2026-09-18
Invoices that start in your books
As of 18 September 2026, Winnows can create invoices directly in QuickBooks Online or Xero. The invoice is created but not sent, so it sits in your accounting system until you're ready to send it yourself. The setup is short: you connect once, tell Winnows where each line should post, match each of your clients to a customer or contact, and then each billing period you pick a date range and create the invoices. From that point on, everything about the invoice happens in your books. This post walks through the setup in the order you'll actually do it, then covers what it costs and what it still doesn't do. If you'd rather have the reference version, it's in the guide.
Set it up once
- Connect your accounting system. Go to Settings → Invoicing and connect either QuickBooks Online or Xero. Connecting is a paid-plan feature.
- Choose where each line should post. In QuickBooks that means picking a service item, and in Xero it means picking a sales account. This step is required, because without it the accounting system has nowhere to book the line. If you charge tax, this is also where you add the tax code.
- Match your clients. Each Winnows client needs to be matched to a customer in QuickBooks or a contact in Xero.
Then, each period
When it's time to bill, go to Reports → Invoicing, pick the date range, and tick the clients and projects you want to invoice. If you use approvals, any hours that are still waiting for approval are left out, and a project that contains unapproved hours starts out unticked. That way you can't accidentally bill a week that's only half approved. Before anything is created, you get a preview of every invoice showing its lines, its total and the number it will carry. If it looks right, you create the invoices. If you'd rather not push them at all, you can download the same lines as a CSV instead.
What you get
What you end up with is a real invoice in your accounting system, rather than a Winnows document that looks like one. It has one line for each combination of person, task and rate, and each line carries the hours, a description and the rate. The invoice is dated, numbered according to your own pattern, and has the tax code you chose attached.
Invoice numbers come from a pattern you set in Settings → Invoicing, for example {CLIENT}-{SEQ:4}. The sequence can run per client, per project, or across your whole organization. If you leave the pattern empty, your accounting tool assigns the number instead. There's one thing worth knowing about QuickBooks here. Intuit's help page says that "QuickBooks Online automatically assigns numbers to your transactions unless you turn on custom transaction numbers." In practice, that means QuickBooks will only use the number Winnows gives it if your company has custom transaction numbers turned on. If it doesn't, QuickBooks numbers the invoice itself, and Winnows records whatever number QuickBooks used.
In Xero, the invoice arrives as a draft. QuickBooks Online doesn't have a draft state for invoices. When someone asked on the QuickBooks community forum in January 2024 whether an invoice could be saved as a draft "without it showing on the A/R report until sent", the QuickBooks Team replied: "For the time being, saving an invoice as a draft isn't yet an option in QuickBooks Online (QBO)." So in QuickBooks, the invoice Winnows creates is open but unsent, and it shows up in your receivables as soon as it exists. That's why it's worth reading the preview carefully before you create anything.
What stays in your books, on purpose
The first thing that stays in your books is the tax calculation. Winnows never works out a tax amount itself. It attaches your tax code to each line and lets QuickBooks or Xero do the arithmetic. We did this deliberately. Xero calculates tax line by line and rounds each line as it goes, which means a tool that works out tax on the invoice total and then pushes that figure across can end up a cent away from what Xero would have calculated. One Xero integrator's knowledge base describes the mismatch plainly: "Xero calculates tax on each individual line item and rounds it immediately," whereas "Most other systems (and standard calculators) add up all the line items first and calculate tax on the total." Because Winnows doesn't do a calculation of its own, there's nothing for Xero's figure to disagree with.
Payment terms, sending and payments also stay in your books. Since the invoice belongs to your accounting system, that's where you send it from and where you record the payment when it arrives. Winnows can set a due date on the invoice, based on a number of days after the invoice date that you set once in Settings → Invoicing, or it can leave the due date to the customer's own terms in your accounting system. Beyond that, it doesn't set anything else on the invoice, and it doesn't read anything back. We explained why we decided not to build our own invoicing module in an earlier post, and this release is that decision put into practice.
Import your Harvest account and read the reconciliation
Free for 2 people and 1 active project; $9 per active member per month after that, no usage fees on anything. The import runs on the free plan.
What never bills twice
When a push succeeds, Winnows records the run against the time entries it billed, and those entries are left out of any later period. If you open the same period again, those hours show as already invoiced rather than as hours waiting to be billed, so running a period twice doesn't produce a second invoice. Sometimes hours have already been invoiced somewhere else, perhaps before you connected your accounting system or through another tool. In that case you can mark them as invoiced elsewhere, and they stop appearing as unbilled. Marking hours this way is available on every plan.
What it costs
Connecting an accounting system is part of the paid plan, which costs $9 per active member per month, billed month to month. Archived members are free, and there are no usage fees on projects, clients, tasks or invoices. Xero charges us for each connected organisation every month, whether it's used or not, and rather than have one rule for Xero and another for QuickBooks we kept it to a single rule that's easy to remember: the connection is the paid feature, and the CSV isn't. Winnows itself is free for two people and one active project. Adding a third active person or a second active project starts a 14-day trial of the full plan, and creating invoices in QuickBooks or Xero is included in that trial. The CSV of the same lines, the read-only API, and marking hours as invoiced elsewhere are available on every plan, including the free one.
What it still does not do
There are a few things the feature doesn't do, and it's worth knowing them before you connect.
- It doesn't send the invoice or email anything to your client. Sending happens from your accounting system.
- It doesn't take or record payments. Winnows has no payment records at all.
- It doesn't calculate tax. It attaches the tax code you chose, and QuickBooks or Xero does the arithmetic.
- It doesn't sync anything back. Once the invoice exists in your books, its status, its payment and any edits you make to it stay there.
- It doesn't handle expenses, estimates or retainers. Winnows has none of those.
Why there is no per-invoice fee
Harvest's pricing page currently lists its Teams plan at "$9 seat/month" and its Enterprise plan at "$14 seat/month" when billed annually. Under both plans, it says: "Your base rate includes core features. As your team grows, additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use, so you're never overpaying." What it doesn't say is how much an additional invoice costs. That rate isn't published on the page. We looked into where the fee comes from in Harvest's usage fees, explained line by line.
Harvest is able to charge per invoice because a Harvest invoice is Harvest's own document. Its Xero integration page describes how the hand-off works: "Automatically copy Harvest invoices into Xero when you send them to your clients." Winnows doesn't have an invoice of its own to copy across or to count. The invoice is created in QuickBooks or Xero and finished there, so there's nothing for us to meter and no second copy that needs reconciling.
Import your Harvest account and read the reconciliation
Free for 2 people and 1 active project; $9 per active member per month after that, no usage fees on anything. The import runs on the free plan.