Load QuickBooks Online data to DuckDB

QuickBooks Online Accounting API is a RESTful interface for accessing and managing QuickBooks Online company data. Everything needed to build a working QuickBooks Online → DuckDB pipeline is on this page: the API's base URL, authentication, endpoints, pagination and incremental field — plus a prompt that hands the whole job to your coding agent.

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Build your QuickBooks Online to DuckDB pipeline

Paste this prompt into Claude, Codex, or Cursor. The agent does the rest.

PromptCopy prompt
Run uvx dlthub-init@latest to build a pipeline from QuickBooks Online to DuckDB and run it on dltHub

That scaffolds a dltHub workspace and installs the dltHub AI harness — the project rules, the secrets-management skill, and the dlt MCP server your agent needs to work safely. From there it reads the QuickBooks Online API, proposes the endpoints to load, then writes, runs and validates the pipeline while you review rather than type. Credentials are inspected through MCP tools, so your agent never reads secrets.toml itself. How the LLM-native workflow works →

Prefer to write it yourself? Every fact the agent uses is below.

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QuickBooks Online API at a glance

These values come from the QuickBooks Online API documentation. Check them against the vendor's current reference before relying on them in production.

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How do I authenticate with the QuickBooks Online API?

Authentication is performed using OAuth 2.0 with an access token, which must be passed in the Authorization header as 'Bearer '.

1. Get your credentials

1. Sign in to your Intuit Developer account at developer.intuit.com.
2. Select My Hub > App dashboard from the upper-right toolbar.
3. Select an existing app or create a new one.
4. From the left navigation pane, select Keys and credentials.
5. Choose between Development or Production keys as needed.
6. Toggle the Show credentials switch to view your Client ID and Client Secret.
7. Ensure you have configured a Redirect URI in the Settings > Redirect URIs tab, which is required for the OAuth 2.0 authorization flow.

2. Add them to .dlt/secrets.toml

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[sources.quickbooks_online_source]
# Example for secrets.toml
# You will need to manage the OAuth 2.0 token lifecycle (access and refresh tokens) # obtained via the Client ID/Secret obtained from the dashboard.
client_id = "your_client_id_here"
client_secret = "your_client_secret_here"
refresh_token = "your_refresh_token_here"
realm_id = "your_company_id_here"

dlt reads this file automatically at runtime. With the harness, the setup-secrets skill prompts you for the values and never handles the raw credential in chat. For production, see setting up credentials with dlt.

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What QuickBooks Online data can I load into DuckDB?

These are the QuickBooks Online endpoints dlt can load into DuckDB:

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How do I load only new QuickBooks Online records?

QuickBooks Online exposes startposition on v3/company/{realmId}/query, so dlt can request only the records that changed since the last run. Set it as the cursor_path and dlt tracks the high-water mark for you between runs.

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{"name": "customer", "endpoint": {
    "path": "v3/company/{realmId}/query",
    "data_selector": "QueryResponse.Customer",
    "incremental": {"cursor_path": "startposition", "initial_value": "2024-01-01T00:00:00Z"},
}}

On the first run dlt loads everything from initial_value; on every run after that it requests only what changed and appends with write_disposition="merge" if you set a primary key. See incremental loading.

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What does the generated QuickBooks Online pipeline look like?

A standard dlt REST API pipeline — the same code you would write by hand, loading customer and invoice from the QuickBooks Online API into DuckDB:

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import dlt
from dlt.sources.rest_api import RESTAPIConfig, rest_api_resources

@dlt.source
def quickbooks_online_source(access_token=dlt.secrets.value):
    config: RESTAPIConfig = {
        "client": {
            "base_url": "https://quickbooks.api.intuit.com (production) or https://sandbox-quickbooks.api.intuit.com (sandbox)",
            "auth": {"type": "bearer", "token": access_token},
        },
        "resources": [
            {"name": "customer", "endpoint": {"path": "v3/company/{realmId}/query", "data_selector": "QueryResponse.Customer"}},
            {"name": "invoice", "endpoint": {"path": "v3/company/{realmId}/query", "data_selector": "QueryResponse.Invoice"}}
        ],
    }
    yield from rest_api_resources(config)


def load_quickbooks_online_to_duckdb() -> None:
    pipeline = dlt.pipeline(
        pipeline_name="quickbooks_online_pipeline",
        destination="duckdb",
        dataset_name="quickbooks_online_data",
    )
    load_info = pipeline.run(quickbooks_online_source())
    print(load_info)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    load_quickbooks_online_to_duckdb()

Run it with python quickbooks_online_pipeline.py. The agent iterates on this until it loads cleanly — you review and approve, rather than write it from scratch.

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How do I query QuickBooks Online data in DuckDB?

dlt creates one table per resource. Query the loaded data with Python or SQL — or ask your agent to, through the MCP server's execute_sql_query tool.

Python (pandas DataFrame):

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import dlt

data = dlt.pipeline("quickbooks_online_pipeline").dataset()
df = data.query.df()
print(df.head())

SQL:

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SELECT * FROM quickbooks_online_data.query LIMIT 10;

See querying your data with dataset and exploring it in marimo notebooks.

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How do I deploy the QuickBooks Online to DuckDB pipeline in production?

The pipeline runs locally, which is ideal for prototyping and one-off analysis. When you need it on a schedule, monitored on every load, and shared with your team, deploy the same dlt code on the dltHub platform — no infrastructure to maintain. The prompt above already ends with "run it on dltHub", so your agent can take it there directly.

• Deploy & schedule — run the pipeline as a managed job with automatic retries.
• Monitor — observable job queues, alerting, and load metrics for every run.
• Transform — promote raw QuickBooks Online loads into governed, documented models.
• Visualize & share — explore data in notebooks and publish live dashboards instead of static screenshots.

Book a demo →

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What other destinations can I load QuickBooks Online data to?

dlt loads into any of these — only the destination argument changes:

Set dlt.pipeline(destination="snowflake") and add credentials in .dlt/secrets.toml. On the dltHub platform the same pipeline runs against a managed Iceberg lakehouse. See the full destinations list.

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Next steps

• Ready for production? Book a demo of the dltHub platform →
• dlt LLM-native workflow docs
• REST API source reference
• Join the dlt community on Slack