collections tasks

An AI agent can run the checks in a month-end close and the lookups behind collections. Only the two prompts that write need full access.

Month-end close

For a month-end close, the agent can pull the trial balance, list customer payments still waiting for a deposit, check which transactions were deleted, and post adjusting entries.

• Run a trial balance for the last day of last month. runs the QuickBooks trial balance report for that date.

• Which customer payments are still waiting to be deposited? lists the received payments available to include in a deposit.

• Which invoices, bills, or checks were deleted in the last 30 days? reads the deleted transactions list, which covers the last 90 days.

• Post an adjusting journal entry dated the last day of last month: debit Insurance Expense $600, credit Prepaid Insurance $600. creates a journal entry marked as an adjustment and needs full access.

Ask for the audit trail or the general ledger by name in the same way. Bank reconciliation stays in QuickBooks, because the Conductor API has no reconciliation endpoint.

Collections

For collections, the agent finds overdue invoices and the customers behind them, then drafts reminder text for you to send.

• Run the collections report and list customers more than 30 days past due, with each customer's phone number and email. combines the QuickBooks collections report with the customer records.

• For each invoice more than 60 days overdue, draft a short payment reminder with the invoice number, amount, and due date. reads the invoices, and the AI tool writes the drafts in the chat.

• Which customers are over their credit limit? compares each customer's balance with the credit limit set in QuickBooks.

• Add "Promised payment by Friday" to the memo on invoice 10482. updates the invoice memo, which appears in reports but not on the invoice, and needs full access.

The Conductor API has no endpoint that sends email, so you send the reminders yourself. An agent with full access can mark an invoice to be emailed, which adds it to the queue of documents for QuickBooks to email to the customer.

Choose full access or read-only

Use the read-only URL, https://mcp.conductor.is/read-only, when an agent only needs to answer questions, and the full-access URL, https://mcp.conductor.is/, when it must create, update, or delete records. Read-only mode blocks creates, updates, and deletes before they reach QuickBooks. It suits a trial, an accountant, or co-workers who should only read. Copilot Studio uses https://mcp.conductor.is/mcp for full access and the same read-only URL as every other tool.

Read-only mode is a guardrail, not a security boundary: anyone with the Conductor key can still write through the Conductor API. Give each person their own key, as signing in does, and revoke it when needed. In tools that sign in, a read-only connection's key is named like "MCP (Claude, read-only connection)" on the project's API Keys page.

For an outside accountant, add them on the Members page in the Conductor Dashboard, then have them connect their AI tool to the read-only URL. When someone leaves, remove them on the Members page and delete their keys, because removing a member doesn't delete their keys.

To test read-only mode, ask the agent Create a test customer named Read-Only Check. If it can't, read-only mode is on. If it can, the agent still has full access, so check the URL.

To limit an agent to certain company files, connect it to a Conductor project that has only those files' QuickBooks Desktop connections. An AI tool can reach every company file connected to its project.

Limits to know before you connect

An AI agent can reach the company file only while QuickBooks Desktop and the Web Connector are running on the computer connected to Conductor.

• When requests to QuickBooks fail, QuickBooks or the Web Connector is usually not running on that computer, so start both there. Connecting an AI tool needs no Web Connector changes.

• If QuickBooks has a different company file open, the request returns an error.

• A QuickBooks pop-up, such as a reminder or an update prompt, pauses the Web Connector until someone closes it.

• QuickBooks processes one request at a time, so requests from several agents or co-workers wait in a queue. A request for tens of thousands of records can take several minutes, which is why a prompt that names a customer, a vendor, or a date range comes back faster.

• On Rightworks, you must stay connected to the Rightworks remote desktop session with QuickBooks open, because Rightworks stops background programs when you disconnect.

• QuickBooks Online is a different product, and Conductor does not connect to it. Intuit offers its own connector between QuickBooks Online and ChatGPT.

• Inventory adjustments need single-user mode unless the company file is on QuickBooks Enterprise with Advanced Inventory enabled.

• Conductor's server is at conductor.is and has only the execute and search_docs tools. A server with tools like ai_brand_insights belongs to an unrelated SEO company at conductor.com.

How this works

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems. Conductor runs the MCP server that lets an AI agent read and write a QuickBooks Desktop company file.

The server exposes two tools. search_docs searches Conductor's API documentation, which the agent uses to find the right endpoint and fields. execute runs code that the agent writes against Conductor's TypeScript SDK in an isolated sandbox with no web or filesystem access, and whatever the code returns goes back to the agent. A question such as Which bills are due this week? becomes a short program that lists unpaid bills and filters them by due date.

That code calls the Conductor API, which reaches the company file through the QuickBooks Web Connector. Intuit ships the Web Connector with every version of QuickBooks Desktop, and it runs on the Windows computer that holds the company file. The Web Connector passes each request to QuickBooks and returns the result, which the agent turns into an answer.

Every AI tool connected to the same Conductor project reads and writes through that one connection per company file.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work with QuickBooks Enterprise?

Yes: QuickBooks Enterprise is a tier of QuickBooks Desktop and uses the same Desktop SDK and Web Connector. Every prompt in this post works on an Enterprise company file. The per-site inventory prompt needs QuickBooks Enterprise with an Advanced Inventory subscription.

Does QuickBooks need to be open for the AI agent to work?

Yes. QuickBooks Desktop and the Web Connector must be running on the computer connected to Conductor whenever an agent sends a request. The AI tool can run on any computer.

Can an AI agent delete transactions in QuickBooks Desktop?

Yes, with full access, an agent can void or permanently delete invoices, bills, checks, journal entries, and other transactions. Customers, vendors, and items can be made inactive but not deleted. Read-only mode blocks every delete.

What does it cost?

Conductor costs $49 per company file per month in production. The free Trial tier covers 1 connection for testing and development. More co-workers, keys, or AI tools on the same company file cost nothing extra.

Is my QuickBooks data secure with an AI agent?

Conductor is SOC 2 Type 2 certified under the Security criteria. Data is processed on AWS US West (Oregon). Each sign-in creates a separate key, and deleting that key on the project's API Keys page cuts off that AI tool.

Connect QuickBooks Desktop to other AI tools

Each post below gives the setup steps for one AI tool. The first compares the QuickBooks Desktop MCP server options.

• QuickBooks Desktop MCP server: the options compared.

• Claude: a custom connector under Customize > Connectors.

• Claude Cowork: the Claude connector, plus the Owner setting that lets Cowork members choose Always allow.

• ChatGPT: a custom MCP server under Plugins.

• Claude Code: one claude mcp add command, then sign in from /mcp.

• Codex CLI: one codex mcp add command, then sign in when the browser opens.

• Cursor: a conductor entry in ~/.cursor/mcp.json, then Authenticate.

• VS Code: a conductor entry in VS Code's Copilot Global config file, then sign in from the chat.

• Microsoft Copilot Studio: an API key from the project's MCP tab and the URL https://mcp.conductor.is/mcp.