> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://zenofirm.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Run Zeno locally with QuickBooks Desktop
> Use the Zeno workflow beside a local QuickBooks Desktop company file, with review before anything posts.
Zeno for QuickBooks Desktop is Zeno running on your Windows machine. It
connects a chat client — Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex — to a company file on your
Windows machine. You hand it a statement, a folder of bills, or a month of bank
feed. Zeno proposes the postings, you review them, and only then are they
applied. Every write is recorded with the document it came from, and any batch
can be reversed.
It works on its own. It does not require a hosted
Zeno account or send the company file to the cloud. It talks to QuickBooks
on the same computer and stores its history locally.
The current Windows installer is named **Zeno for QuickBooks Desktop**. That is
the shipping name of the local package, not a separate bookkeeping product or
workflow.
## What it does
* **Codes and posts transactions in volume** — bills, checks, card charges, journal entries, invoices, payments, vendor credits.
* **Works a [bank feed](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/bank-feed)** — the statement file you already download, staged as a queue, deduplicated, coded by your rules, and matched against what the company file already holds. A [live bank connection](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/bank-feed#a-live-bank-connection) is available as a paid add-on and fills the same queue.
* **Remembers coding decisions**, so the same vendor descriptor isn't re-reasoned every month, along with [notes about a client](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/memory) that a rule can't express.
* **Answers "why is this entry here"** six weeks later, from its own record of what posted and where it came from.
* **Reverses a batch** by voiding each transaction it created.
* **Runs financial reports** — P\&L, balance sheet, trial balance, agings — through QuickBooks' own report engine, so the numbers match the client's screen.
* **Answers questions no report covers** — totals, comparisons across periods, one query spanning [every client on the workstation](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/first-questions#the-whole-practice-at-once).
## What makes it safe to point at a client file
**Nothing posts in one step.** `qb_plan_batch` reads your company file and returns a table. It writes nothing. A second, separate call posts what you approved.
**The table is the same every time.** The software renders the approval screen; the model doesn't compose it. It has the same columns and the same ordering on every run and every workstation.
**Re-running is safe.** Each entry carries a key derived from its content and its source reference. If a batch is interrupted halfway, plan and apply it again — what already landed is skipped, not posted twice.
**The person who approves doesn't have to be the person in the chat.** A plan can be reviewed line by line in the [console](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/console), and exclusions recorded there are honoured when it posts, with the reviewer's name against them.
**Everything is written down.** The console shows every run this workstation has posted, who approved it, what it was worth, and what failed.
**It can be installed read-only.** Every write tool refuses before it reaches QuickBooks. Install this way for a first look at a live file.
## What it requires
* QuickBooks Desktop — Pro, Premier, or Enterprise — on the same Windows machine.
* QuickBooks running, with the company file you want open.
* A chat client that speaks MCP — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT Desktop, or Codex. The installer [connects all four](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/clients).
QuickBooks Desktop has no network API. It exposes an in-process COM server, so this software has to run on the same computer. There's no remote or server-hosted option, and ChatGPT on the web or on a phone [can't reach it](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/clients#chatgpt-on-the-web-or-on-a-phone) — only the desktop apps on the QuickBooks machine can.
## Start here
Installer, first connection, and the authorization prompt that appears inside QuickBooks.
What the installer registered with Claude, ChatGPT, and Codex, and the manual route.
Plan, read the table, approve, and undo it again.
Sync a local copy, ask one client, then ask the whole practice at once.
A month of statement lines as a queue: import, code, match, and post what is left.
The limits of the QuickBooks SDK. Read before you buy.
Coding rules, client knowledge, written procedures, and the work log.
Registering a practice's clients, and what QuickBooks lets you reach at once.
How this differs from the Zeno operator and the QuickBooks sync.
## Stuck on something
[Contact support](https://zenofirm.com/support) — a real person reads it, and during the beta we'd rather hear about a rough edge than not.
If it's an install that won't connect, [when it doesn't connect](/docs/quickbooks-desktop/install#when-it-doesnt-connect) covers what goes wrong most often, and says which two files to send us.
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