Moving from QuickBooks

Before you cancel#

Export first. After you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription, Intuit keeps your company read-only for one year: you can look and export to Excel, but not add anything. A trial you cancel, or one that runs out, is kept for 90 days. After that, plan on your exports being your only copy.

Pick your start date first (see Moving to EscBooks): it's the date range for most of what follows.

Export everything in one file#

QuickBooks has one export for the main reports and lists. It's your record of the years before EscBooks.

1. Click Settings (the gear), and in the TOOLS column choose Export data.
2. Pick a reason for exporting, then Continue.
3. On the Reports tab, choose a range under Pre-selected date ranges. Pick the widest one that covers the years you keep.
4. Leave the switches on the Reports and Lists tabs on, then click Export to Excel.

You get one ZIP file of Excel spreadsheets: the General Ledger, Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, Trial Balance and Journal reports, and your customer, vendor and employee lists.

The reports EscBooks needs#

The ZIP is for your records. For the move itself, a few reports are easier to work from. For each one: go to Reports, then Standard reports, find it with Find report by name, set the dates from your start date to today, then open Export/Print and choose Export as CSV (or Export to Excel).

• Customer Contact List: your clients, with their emails and phone numbers.
• Invoice List: every invoice, with its number, date, customer and amount. Open Invoices shows what's still owed.
• Invoice and Received Payments: each invoice with the payments received on it, and when.
• Time Activities by Customer Detail: the hours you tracked, by customer, if your plan tracks time.
• Transaction Detail by Account: run it once for each bank and credit card account, filtered to that account.
• Products and Services List: what you bill for, to set up as services in EscBooks.
• Vendor Contact List and Unpaid Bills: who you pay, and the bills still open.
• Account List: your chart of accounts, for your records.

What Export data leaves out#

These need their own exports, if you want to keep them:

• Attachments (receipts and other files): Settings, then in the LISTS column Attachments. Select the files, open Batch actions and choose Export. They download as a ZIP.
• Estimates: Sales & Get Paid, then Sales transactions. Set Type to Estimates, pick the dates, and Export to Excel. Purchase orders are the same under Expenses & Bills, then Expense transactions.
• Recurring templates: the Recurring Template List report, so you can set up repeating invoices again in EscBooks.
• Customer statements: one customer at a time, from their Statements tab.

Bring it into EscBooks#

Attach the reports to a chat with the assistant you've connected to EscBooks, and paste this with your start date filled in. Unzip anything zipped first.

I'm moving my books from QuickBooks Online to EscBooks, starting [START DATE]. The files I exported from QuickBooks Online are attached. The customers are in the Customer Contact List; the invoices in the Invoice List, with their payments in Invoice and Received Payments; the time in Time Activities by Customer Detail; and each bank or card account in its own Transaction Detail by Account report. QuickBooks' time report doesn't say which invoice each entry was billed on, so match time to invoices by client, project and dates, and tell me when you aren't sure. Using the EscBooks connector, bring them in one step at a time, and show me what you're about to add before each step.

1. Look first. Call whoami, import_context and list_clients, so you know what's already in EscBooks and nothing is added twice.
2. Clients. From the customer or client list, add each client I still work with using create_client: name, email, contact name, and hourly rate if the export has one. Show me the list before adding them. Then tell me which clients have an address, phone, payment terms or a currency other than dollars, so I can add those in EscBooks.
3. Projects. Add each project to its client with create_project, with its own rate if it has one.
4. Invoices dated [START DATE] or later, and any older invoice that's still unpaid. For each one billed by the hour, log its time with log_time on the original dates, client and project (one entry per day, 24 hours at most), then draft_invoice from just those entries, with number set to the invoice's old number and issueDate and dueDate set to its old dates. Compare each draft's total with the old invoice, and tell me any that differ (a different rate, a discount, tax, or lines that weren't hours) and any invoice that wasn't billed by the hour, which I'll make in EscBooks myself. Then list the drafts for me to open.
5. Wait while I check each draft and click Mark as Sent. Then, for each invoice that was paid, use request_record_payment with the amount, the date it was paid and how. I'll approve those in EscBooks. Tell me about any invoice in another currency: I'll record its payment in EscBooks myself.
6. Time that isn't on an invoice yet: log it as billable, so it waits on To Invoice. Other past time I want in my reports: log it with billable set to false, so it's never billed.
7. Bank and card transactions since [START DATE]: one import per account with import_expenses, using the account's name as the source and its opening and closing balances if the export shows them. Send every line. Mark transfers between my own accounts and card payments as skip, and anything personal as personal. Tell me which deposits aren't client payments (bank interest, a sale I didn't invoice), so I can mark them as other income when I review. I'll review and approve each import in EscBooks.
8. Income that isn't a payment on an invoice and isn't on those statements (interest on an account I'm not bringing in, a cash sale): ask to record each with request_record_other_income, with its type (interest, sale or other), amount, the day it came in and the account from import_context. I'll approve those in EscBooks.
9. Expenses that aren't on a bank or card statement (cash, or paid personally): add them with add_expense.
10. When you're done, list what you added, what's waiting for my approval, and anything you couldn't bring in.

• It adds your clients and projects, logs the time, and drafts each invoice under its QuickBooks number. You set each draft's Invoice date and click Mark as Sent; then it asks to record the payments, which you approve in Requests.
• Each bank and card account comes in as an import that waits on the account for your review. For an account you'd rather upload yourself, download its CSV from the bank's own website: it reads more cleanly than a QuickBooks report.
• Services aren't added by the assistant. Add them from the Products and Services List in Settings → Services.
• Then set Next invoice number in Settings → Invoicing to follow your last QuickBooks invoice. If your QuickBooks numbers are plain numbers, clear Invoice prefix.

Before you start, read Moving to EscBooks: it covers the assistant's permissions, its changes a day, and the services and subcontractors to add first.

What doesn't come across#

• Invoices for products or a fixed price. The assistant builds invoices from time, so it tells you which ones to make yourself with New Invoice and Add Line.
• Payments on their own. A payment comes over on the invoice it paid. Deposits on your bank imports are matched to those payments.
• Attachments. They stay in your ZIP. Attach any you need to their expense in EscBooks.
• Your chart of accounts, journal entries and balance sheet. EscBooks puts each expense in one of its own categories, and builds its General Ledger from your records. Keep the QuickBooks reports for the years before.
• Bank rules, recurring templates, estimates and open bills. Set up Import rules and repeating invoices again, and enter open bills on Bills.
• Payroll. Payroll runs stay with your payroll service; the bank imports bring in what was paid.