Diligence desk

What QuickBooks can—and cannot—tell a buyer

Importing a profit-and-loss statement is the beginning of a valuation workflow, not its conclusion.

An accounting report is a scoped observation

Intuit’s accounting API supports reports, but the standard accounting OAuth scope is broad. A product that promises read-only behavior must enforce that restriction in its own backend; it should not imply that this standard scope is a narrow, read-only token.

This launch uses local import of a QuickBooks ProfitAndLoss JSON report instead of pretending a live integration is connected. The importer identifies the reported net-income total, dates, basis and currency. It does not produce verified SDE or guess at add-backs.

Normalize with evidence

Check whether the period is complete. Review cash versus accrual accounting, related-party expenses, one-time items, deferred obligations and the cost of replacing owner labor. Treat bank reconciliation, customer contracts and revenue quality as separate evidence.

A short report period should not silently become annual profit. The importer displays the period and leaves valuation inputs under your control. Unexpected columns or ambiguous totals should stop the automated path and require review.

Consent is a product feature

An owner connecting an accounting system for a readiness report has not agreed to publish the books, sell their data or distribute the business to buyers. Those are separate choices with separate retention and revocation rules.

The planned live integration should encrypt refresh tokens, allow disconnection, log report access and restrict API methods to approved GET reports. It also needs a tested account-isolation boundary before it is made available.

Your next move: replace one important assumption with a dated piece of evidence.
Open the owner tools