I'm setting up automated financial reporting for restaurant clients whose books are in QuickBooks Online or Xero. The goal is a weekly summary that reaches the owner without anyone building it manually in spreadsheets.
What I want to automate:
1. Pull weekly sales, COGS, and payroll totals from QuickBooks/Xero.
2. Calculate food cost %, labor %, and prime cost against a target.
3. Send the summary to Slack or email every Monday morning.
4. Flag it automatically when a number goes more than 2-3 points over target.
What I've tried so far:
- A scheduled Zap that triggers weekly, but QuickBooks reports don't seem to be available as a direct trigger or action.
- Sending data to Google Sheets and calculating the percentages there, but it gets messy with multiple locations.
Questions:
- Is there a clean way to pull P&L or report data (not just individual transactions) from QuickBooks or Xero in a Zap?
- Would you use Formatter or Code by Zapier for the percentage calculations, or do them in Sheets?
- Has anyone combined Zapier with a dedicated financial performance tool for this? I came across KYN (https://kynusa.com/), which sits on top of QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite, and I'm wondering whether it's better to use something like that instead of a custom Zap setup.
Any example workflows or best practices would be appreciated. Thanks!
