SideQuest for electrical distributors on QuickBooks Online
If you run an electrical wholesale business on QuickBooks Online and your customer mix is electrical contractors plus facility maintenance teams, your POs run heavy. A 40-line PO for a single rough-in job is normal. The volume tracks with project starts and slows when permitting drags. SideQuest reads those POs from inbound email, matches every line against your QuickBooks catalog, and builds the draft Estimate. Your CSR reviews the draft instead of typing 40 lines into QuickBooks by hand.
What changes for you
40-line POs stop costing 30 minutes of typing
A typical residential rough-in PO runs 25 to 50 lines. SideQuest parses the whole PO in one pass and builds the draft Estimate. Your CSR opens Claude and sees every line matched, with variance flags on anything off. Review time scales with the variance count, not the line count.
NEMA and UL designations route to the right SKU
Breakers, receptacles, conduit fittings carry NEMA codes and UL listings in the description. A line like '12 × NEMA 5-15R duplex receptacle ivory' gets matched against your catalog descriptions, not just the PN. If the contractor wrote the OEM PN and your shelf has a house SKU, the cross-reference handles the mapping.
Reply drafts confirm large orders before the contractor reorders
When a large PO clears the clean gate, SideQuest drafts the confirmation reply with line totals, total value, and the ship date. Your CSR clicks send. The contractor knows the order is in, knows the price, and stops calling. Phone time drops.
Why this fits electrical wholesale
Catalog quirk: NEMA and UL designations matter for matching
Electrical SKUs differ by NEMA configuration and UL listing. The matcher reads the description alongside the PN, so a contractor who types the NEMA code lands on the right SKU even without the PN. The cross-reference table (OEM PN to house SKU) catches contractors who order by manufacturer number.
Customer mix: contractors on net-30 plus institutional accounts
Electrical contractors carry net-30 terms. School districts, hospitals, and other institutional buyers run on PO-and-net-60 cycles. SideQuest's Customer Risk Gate reads QuickBooks Customer.Balance and overdue Invoices on every parse. Institutional accounts past their net-60 trigger a credit hold flag before the draft hits the review queue.
Project-driven order patterns with heavy SKU counts
A residential rough-in PO is 40 lines. A commercial fit-out is 200. SideQuest's batch handling doesn't slow down on large POs. Parse time scales linearly with line count, and your CSR sees the variance flags first, so the review path stays short even on a 200-line order.
Start free for 30 days
The Solo tier covers up to 100 POs per month. Setup is install the connector, point it at your Gmail and your QuickBooks Online file, and let it parse your next inbound PO. No credit card to start.
Quick-start guide See pricingFAQ
Does SideQuest handle the long PNs from electrical manufacturers (Eaton, Square D, Cutler-Hammer)?
Yes. The matcher reads full PNs up to 30 characters and tolerates suffix variations (-NA, -US, /NSP). The cross-reference table catches OEM-to-house mapping if you carry house brands.
What about POs from procurement portals (Greenshades, Procore, etc.) that come as PDF attachments?
SideQuest reads PDF attachments. Procurement-portal PDFs are usually clean (born-digital, not scanned) so OCR is not in the path. The parser pulls the line items from the structured PDF text directly.
Can we set per-customer pricing rules so the variance flag knows what to expect?
Yes. The variance check reads your QuickBooks item price list plus any per-customer pricing rules you've set in QuickBooks. A contractor with a contract-pricing tier gets variance-checked against their tier price, not the default. If the PO lists a different price, the line gets flagged.