MCP Server for QuickBooks Online (karellen-qbo-mcp)

Overview

karellen-qbo-mcp is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets an MCP client such as Claude Code keep a company's QuickBooks Online books under the owner's supervision: run financial reports, query any record, and create, update, void, delete or deactivate records through the QuickBooks Online Accounting API.

It runs locally as a stdio server. Your Intuit app credentials and OAuth tokens stay on your machine, and the only services it talks to are Intuit's.

Features

• Reports: profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, trial balance, general ledger, A/R and A/P aging, transaction lists and any other QuickBooks report, returned either flattened into ordered rows or as QuickBooks' raw JSON
• Queries: the QuickBooks query language with automatic paging, single-record reads, change data capture
• Full record management: create and update (sparse or full) on 30+ entities; delete transactions; void invoices, payments, sales receipts and bill payments; deactivate name-list records; email invoices, estimates and purchase orders; batches of up to 30 operations
• Attachments and PDFs: upload receipts and documents linked to records, download attachments and invoice/estimate/sales receipt PDFs
• Supervision: read and write tools are separate (and annotated as such), so Claude Code can allow reads and ask before every write; dry_run previews with field-level diffs; a read-only mode; a local audit log of every write
• Safe retries: every write carries a QuickBooks requestid, so a retried request is de-duplicated by QuickBooks instead of being posted twice
• Token care: access tokens refresh automatically; the rotating refresh token is persisted after every refresh, and refreshes are serialized across processes
• Both MCP protocol eras: built on MCP Python SDK 2.x, serving 2026-07-28 clients and older (initialize handshake) clients alike

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10
• An Intuit Developer account and an app with the com.intuit.quickbooks.accounting scope (free; see below)
• A QuickBooks Online company: a sandbox company for development, your real company for production

Installation

pip install --user karellen-qbo-mcp

The Claude Code plugin adds the MCP server, a bookkeeping skill, and a prerequisite check. From the Karellen marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add karellen/claude-plugins
claude plugin install karellen-qbo-mcp@karellen-plugins

From a local checkout:

claude --plugin-dir /path/to/karellen-qbo-mcp

Or register only the MCP server:

claude mcp add --transport stdio qbo -- karellen-qbo-mcp
claude mcp add --transport stdio --env QBO_MCP_ENVIRONMENT=production qbo-production -- karellen-qbo-mcp

Setting Up Intuit Access

1. Create an app

At developer.intuit.com, create an app for QuickBooks Online with the Accounting scope. Development (sandbox) keys are available right away, along with a sandbox company to test against.

2. Sandbox

Under the app's development settings, add the redirect URI http://localhost:8765/callback (Intuit accepts plain-HTTP localhost redirects for development keys). Then:

karellen-qbo-mcp auth configure --client-id <development client ID>   # prompts for the secret
karellen-qbo-mcp auth login                                          # opens the browser
karellen-qbo-mcp auth status

Choose the sandbox company on Intuit's consent page. Inside Claude Code, the qbo_auth_login tool runs the same browser sign-in.

3. Production

For production keys, Intuit asks a private (unlisted) app to fill in its app details and an App Assessment Questionnaire; no App Store review is involved. The app details require host, launch, disconnect, reconnect, EULA and privacy policy URLs. Intuit does not validate these for private apps, so for an app that only you use, placeholder HTTPS URLs on a domain you own will do.

Intuit does not allow localhost redirect URIs for production keys, so production tokens are bootstrapped once through Intuit's OAuth 2.0 Playground:

1. Add https://developer.intuit.com/v2/OAuth2Playground/RedirectUrl as a production redirect URI of your app.
2. In the OAuth 2.0 Playground, select your app, choose the Accounting scope, sign in as an administrator of your company, and exchange the code for tokens. Note the refresh token and the company (realm) ID.
3. Store the production keys and import the refresh token:

karellen-qbo-mcp --environment production auth configure --client-id <production client ID>
karellen-qbo-mcp --environment production auth import --realm-id <company ID>   # prompts for the refresh token

The import refreshes the token immediately, which validates it and replaces it with a fresh one the Playground no longer knows. From then on the server keeps it alive on its own. A refresh token expires after 100 days without use and, regardless of use, five years after the original sign-in; auth status shows both dates. When it expires, repeat the Playground steps.

auth logout revokes the authorization at Intuit and deletes the local tokens.

Configuration

Each environment keeps its own client.json, tokens.json and audit.jsonl under <config dir>/<environment>/, all readable only by you. The command line option --environment overrides QBO_MCP_ENVIRONMENT.

Tools

Every write tool except qbo_send and qbo_upload_attachment accepts dry_run=True.

Supervision

• Permission rules. Let Claude Code run reads without asking and prompt for every write by allowing only the read tools. For the plugin, tool names take the form mcp__plugin_karellen-qbo-mcp_karellen-qbo-mcp__<tool>; for a server added with claude mcp add ... qbo, they are mcp__qbo__<tool>. For example, in .claude/settings.json:

  {
    "permissions": {
      "allow": [
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_auth_status",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_list_entities",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_get",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_query",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_cdc",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_list_reports",
        "mcp__qbo__qbo_report"
      ]
    }
  }
  

  The two download tools are marked as local writes rather than reads: they create files (owner-readable only, never inside the server's own configuration directory) and with overwrite=True replace them, so leave them out of the allow list to confirm each one.

• Previews. dry_run=True shows what would be sent; for updates it fetches the record and shows each changed field, whether your SyncToken is current, and which fields a full (non-sparse) update would clear.

• Read-only mode. QBO_MCP_READ_ONLY=1 makes every write fail before anything is sent. Dry runs and query-only batches still work.

• Audit log. Every write, successful or failed, is appended to <config dir>/<environment>/audit.jsonl with its request, requestid and result (for batches, each operation's record or fault). A write cancelled while waiting for QuickBooks is logged too, since QuickBooks may have applied it.

MCP Protocol Versions

The server answers both the initialize handshake (protocol 2025-11-25 and earlier) and server/discover (2026-07-28). As of Claude Code 2.1.283, Claude Code connects to stdio servers with the handshake unless MCP_PROTOCOL_NEGOTIATION=auto is set; both work.

Limitations

These come from the QuickBooks Online API, not from this server:

• The bank feed ("For Review") queue is not available through any public API, and reconciliations cannot be performed through the API.
• Reads, queries, reports, change data capture and batches count toward the app's monthly quota (500,000 calls on Intuit's free Builder tier); writes do not.
• Requests are limited to 500 per minute and 10 per second per company; the server paces itself and waits out throttling.
• Intuit moved reports to a new reporting service in 2026 and dropped some undocumented reports; report names outside the documented set may be rejected.

Development

This is a PyBuilder project:

pyb -vX                      # lint, unit tests, integration tests, coverage, package
pyb -vX run_unit_tests       # unit tests only

The integration tests start the server over stdio and exercise both protocol eras. A second suite runs end to end against a sandbox company; it creates and removes records there, and runs only when asked:

pyb -vX run_integration_tests -P qbo_sandbox_tests=true