Can you see who changed what, and get the source document? Only NetSuite has a real audit trail through its API. Xero gives you a per-record history feed; QuickBooks gives you a timestamp and no actor at all. Any evidence surface has to be honest about that.
Xero
GET /{Endpoint}/{Guid}/Attachments, /History
Per record
QBO
SELECT * FROM Attachable
Queried by AttachableRef, not by transaction
NetSuite
file records + SuiteQL: FROM systemnote
Field-level change log
Read across a row. Where a cell is absent, the concept has nowhere to live in that system — which is a design constraint, not a gap to paper over.
A difference stated without a response is trivia. Each of these carries the handling.
There is no endpoint for change history and no actor on any record. If a bookkeeper edits an invoice in QuickBooks, you will see a new LastUpdatedTime and nothing else — not what changed, not who changed it, not what it was before.
Do — Keep a before-and-after for every change we make and snapshot watched fields on every sync, so a diff can be reconstructed. Present it as our record, not the ledger's.
Files dominate an integration's storage and transfer cost, and QBO needs an extra query per transaction to discover them. Fetching every attachment eagerly on first connection is how a sync exceeds a daily call cap on day one.
Do — Sync attachment metadata eagerly and file bytes lazily, on first view or on an explicit archive action. Show a placeholder that is honest about the file not being fetched yet.
type Attachment = {
id: string;
fileName: string;
mimeType: string;
bytes?: number;
/** Metadata syncs eagerly; content is fetched on demand. */
contentUrl?: string;
fetchedContent: boolean;
source: SourceRef;
};
type AuditEvent = {
at: string; // ISO instant
actor?: { id: string; name: string }; // absent on QBO, always
action: "created" | "updated" | "voided" | "deleted" | "approved" | "synced";
field?: string; // NetSuite systemnote is field-level
before?: string;
after?: string;
/** Ours or theirs. The UI must not blur the two. */
observedBy: "us" | "source";
};The payoff. Every difference above that reaches the surface, and what the component does about it.
The normalised object above is what the components read. These are the surfaces it feeds, the words for the concepts in it, and the document that explains the accounting.
Compared acrossXero docsQuickBooks Online docsNetSuite docs