How to Convert Desktop to Online QuickBooks Safely

To convert Desktop to Online QuickBooks, update and verify the Desktop company file, check Intuit's size limit, then start the export from Desktop into a new or empty QuickBooks Online company. Most lists and transactions copy across. Bank connections, memorized reports and the audit trail do not. Finish by tying out accrual reports between the two files.

What moves when you convert QuickBooks Desktop to Online?

A QuickBooks Desktop to Online conversion copies the company file's lists, transactions and many settings into QuickBooks Online, but not everything has an Online equivalent. Intuit publishes an item-by-item list of what moves and what stays behind. Read it for the client's file before promising anyone a clean switch.

Intuit's features and data transfer list for Desktop to Online splits each area into what moves and what does not. The summary below covers the items firms ask about most, with a middle group for records that move but leave some fields behind.

Moves across:

• The chart of accounts, with a detail type assigned to each account. Bank account numbers and account notes stay behind.
• Invoices, estimates, sales orders, journal entries and credit card charges, which arrive as expenses. Some checks and invoices may arrive as journal entries.
• Memorized transactions, which become recurring transactions.
• Multicurrency preferences and transactions, on Plus or Advanced.
• Items, which become products and services. Groups become bundles.

Moves, with some fields left behind:

• Customers and jobs. Leaf-level jobs become projects, and other jobs become sub-customers. Customer type, rep, price level, credit limit and job status do not move.
• Vendors. Most contact and terms data moves; vendor type, credit limit and the 1099 ID do not.
• Sales tax. Some taxes arrive as journal entries, and Desktop tax payments can land on the wrong filings in Online.
• Payroll. Current-year paychecks arrive as lump sums.
• Attachments of 30 MB or smaller stored on the computer's hard drive.
• Inventory, with FIFO or average cost valuation and recalculated adjustments. Units of measure stay behind.

Stays in Desktop:

• Bank connection setup and uncategorized bank feed data. Banking rules move in Express and Advanced mode.
• Memorized reports and the audit trail.
• Price levels, sales reps, vendor types, job types and other names.
• Users and permissions. Each Desktop user has to be invited to Online.
• Progress invoices and their extra fields, custom templates and pending sales.

The customer list is the part clients notice first, because sub-customers and jobs change shape. Export a copy before the move so the firm has the original structure on file; the steps are in exporting a customer list from QuickBooks Online or Desktop.

Preparing the Desktop company file for an Online conversion

Preparing a Desktop company file for an Online conversion means updating QuickBooks, checking file size, verifying the data and saving everything that will not survive the move. Intuit's own preparation steps are short. A firm's checklist adds the records it will want later, when a client asks why an old report no longer exists.

Intuit's guide to moving a Desktop file to QuickBooks Online sets the hard requirements. The Online subscription must be recent: 90 calendar days from sign-up if the client signed up, or 180 days if the accountant did. Press F2 or Ctrl+1 in Desktop to open Product Information, where the Total Targets count must be below 4,000,000. Intuit's Move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online page adds that the file must sit on the local hard drive and Desktop should be in single-user mode.

A ten-item pre-conversion checklist

This example checklist is for a fictional client, Harbor Lane Bakery LLC, converting as of December 31:

1. Update QuickBooks Desktop to the latest release.
2. Open Product Information and record the Total Targets count. Example: 612,450, well under the limit.
3. Verify the data, and rebuild if Verify reports problems, as Intuit's preparation steps advise.
4. Copy the file off any hosting service onto a local drive.
5. Switch to single-user mode.
6. Reconcile every bank and credit card account through the conversion date, and save each reconciliation report as a PDF.
7. Run every memorized report the client relies on and save it as PDF or Excel, because memorized reports do not move.
8. Export the customer list, vendor list and any price levels to Excel.
9. Export the trial balance as of the conversion date. The post on exporting the QuickBooks trial balance to Excel without broken rows covers the clean export.
10. If the client runs Desktop payroll, wait two to three business days for payroll to sync, as Intuit advises, and finish at least seven business days before the next payroll.

Keep one more backup after item 10. If anything goes wrong in Online, that backup is the only copy of the file exactly as it stood on the day of the move.

The QuickBooks Desktop to Online conversion steps

The QuickBooks Desktop to Online conversion starts inside Desktop, from the Company menu in Pro and Premier, and ends in a QuickBooks Online company the admin chooses. Along the way the firm makes two decisions: whether to bring all data or only lists and balances, and which Online company receives it.

The Intuit guide to moving a Desktop file gives this sequence for Pro and Premier, signed in as the company admin:

1. Go to Company, then Migrate this company file to QuickBooks Online.
2. Select Export Your Company File to QuickBooks Online, then Get started.
3. Work through the checklist Desktop shows, then select Continue.
4. Choose Bring all your company data or Bring only list and balances.
5. Select Yes, sign me in, sign in to QuickBooks Online and choose the target company.
6. Select Export and wait for the progress bar to finish.

For Enterprise, the same article says to press Ctrl+1 to open Product Information, then Ctrl+B+Q to open the export window. After that the choices are the same.

The target company matters more than it looks. If the Online company already holds data, QuickBooks asks the admin to replace it, and Intuit says the replacement cannot be undone. Pick an empty company, or create a new one, unless replacing a test import is exactly the intent.

Intuit also offers an online migration tool for a firm that has a Desktop file but not QuickBooks Desktop itself. It takes a .QBW company file, a .QBB backup or a .QBM portable file. Files from QuickBooks Desktop 2010 or earlier should go through File Doctor first, because the tool needs a 2011 or later file.

Moving a client the other way, from Online back into a Desktop file, uses a different tool with its own limits. That route is covered in exporting from QuickBooks Online to Desktop.

Can you convert only recent years from Desktop to Online QuickBooks?

Converting only recent years from Desktop to Online QuickBooks has two routes: bring lists and balances without transaction history, or shrink the Desktop file first so less history goes across. Each route trades history for a cleaner, smaller file. Neither can be reversed once done, so keep the full Desktop file as the archive.

Lists and balances only. The export screen's second option, Bring only list and balances, does what its name says: it brings the lists and account balances rather than the full transaction history. Test it on an empty Online company first and check which lists arrived. Older detail is then looked up in the Desktop file, which stays untouched.

Condense first. Intuit's Use the Condense Data utility article describes File, Utilities, Condense Data. It replaces older transactions with summary journal entries. The warnings are worth reading before anyone runs it:

• Condensing cannot be undone.
• Cash-basis reports for the condensed period will be inaccurate.
• Reconciliation reports may be incorrect or missing afterward.
• Open transactions, and invoices, payments and bills that are not linked to each other, are not condensed.

A file over the 4,000,000-target limit has to shrink before it can move at all, which makes condensing the usual fix. A file under the limit with a decade of history is a judgment call. If the client rarely looks back more than two years, lists and balances is simpler and leaves the Desktop file untouched.

Whichever route the firm picks, record the conversion-date trial balance from Desktop first. It is the figure the new Online file has to match.

Tying out the converted Online file against Desktop reports

Tying out a converted Online file means running the same reports in both products, on the same basis and dates, and confirming every total agrees. Intuit's guidance is to compare the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet with the report period set to All Dates and the accounting method set to Accrual.

Intuit's what to do after you move from Desktop to Online page also says to check the balance of each Accounts Receivable account, Undeposited Funds and overall report totals. A firm usually adds A/P and the trial balance.

Example tie-out table

These figures are examples for the fictional Harbor Lane Bakery LLC:

Match account by account as well as in total. Two errors that offset each other leave totals equal while two accounts are both wrong.

Expect some accounts to need cleanup that does not change balances. Intuit's after-the-move page notes that QuickBooks Online may assign a generic detail type, such as Other Miscellaneous Income, which the firm can change under Settings, then Chart of accounts. Sales tax payments are another known gap: Intuit's transfer list says to delete migrated payments and recreate them in the Online sales tax center.

When the trial balance does not match, compare the Desktop and Online versions in Excel. The QuickBooks trial balance date ranges and accounting basis section explains why a basis or date mismatch is the first thing to rule out.

Reconnecting bank feeds after a Desktop to Online conversion

Reconnecting bank feeds after a Desktop to Online conversion is a manual step, because bank connection setup does not move. The risk is pulling in transactions the conversion already brought across. The way to avoid it is to choose a download start date that begins after the last converted transaction in each account.

Intuit's connect bank and credit card accounts page gives the Online steps: go to Bank transactions, select Connect account (or Link account if one is already connected), find the bank, sign in, choose the accounts, then pick a start date from the date range dropdown. The same page notes that download spans vary by bank, from 90 days up to 24 months, and suggests a date just after the most recent transaction already in QuickBooks.

Connect each feed to the existing account from the chart of accounts, which Intuit's walkthrough offers in a dropdown. Add new is for an account that is not in the chart yet. Choosing it for a converted account leaves the converted history in one account and the feed's downloads in a second one.

An example for Harbor Lane Bakery: the converted checking account XXXX-4821 holds every transaction through December 31. The feed start date is January 1. Anything dated before that already exists and stays out of the For review list.

If a feed does double some entries, the cleanup is in setting an import cutoff date so duplicates do not return. How far back each bank's feed reaches is covered in what a QuickBooks bank feed pulls and how far back.

An independent check on the cash accounts helps here. Schema CPA reads a client's bank and credit card statements, ties balances month to month, flags gaps in a run of statements and exports the result to Excel or CSV, so the converted balances can be checked against the statements themselves. It does not connect to QuickBooks today; QuickBooks Online and Xero connections are on the roadmap. The workflow section of the homepage shows each step.

When converting a client from Desktop to Online is the wrong call

Converting a client from Desktop to Online is the wrong call when the client depends on a Desktop feature that does not move or has no Online equivalent, or when the file cannot pass Intuit's limits. Check the transfer list against how the client actually works before setting a date.

Intuit's features and data transfer list names several items with no Online equivalent:

• Price levels and billing rate levels. A distributor that prices by customer tier loses that setup.
• Units of measure. An inventory client that buys by the case and sells by the unit has to rebuild its process.
• Progress invoice fields. A contractor billing by percentage of completion should test this first.
• Sales reps, vendor types and job types. Reports built on those fields will not run the same way.

Other situations argue for waiting:

• The client is mid-year on Desktop payroll and the firm cannot meet Intuit's timing around payroll runs.
• The file is over the target limit and the client will not accept condensed history.
• Year-end work is still open in Desktop. Converting a file whose books are not closed means tying out a moving target.

Staying put has a cost too. Intuit's after-the-move page says a canceled Desktop subscription keeps view-only access to historical files for 12 months, provided the client is on QuickBooks Desktop Plus 2024 or newer, or QuickBooks Desktop for Mac 2024 or newer. Plan where the old file will live before the subscription ends.

None of this is a reason never to convert. It is a reason to read the transfer list with the client, name each feature they use, and decide before the export button is pressed.