Choosing a driver: CData or QODBC

Nymble talks to QuickBooks Desktop through an ODBC driver, and there are two. They are not interchangeable, and the difference isn’t cosmetic: one of them can write orders back into QuickBooks and the other can’t. Pick with that in mind, because switching later means redoing the setup and rewriting your queries.

The two options

CData ODBC Driver for QuickBooks Desktop — reads and writes. This is the one Nymble recommends and the one the connector defaults to. With CData installed, data flows both ways: customers, items, prices, and invoices come into Nymble, and orders written in Nymble can be imported back into QuickBooks as sales orders, from the connector’s Orders page. It’s a paid subscription, per machine, with a free trial. Download or start a trial.

QODBC — read-only, as far as Nymble is concerned. A read-only edition ships with QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise, so if you’re on Enterprise it may already be installed and cost you nothing. Data flows one way: into Nymble. FLEXquarters sells it by subscription if you’re not on Enterprise.

One thing worth knowing before you spend anything: FLEXquarters also sells a read-write QODBC subscription, and buying it will not give you order import in Nymble. The connector’s write path is built on CData and only on CData. If orders flowing back into QuickBooks is what you’re paying for, the driver you want is CData.

What “read-only” actually costs you

This is the part worth being honest about, because the consequence lands on a person, not a feature list.

With a read-only connection, Nymble knows everything about your QuickBooks catalog and customers — reps in the field sell from live prices and real inventory, and buyers on the storefront see their own pricing. All of that works.

What doesn’t happen is the return trip. Every order your reps and buyers write in Nymble has to be entered into QuickBooks by hand. On a slow week that’s an hour of typing. On a good week it’s the bottleneck that decides how fast you can ship, and it’s where transcription errors get introduced into your books.

So the question isn’t “which driver” — it’s “who re-keys the orders?” If the answer is “nobody should have to,” you want CData.

Choosing, in one line each

• You run QuickBooks Desktop Pro or Premier — CData. QODBC isn’t bundled with your edition, so there’s no free option to weigh; go straight to the driver that does both.
• You run Enterprise and want orders flowing back — CData. The bundled QODBC won’t do it.
• You run Enterprise and only need QuickBooks data inside Nymble — QODBC is already on the machine. Start there, and move to CData when the re-keying starts to hurt.

The other consequence: your queries

The two drivers expose the same company file under different table names. CData has Customers, Items, and InvoiceLineItems; QODBC has Customer, ItemInventory, and InvoiceLine. A query written for one fails on the other with “is not a valid table.”

You don’t have to memorize any of that. Tell the connector which driver you’re using on the Source Connection page, and its Insert starter query button on each endpoint gives you the queries that match. But it does mean switching drivers later is a real piece of work, not a checkbox — which is the argument for deciding now rather than discovering it in six months.

Good to know

• Both drivers use a helper service. Neither one reaches QuickBooks on its own. CData installs the QuickBooks Desktop Gateway; QODBC has its Remote Connector. It runs in the background on the same machine, and it’s the piece that most setup problems trace back to.
• The rest of this course covers CData, since it’s the recommended path and the more involved of the two. If you’re setting up QODBC, lessons on authorizing in QuickBooks and creating the DSN still apply almost word for word — the helper service has a different name and its own installer, and you skip the gateway user.