If your store runs Verifone at the register, PDI in the back office and QuickBooks Online for the books, every sale takes a trip through all three. Most owners never see that trip, and that's where numbers go missing. This PDI integration guide follows one day from the first sale to the final entry, through the PDI Verifone integration and the PDI QuickBooks integration.
Rings the sale
Totals the day
Keeps the booksThe handoff from PDI to QuickBooks is where the PDI QuickBooks integration either works or quietly fails. Here is each step, from the register to the books.
Every sale at the pump and the counter is rung up on the register: fuel by grade, store items, lottery, and how the customer paid (cash or card). At this point the numbers exist, but they're just a pile of transactions.
PDI collects that data and sorts it into the numbers you use to run the store: sales by fuel grade and department, lottery, and the deposit you should be making. This is the daily report you check. How PDI is set up can differ from store to store, so your reports may look a little different.
Those daily totals go into QuickBooks Online, where they become income, sales tax owed and bank records. This is the version your CPA, lender and the IRS look at. If the totals arrive late, wrong or incomplete, the books are wrong even if PDI looked fine.
Does well: Records every sale and how it was paid.
Does not: It does not total the day into reports or keep your books.
Does well: Totals sales by fuel grade, department and tender, shows lottery, and gives you the expected deposit.
Does not: It does not reconcile to the bank, record card fees or file your taxes.
Does well: Holds your income, expenses, bank records and sales tax owed.
Does not: It is only as good as the totals that go into it.
Everything matches in a perfect day. The work starts when it doesn't.
None of these is big on its own. After a month, they are the reason the books and the store disagree.
The fuel delivered doesn't match the fuel sold.
The deposit is a little off and nobody can say why.
Payouts show up in PDI but never reach QuickBooks Online.
Card processing fees get taken from the bank and never recorded.
Each one is small on its own. Together they leave you with books you can't trust. See why PDI and QuickBooks Online totals don't match.
If you see any of these, the numbers are not moving cleanly from PDI to QuickBooks.
A day's income in QuickBooks does not equal the total PDI shows for that day.
The lottery liability keeps growing, or goes negative, and never agrees with your lottery statement.
Card or cash clearing accounts hold balances from weeks ago.
Bank deposits do not match what was posted, even allowing for timing.
A day was posted twice, or not at all.
There is no merchant fee expense in QuickBooks, but fees are leaving your bank account.
You do not need an accountant to spot a problem. You need to compare two numbers that should be the same.
Compare one day's expected deposit in PDI with the actual bank deposit. A gap means a shortage or a timing difference.
Look at the card deposit a day or two later. Is the net amount what you expected after fees?
Compare what PDI shows owed with your lottery statement. They should agree.
Compare fuel delivered on the jobber invoice with fuel sold for the same period.
Check that the day's income in QuickBooks Online equals the total PDI shows.
Report names vary with your setup. These are the categories that matter.
How a customer pays: cash, card or fleet card.
The difference between what the register says should be there and what was counted or deposited.
A temporary account for money that has been earned but has not yet reached the bank, such as card sales waiting to settle.
The fuel in your underground tanks.
The distributor that supplies and delivers your fuel.
The gap between the fuel delivered and stored and the fuel sold.
The delivery paperwork that shows how much fuel was delivered.
FuelCFO checks all three every month.
We reconcile register, PDI and QuickBooks Online against your bank and find the differences.
We hand you books and reports you can use.
You get a clear list of what we found and what to fix at the store.
FAQ
The usual causes when PDI and QuickBooks Online disagree, how to find the gap, and how we reconcile the two.
Read more →Monthly bookkeeping for stores that run PDI: daily reconciliation, month-end close and PDI totals posted into QuickBooks Online.
Read more →A step-by-step month-end close checklist for a gas station running Verifone, PDI and QuickBooks Online.
Read more →Send us a day or a month and we'll show you where the three systems disagree.
Get started →FinTruction · Construction Clients
Real US-based contractors. Same team, same operational discipline that we now bring to gas stations. Construction is a different vertical - but the muscle (multi-stream books, cost reconciliation, niche specialization) is the same one stations need.
"They didn't just record transactions and call it a day. They built a custom chart of accounts around how a remodeling company actually runs, did a full catch-up on years of bookkeeping inside QuickBooks Online, and now stay on top of my monthly bookkeeping and payroll."
Oniel Campbell
"Sahil and his team have been handling the bookkeeping and job costing for my painting business. They've done a great job cleaning up my books, using integrations to give me accurate, timely job costing and solid weekly data. Reliable, and the team is very detailed."
Dalton Mayberry
"They rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, WIP, and retainage."
Carl Moore
Owner, Hearth & Haus
"They set the accounts up properly first, then cleaned up everything I never entered."
Rolian
"When I came to them I had no financial structure in place at all. No job costing, no WIP tracking, books were behind, no real way to tell if any job was actually making money. They came in, did a full cleanup, and set up job costing and WIP tracking inside QuickBooks."
Clay PearsonBook a Free Books Review
Book a free books review. We'll look at your setup, show you what's missing, and tell you exactly how we'd fix it. No pressure, no obligation.
Prefer to skip the form? WhatsApp us or email info@fuelcfo.com.
Tell us where to send it - we'll email it straight over.
Ask FuelCFO
Gas station & c-store accounting questions, answered.