SideQuest for plumbing wholesalers on QuickBooks Online
If you run a plumbing supply house on QuickBooks Online, your order desk sees the same five PO patterns over and over. A licensed plumber emails a typed list. A general contractor's PO comes as a PDF from a procurement portal. A property manager forwards a maintenance request and asks you to figure out the parts. SideQuest reads them out of your inbox, matches the lines against your QuickBooks catalog, and builds the draft Estimate. Your counter staff reviews it instead of typing it.
What changes for you
PO intake stops eating counter time
Inbound POs come into the SideQuest-watched Gmail. The header anchor pulls customer, ship-to (often a job-site address that's different from billing), net terms, and need-by date into the right QuickBooks fields. Your counter staff opens Claude and sees the draft Estimate. The plumber's email is still there for context, not for re-typing.
Thread specs in PNs route to the right SKU
Plumbing PNs carry the thread spec in the suffix. NPT, MIP, FIP, sweat, push-fit. The matcher reads the full PN (not just the prefix) so '3/4 MIP × 1/2 FIP' lands on the right valve and not a sibling SKU. Your cross-reference table (house brand to OEM PN) is included in the match, so plumbers who write the OEM number still land on your shelf SKU.
Reply drafts confirm pricing the same hour
When the draft passes the clean gate (every line matched, no price variance, customer in good standing), SideQuest drafts the confirmation reply with line totals, total order value, and the ship date. Counter staff clicks send. The plumber gets pricing back the same hour, not the next day.
Why this fits plumbing supply
Catalog quirk: thread specs as PN suffix
Plumbing PNs encode the thread spec. The matcher reads the full PN, the description, and the customer's own part number. Lines like '6 × 3/4 NPT brass ball valve' get matched against descriptions, so a plumber writing in plain language still lands on the right SKU.
Customer mix: licensed plumbers and general contractors
Plumbers run net-30 on your books. Generals run net-30 on the GC's terms but pay through their AP system, often slower than 30 days. SideQuest's Customer Risk Gate reads QuickBooks Customer.Balance and overdue Invoices on every parse. If a GC is over limit or has invoices past 60 days, the draft gets flagged 'customer credit hold' before your counter sees it.
Seasonal swings on water heaters and freeze-related fittings
October brings the water-heater rush and January brings the burst-pipe rush. SideQuest scales your CSR throughput without hiring. The draft-review path runs faster than the type-from-scratch path, so the same staff handles 2x the order volume during the spikes.
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 plumber POs that use the OEM part number instead of our house number?
Yes if you have the cross-reference loaded in QuickBooks (item alias or custom field). The matcher reads aliases alongside the primary PN. If the cross-ref isn't loaded, the description match takes over and lands the SKU based on the text of the line.
What about POs that come in as photos from a phone (plumber on a job site)?
SideQuest runs photos through OCR with a trust gate. Phone-camera POs often fail the structural confidence threshold because of skew and lighting. When that happens, the draft gets flagged with the low-quality OCR reason and your counter staff sees the source photo, not the garbled text. Optional cloud OCR (Azure Document Intelligence) handles harder cases.
Can the counter approve a draft and submit from Claude, or do we go back into QuickBooks?
Submit happens from Claude. The counter staff opens the draft in Claude, fixes anything off, and types 'submit.' SideQuest writes the Estimate to QuickBooks Online through the same API your accounting team uses. No double-handling.