Workarounds for Quickbooks, or a step too far?

Soccy

I recently set up a new Pixel 8, which is my business phone, with GrapheneOS. I knew I was not likely to have a 100% same as stock experience, but wanted to see how much of my regular workflow I could get away with sans-Google. Ultimately, I've only run into one thing that is a near dealbreaker for me, and that is Quickbooks. I use it on mobile for mileage tracking and invoicing/contract signing, but other than transaction review, it won't work without Google Play Services (I guess the sandboxing doesn't work in this situation)
My initial thought was that it required Google Maps to be installed to refer to it for mileage tracking, so I tested an install, no dice. So I am wondering if anyone here is familiar with a way to make the sandboxed play services work for Quickbooks Online, or is this a situation where I need to consider an alternative OS with a less restrictive play services model like CalyxOS before I do what I really don't want to do which is go back to stock. At this stage of the game migrating away from QuickBooks is a no-go, it would be a huge ordeal and my bookkeeper/tax guy would likely drop me, and my super rural location means that I would have to go to a remote one which is not ideal either.

Thanks for your time. I feel that Graphene is top notch for a personal device, but I fear I might fall into one of those people who probably have to reluctantly stick to worse platforms because of the need to use specific software at work.

other8026

Soccy Unsure what could be causing this problem. I tried to test it myself, but couldn't because I don't pay for the service.

A few questions about your setup:

What happens in the app exactly? Does it display any helpful error messages, or does it just not work?
Did you install Google Play in the same profile as Quickbooks?
Have you made any changes to Google Play or Google Play Services' permissions?
Not sure if this will help, but have you set up the phone to use Google Play for geolocation following these instructions: https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play-configuration?

Soccy restrictive play services model

This part confuses me. What do you mean by this? Google Play works very much like it does on the stock OS, just without privileged access. Depending on the cause of this problem, I suspect one of two things will be true: either the issue can be fixed on GrapheneOS, or the Quickbooks app is written so that certain functionality doesn't work on non-Google certified OSes, which would mean having to use the stock OS again.

treequell

Soccy it won't work without Google Play Services

Did you install the QuickBooks app only after installing Google Play Services?

If you installed QuickBooks before, you may need to reinstall it to get it to work

QuietEngineer

First some troubleshooting.

Is "Use location" on in settings?
Does QuickBooks have the location permission?
Do you have Google Play Services installed?
What are your answers to treequell and other8026's questions?

I've successfully used QuickBooks Workforce and its location tracking. I wonder if your QuickBooks app is similar.

I needed Google Play Services, Google Services Framework, and Google Play Store installed. In settings I gave Workforce location permissions and allowed background usage. For sandboxed Google Play I rerouted location through the OS but you may want to follow the instructions other8026 linked. I don't remember if I enabled "Exploit protection compatibility mode".

Soccy

Quickbooks was installed after Play services were enabled, location is on and granted to the app. I've also not messed with any permissions for Play services. When I say "restrictive play services model" I refer to the modifications made for sandboxing for redirecting requests for play services.

What happens n the app is some variations of an error bar in parts of the app that say

"Something wrong happened", in trip tracking
auto trip tracking won't enable, "track trip" does nothing when start is pressed,
manually add trip has a banner at the top saying "Quickbooks won't run without Google Play Services, which are not supported by your device"

The last one suggests to me that it is actually requiring some remote function provided by a Play service server that is not working? That's a little above my pay grade

Soccy

Just a brief update, I tried a solution to a similar but directly unrelated problem someone was having with find my device posted several hours ago, and had some minor improvement to my issue, which leads me to believe it might be possible to workaround issues in Quickbooks.

So far, I've reinstalled Google Play Services and Quickbooks, and Google Maps. Afterwards I turned off "play services redirect to OS" and gave all the time location access to maps, QB, and play services.

The result: While I still cannot manually input trip addresses (after entering, it just shows a blank field) I no longer see any errors about play services being unsupported, and auto tracking stays turned on. I'll need to take a trip with it turned on to confirm whether or not new trips are actually logging correctly or not, but in part this seems to have dealt with a chunk of the issue.