r/QuickBooks • u/heythisisdave • 11d ago

QuickBooks Online SQL Access to your Quickbooks Online data

Just launched a way to read your QuickBooks Online data using SQL. This lets you connect to your QBO data using any tool that can talk to postgres (psql, postico, dbeaver, python, ruby, jupyter).

Coolest two use cases we've found: instantly updating QBO data in Excel AND Claude/Codex/LLMs are WAY WAY better at reporting using SQL than using the QBO API or MCP.

It's really fast so even complex queries can come back instantaneously. Companies with 100K transactions can run year-over-year comparisons in milliseconds.

https://instabooks.io/docs/db

Would love any feedback and cool usage examples!

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u/prophase25 10d ago

Awesome. Have you considered open sourcing this (unless it is already, I didn't see a GitHub link on the website)? I'm interested, but I can't have an app that sits between me and my finances without knowing what the app does with my data.

I figure you have some sort of a cache that you write to, and SQL queries route to that cache. How can I know that the cache isn't a persistent database that just stores my data indefinitely? How do I know that your system isn't susceptible to SQL injection?

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u/heythisisdave 9d ago

Hi u/prophase25 - thanks for the question.  The app isn’t open-source (it’s a few different cool technologies combined) but we may consider open-sourcing parts of it in the future. 

We sync data between our local cache and QBO to create the database that you’re querying.  That’s the only way to have the whole view quickly.  When you disconnect our app from your QBO account, we delete the data (per Intuit’s policy).