Glossary

QuickBooks Location Tracking

Location tracking is a QuickBooks Online feature that tags an entire transaction with a place, such as an office, region, or outlet, so a single company file can report profit and loss by site instead of being split into separate books.

Also called: locations, QuickBooks locations, location tracking, track locations

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Definition

Intuit defines it in one sentence: "Location tracking is used to categorize data from different locations, offices, regions, outlets, or departments of the same company." It is the where axis of your reporting, and its whole purpose is to let one set of books answer a question the chart of accounts cannot: which site earned this, and which site spent it.

The structural fact that decides everything else about the feature is how a location attaches. Intuit draws the contrast against classes directly: "Class tracking specifies a different class for each detail line of a transaction", while "Location tracking allows you to assign a location to an entire transaction." There is no per-line option and no override. One transaction carries exactly one location, or none.

Like class tracking, it is available only on QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. What is less well known is that on Plus the two features are not budgeted separately. Intuit lists the Plus usage limit as "40 combined classes and locations", so every location you create is a class you cannot.

Key points

+Intuit: "Location tracking is used to categorize data from different locations, offices, regions, outlets, or departments of the same company."
+A location attaches to the entire transaction. Unlike a class, it cannot vary line by line.
+Available only on QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced.
+Plus allows "40 combined classes and locations". Advanced is unlimited.
+Only active classes and locations count against that limit.
+Turned on under Settings, then Account and settings, then Advanced, then Categories, then Track locations.
+It groups deposits: the feature lets you see all the payments for one location and deposit them as a group.
+Stripe has no location field, so the location is assigned on the QuickBooks side.

One location per transaction, and what that rules out

A class can differ from line to line on the same invoice. A location cannot. Intuit is explicit that location tracking "allows you to assign a location to an entire transaction", and there is no setting that changes this the way the Assigned classes dropdown changes it for classes.

Most of the time that is exactly right, because a sale usually happens somewhere. The Denver store sold it, the Denver store gets it, and nothing about the line items complicates that. The rule only becomes a constraint when a single transaction genuinely spans two sites: one invoice covering work done at two branches, or a bundled order fulfilled from two warehouses.

When that happens there are two honest answers and one bad one. You can split the transaction, writing one record per location, which is more work and produces books that are actually true. You can decide the segment is not really a place after all and track it as a class instead, which buys you per-line granularity. The bad answer is picking whichever location is larger and accepting the misattribution, because nothing in QuickBooks will ever flag it and the location reports will look complete while being quietly wrong.

This is also the reason location lists tend to stay short and well behaved while class lists sprawl. A place is a fact about the transaction that someone already knows when they write it. A segment often is not.

The 40-item budget you are actually spending

Intuit publishes usage limits by plan, and the line for Plus is worth reading carefully: "40 combined classes and locations". Not 40 of each. Forty between them.

A business with twelve retail sites has twenty-eight classes left for every other segment it will ever want to report on. A business that opens sites faster than it opens product lines will hit the ceiling from the location side, which is not where most people expect the pressure to come from. Advanced removes the ceiling entirely with "Unlimited classes and locations", and for a genuinely multi-site business that limit is often the real reason to move up a plan rather than any of the features on the comparison page.

One piece of relief is worth knowing. Intuit states that "Only active (or invited) users, accounts, classes, locations, and custom fields, count toward the limit in each category", so a site you closed last year can be made inactive and stops consuming budget while its history stays intact on the transactions that already carry it.

The practical advice is to design both lists at once rather than one at a time. Locations and classes are separate axes and you can run both, but on Plus they draw from one pool, and discovering that after you have built a forty-value location list means deleting work rather than adding to it.

Grouping deposits by location

One use of locations is less about reporting than about the mechanics of getting money into the books correctly. Intuit notes that the feature "lets you see all the payments for one location and deposit them as a group."

For a business where each site banks its own takings, that is the difference between a deposit that matches the bank line and a deposit assembled by hand from a list of every payment the company took that day. The location becomes the filter that makes the grouping obvious.

It is worth holding onto that idea when the money arrives from a payment processor instead of a till, because the shape of the problem is the same and the answer is not. A Stripe payout is already a group: two days of charges, netted of fees and refunds, arriving as one bank deposit. What the payout is not grouped by is location. Stripe batches by balance and payout schedule, not by which of your sites made the sale, so a business running one Stripe account across five locations gets a deposit that mixes all five.

That leaves a design decision that is better made early than discovered at year end: either the location has to be recoverable from something on each individual charge, or each site needs its own Stripe account so its payouts arrive separately in the first place.

Stripe has no location field

Nothing in the Stripe data model corresponds to a QuickBooks location. A charge carries a product, a price, and whatever metadata you attached to it. A customer carries an address, which is where the customer is rather than where the sale happened, and those are different facts for anyone shipping goods or selling online.

So the location is always assigned on the QuickBooks side, by whoever or whatever writes the record. The question is what it gets assigned from.

The durable handles are the ones you control deliberately: a metadata key set at charge creation, a distinct Stripe account per site, or a product or price that only one site sells. The fragile handles are the ones that look convenient in the dashboard and break silently later: a pattern in a description someone will reword, or a billing address standing in for a place of sale.

Sequencing matters here too. If Track locations is switched off in QuickBooks there is no field to assign to, so turning it on and settling the location list comes before any question of how Stripe data gets routed. Turn it on, keep the list to real places, and decide what on the Stripe side identifies each one.

How Acodei puts a location on a synced transaction

Acodei has a location surface, and it is not self-serve. Enable Location Tracking is an advanced toggle in the Acodei admin panel, documented as adding a QuickBooks Location tag to the sales Acodei writes. The documented audience is businesses using Locations for multi-entity profit and loss, which is the same use case Intuit describes.

The part to plan around is that it is a beta feature enabled by the Acodei team rather than a checkbox in your own dashboard, so switching it on is a conversation with support. That puts it in the same category as several other Acodei settings that change the shape of your records rather than their presentation, and it is worth raising during onboarding rather than after a year of history has synced without locations on it.

Acodei Class Tracking and location tracking are separate features and should be planned separately. The class rides on the mapped QuickBooks product, so each product and class combination needs its own item, which is why class lists have a multiplying cost in the item list. Location tracking does not work that way and carries no equivalent item cost.

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Frequently asked questions

What is location tracking in QuickBooks?

A way of tagging transactions with a place so one company file can report by site. Intuit describes it as categorizing "data from different locations, offices, regions, outlets, or departments of the same company". Like a class, a location is a reporting label and does not change which account a transaction posts to.

Which QuickBooks plans include location tracking?

QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. Intuit states the feature "is only available for QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced", the same requirement class tracking carries.

How do I turn on location tracking in QuickBooks Online?

Go to Settings, then Account and settings, then Advanced. In the Categories section, select the edit icon and turn on the Track locations switch.

Can I assign a different location to each line of an invoice?

No. Intuit contrasts the two features directly: class tracking "specifies a different class for each detail line of a transaction", while location tracking "allows you to assign a location to an entire transaction". If one transaction genuinely spans two sites, split it into two transactions or track that axis as a class instead.

How many locations can I create in QuickBooks Online?

On Plus the published usage limit is "40 combined classes and locations", so the two features share one budget rather than getting 40 each. Advanced is "Unlimited classes and locations". Only active classes and locations count toward the limit, so retiring a closed site frees its slot without disturbing its history.

Do Stripe transactions come with a QuickBooks location?

No. A location is a QuickBooks construct and Stripe has no equivalent field. A Stripe charge carries a product, a price and any metadata you attach, and the customer address describes where the customer is rather than where the sale happened, so whichever of those identifies your site has to be translated into a location on the QuickBooks side.

Can Acodei set a location on synced Stripe transactions?

Yes. Acodei documents an Enable Location Tracking toggle in its admin panel that adds a QuickBooks Location tag to synced sales, aimed at businesses using Locations for multi-entity profit and loss. It is a beta feature enabled by the Acodei team, so turning it on means contacting support rather than flipping a switch yourself.

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