Switching from QBOnline to Quicken Classic Business/Personal

cms.tms

Is it feasible to convert from QBOnline to Quicken Classic Business/Personal? If so, can you assign account numbers to the Chart of Accounts?

Thanks for your input

jacobs

Quicken is designed as personal finance software. The Business & Personal level of subscription grafts on some business tools, but it is still designed for individuals with small businesses, not as a full-fledged business accounting program. There are some fundamental differences in personal finance software and true business accounting software. For instance, transactions are not posted, and they can be edited or deleted at any time; there is no audit trail. Quicken doesn't use a chart of accounts, per se. In Quicken, there are "Categories", which are basically all the income and expense accounts from a business general ledger, and "Accounts" to represent assets and liabilities. You can have Transfer transactions to move funds between asset and liability accounts (e.g. paying a credit card bill from a checking account). So you can emulate most transactions you're used to in a business accounting program, but the paradigm is a bit different.

I suggest you do some searching to find introductory videos on Quicken — either from Quicken Support or fellow users — to get an idea what Quicken looks like and works like. Then you can post back here if there if you need to get into the weeds and ask additional questions before deciding if Quicken will meet you needs.

Oh, I forgot to answer your questions!

Is it feasible to convert from QBOnline to Quicken Classic Business/Personal?

Perhaps, depending on your needs. Quicken won't import your QuickBooks data file, so you may need to start from scratch. Or you may be able to export some of your QB transaction data to a .csv file, manipulate it into the format Quicken needs for importing, and then import it. But this will likely take a fair amount of work.

can you assign account numbers to the Chart of Accounts?

As mentioned, you will have Accounts and Categories instead of a chart of accounts. You can name those Categories and Accounts however you wish, so if you want to give them numerical prefixes — like "3150-200 Office Supplies", you can do so. I'm not sure it will be helpful to have numerical prefixes working in Quicken, but you can do it. But… the initial default list of categories a new Quicken file will start with will have category names you'll either need to delete or edit if you want to emulate your existing chart of accounts. (I'm a Quicken Mac user, so I don't know if this is tru in Quicken Windows, but there are a small number of categories in Quicken Mac which are created by Quicken and can't be edited or removed; these mostly have to do with investment transactions, so if you have investments in your business, you may not be able to name all your categories with your chart of accounts numbering system.) Also, where G/L account numbers in QuickBooks may have segments to separate different units or products of your business, they will only be cosmetic in Quicken.

Boatnmaniac

Perhaps you will find this Support Article answers your question: https://www.quicken.com/support/convert-quicken-windows-data-quickbooks-data/ . While the title of the article regards Quicken data-to-QuickBooks data, it also addresses QuickBooks data-to-Quicken data.

jacobs

@Boatnmaniac Are you saying that the line in the article you referenced which says "it is not possible to convert QuickBooks data to Quicken" is the simple answer? 😉

My wordier response above suggested it might be possible to export some transaction data from QuickenBooks to a .csv file and then massage that data into a format it could be imported into Quicken. Do you think even that would be impossible? Of course accounts would need to be set up in Quicken first and perhaps categories, and things like invoices likely can't be imported at all, but I was thinking transactions, perhaps on an account by account basis, might be possible. Whether it's worth the work to try to massage the data and then clean it up once imported into Quicken is certainly questionable.

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20494612#Comment_20494612

I took the inquiry as a rather straightforward question: "Can the QB data be imported into Quicken Classic by Quicken Classic". The straightforward response to that can only be "No."

Of course, if one wants to and has the skills to manually manipulate the data into a format that can then be manually imported into Quicken, then that can be an option. The same type of process can be done with data from Simplifi or just about any other financial software and then manually manipulating it into a format that can then be manually imported into Quicken. Just know that it is a tedious complex process and that Quicken does not have the capability to accommodate every type of QB data without significant manipulation and which, in the end, will not be a 1-for-1 data conversion if for no other reason that once the data is in Quicken it will no longer meet standard business accounting protocols.

It is also really important to note that Quicken, unlike QB, does not have the capability to manage inventory nor payrolls, does not have all the accounting and tax reporting tools that many businesses require and is not well suited for use by multiple users (most certainly not concurrently). So, these things (among other things) are deal-killers for many QB users right off the bat.

But if the QB user is running a small sole proprietorship property rental or service business or other similary type of business that does not need all of the QB features, functionality and tax reporting capabilities then maybe it's worthwhile to make the effort to manually convert the data so Quicken Classic can then import it. But if I were a QB Online user I would probably first look at whether or not there might be a lower cost QB plan (or other business financial software) available that would not require me to give up as much as what converting to Quicken Classic would require. I see that QB Online has subscription plans ranging from $420/yr to $2800/yr…compared to Quicken Classic Business & Personal which is $132/yr. Only the QB user can determine whether or not the savings from Quicken Classic is worth the time and risk to make the jump to Quicken Classic.

Perhaps @cms.tms might want to consider ordering Quicken Classic to evaluate it and experiment with importing some of the QB data. If within 30 days they determine it will not meet their needs or wants they can request a full no questions asked refund.

CaliQkn

There there may be no conversion tool within Quicken for converting QuickBooks data to Quicken, but there are third party conversion tools that will convert QBO files to QFX or QIF.

The other aspect of feasibility would be if Quicken meets the needs of the Quickbooks user.

Boatnmaniac

…but there are third party conversion tools that will convert QBO files to QFX or QIF.

I've heard there are some such 3rd conversion tools, too, but I've also heard that they can be somewhat expensive.

Here is a link to a QB support post thread that talks about conversion from QB to Quicken Classic that might be helpful: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/other-questions/can-i-transfer-quickbooks-to-quicken/00/1339749 . There are a couple of glaring errors or misunderstandings about Quicken in this QB post thread (not too surprising since they do not have expertise with Quicken).:

1. It seems to me that this post thread is specific to Quicken Classic for Windows, not Quicken Classic for Mac.
2. It references exporting QB data into Excel and then importing that Excel file into Quicken. The issue with that is that Quicken Classic cannot import Excel files.
3. It then references converting that exported Excel file into a QIF file and then importing the QIF file into Quicken. The issue with that is that the QIF file needs to be formatted in a specific way in order to then be importable into Quicken. For Quicken Windows, there is a safe file conversion software that can be downloaded for free from https://www.quicknperlwiz.com/ that might be able to convert the Excel and/or QIF file properly so that the final QIF file can then be imported into Quicken. NOTE: The conversion program is a Windows-only application so it does not support Quicken for Mac.

CaliQkn

While Excel files cannot be imported directly into Quicken Windows, CSV files can be imported directly into Quicken for Windows. The instructions are contained in this Quicken Support article -

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-import-data-quicken-windows/

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20494671#Comment_20494671

This applies to Mint-compatible CSV files only. Mint CSV files are formatted differently than standard CSV files but I don't understand what the differences are (leave it up to Intuit to customize a standard format so that it cannot be used with other non-Intuit based applications). All I know is that many have posted in this forum that their non-Mint-compatible CSV files could not be imported.

If someone has found a way to do this, it would be great if they would post here how that was accomplished.

CaliQkn

@Boatnmaniac it doesn't just apply to mint-compatible files. It was initially created for Mint users to convert to Quicken, but it can be used for any CSV file, just so long as the CSV file is in the correct format.

Here is more detailed information on how to import data into Quicken Windows with a CSV file -

https://info.quicken.com/win/import-transactions-from-csv-file

jacobs

Mint CSV files are formatted differently than standard CSV files

Nope. A CSV file is what its name says: a file with values (columns) separated by commas. There is no special formatting; CSV files are plain text.

All that’s “special” about importing file in Mint format is insuring that all required columns are present, in the correct order, and without extraneous data. Using any spreadsheet program to change the order of columns, or create blank columns, is easy, as is then exporting to a CSV file.

I think the reason some have had problems importing data is that the Quicken import doesn’t offer any handholding or error-correction; it relies on the user to insure the file is properly constructed (as it would have been had it been exported from Mint).

Boatnmaniac

Whether one calls it "formatting" or calls it "columns construction" is not the issue. We are all essentially saying the same thing…that the CSV files need to be made Mint-compatible before they can be imported into Quicken.

Thanks to both @CaliQkn and @jacobs for providing additional information about how to make CSV files Mint-compatible or to ensure they are Mint-compatible.

jacobs

@Boatnmaniac I was just saying it is not "formatted differently than standard CSV files", nor is it "an Intuit customize[d] standard format that cannot be used with other non-Intuit based applications". It's a plain, ol' CSV file, just like any CSV file. The only thing that's Mint-specific about it is that Quicken's import expects the columns to be in the order of a Mint export. It would be fairly easy for Quicken programmers to allow the columns to be in any order and use the column headings in the first row of the CSV file to map the fields correctly in any order. But at the time the import was created, they didn't want to promote it as a general-purpose CSV importer, or they didn't want to invest the time in building a robust importer, or both.

In any case, we're on the same page now. 😀 And I don't think there's more we need to discuss about this unless we hear back from the @cms.tms with any follow-up questions. The import functionality may well be irrelevant if Quicken doesn't provide the business accounting functionality they require.

Jim_Harman

Re: CSV import, please see this discussion.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7963384/csv-transaction-file-import-does-not-work

In R63, Quicken has dropped the "Mint compatible" from File > File Import > CSV transaction import menu selection and added a new screen that describes the required file layout. Unfortunately the description is wrong and if you follow it the import fails. For the import to work, you must switch the Amount and Debit/Credit columns.