Migrate Quickbooks to Quicken

DavidRasley

I want to migrate my files from Quickbooks to Quicken. They were originally set up by someone else, and Quickbooks is waaaayyyy overblown for my needs, as all I need is a simple check register and other functions that are available in Quicken. The only search results I saw for this dated back to 2012, and I am hoping that some suitable export and import system has been implemented. All I need is something as simple as exporting my check register in a format Quicken can import.

GeoffG

I do not believe this is possible. You can confirm by checking if Quickbooks can export to a QIF format. This is the only way short of starting from a set date and manually setting opening balances for each register.

Chris_QPW

If all you have is one account or accounts that don't have transfers between them, you can use this for the CSV file. If there are transfer, the matching/linking between them will most likely be messed up because Quicken's match for that isn't very good.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7100667/faq-a-program-to-add-the-account-name-and-type-to-qif-files-so-that-quicken-will-import-them

GeoffG

I do not believe this is possible. You can confirm by checking if Quickbooks can export to a QIF format. This is the only way short of starting from a set date and manually setting opening balances for each register.

DavidRasley

The best 'export' I can find that Quickbooks can do is to run a report and then send it to Excel. It doesn't look like Quicken can import from that, either in spreadsheet form or converted to a csv file. At least having the information in Excel will allow me to ditch Quickbooks, and I can start with a reconciled balance in Quicken.

Chris_QPW

If all you have is one account or accounts that don't have transfers between them, you can use this for the CSV file. If there are transfer, the matching/linking between them will most likely be messed up because Quicken's match for that isn't very good.
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7100667/faq-a-program-to-add-the-account-name-and-type-to-qif-files-so-that-quicken-will-import-them

DavidRasley

The only thing I am using QB for is to manage one active checking account, plus it has the history for a second account that was closed a few years ago. The only transfer was moving the balance from the old to the new. Two deposits a week, one batch of checks each quarter. Hence, why I regard QB as so much overkill for something Quicken can handle easily.

This program looks promising, so I'll give it a try once I get my monthly reconciliation done. And, since I can save the old, closed account in Excel I won't even need to import it, just only the one active account.

I'll post back with the results.

DavidRasley

Followup - Success!

I handled each account separately, working with the closed account first. Export to Excel, save as a CSV, and then trial and error to get the file right for the QIF tool. QB not only exports the checking account but all the other accounts associated with the transactions - these had to go so I was just dealing with the checking account. Next, the 'Balance' column went, and the 'Amount' column was split into Deposits and Payments and then removed, and a Category column was added. Export to Quicken, review the results, delete the new account, tweak the CSV file some more, until the results were what I wanted. That done, I did the second, live account following the CSV layout from the first.

Chris_QPW

@DavidRasley I'm glad you got it working for you.

Just a couple of notes for anyone else that sees this.  ImportQIF's column mapping can ignore columns like the Balance, and as long as there is a sign to the amount the Amount column should be usable without having to split it into two columns.

Chris_QPW

Actually the more I think of it, without actually seeing what the format looks like, I shouldn't have commented on what you might do, because I might not exactly understand what you are dealing with.

DavidRasley

I saw that columns could be ignored, but I always prefer to clean up the input file first. On review, the converter did handle the +/- Amount field and properly parsed it into +Payments and +Deposits, but the first time I tried the import something goofed up and left the account 300k in the red so that's when I decided to try it with the types split out.