When you send a request to QuickBooks Desktop through Conductor, Conductor will wait up to four minutes for QuickBooks Desktop to process the request and return a response.

If you prefer a different timeout period, you can customize it by setting the Conductor-Timeout-Seconds request header to your desired value.

While the four-minute timeout might seem long, it is necessary for the following reasons:

  1. Large Data Requests: Without paginating your requests (via the MaxReturned or other range-based parameters), you may unintentionally request tens of thousands of records in a single call. Processing such a large volume of data can take several minutes in QuickBooks Desktop.

  2. Sequential Processing: QuickBooks Desktop can only process one request at a time. If multiple requests are sent concurrently, they are placed in a queue and processed sequentially, requiring sufficient time for each request to complete before the next one can begin.

  3. Potential Program Startup: If QuickBooks Desktop is not open but the user’s computer is on, Conductor will automatically launch the program when a request is made. Given that QuickBooks Desktop can take at least 30 seconds to start, adding considerably to the response time.

If QuickBooks Desktop is already offline when you send the request, Conductor will immediately return an error without initiating the timeout period.