To develop and test integrations with Conductor, you need your own QuickBooks Desktop instance to send and receive data. This guide shows you how to set up a QuickBooks Desktop test environment by creating a virtual Windows instance and installing the QuickBooks Desktop free trial. Once set up, you can connect to this QuickBooks Desktop test instance from your local development environment via Conductor.
Also important: This guide may be outdated as AWS WorkSpaces. Alternatively, check out this guide or asking an LLM (like ChatGPT) for different approaches to setting up a Windows instance with QuickBooks Desktop installed.

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1. Set up a virtual Windows environment

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2. Disable IE Enhanced Security Configuration

By default, you will see the following warning whenever you open QuickBooks Desktop. If you do not resolve this issue, this warning will freeze QuickBooks Desktop whenever the QuickBooks Web Connector opens QuickBooks Desktop when it is closed. Windows error - Internet security levels are set too high To prevent this error, follow these steps:

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3. Install QuickBooks Desktop

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4. Connect Conductor to your QuickBooks Desktop instance

Now that you have your own QuickBooks Desktop test instance, you can return to the Quickstart guide to connect it to Conductor. Don’t worry; this part is much easier.