Exporting to QuickBooks

Much of what gets asked for as accounting integration is simpler than a live connection: my bookkeeper needs this in QuickBooks and I am currently retyping it. The export answers that, on every plan, with three files.

You run your business here all month, and once a quarter somebody outside the product needs the same numbers inside QuickBooks, in a shape QuickBooks will accept.

Get the three files

Below the reports on the Reports page, the QuickBooks Online panel lists the three files in the order QuickBooks needs them. Pick a period and download each one:

File	What is in it
Customers	Your client directory — name, company, email, phone, address.
Invoices	Every invoice raised in the period, one row per line item, with the number, customer, dates, description, quantity, rate, amount and tax.
Transactions	Your costs, and any money that came in without an invoice, as dated money movements in their categories.

The same three files are listed under Import & export as well, beside every other export.

Import them in that order

Customers first, always. QuickBooks matches invoices to customers by name. Import invoices referencing customers QuickBooks has never heard of and it will either refuse the file or quietly create a second copy of every client you have — which is a worse outcome than a failure, because nobody notices for a month.

Why it is files rather than a live connection

This is not new data. It is the same information the Reports page exports, arranged the way the receiving system demands: QuickBooks’ own column names, one row per invoice line, and dates in a format that cannot be read as the wrong day.

A file you can look at before you import it is also a file your bookkeeper can check, correct and re-run. That is why the export stays, on every plan, beside the live connection Professional adds.

Choose the files or the sync

On Professional, Accounting sync sends your records to QuickBooks Online — or Xero — itself, as they change, instead of in files once a quarter. Both are yours to use; which suits depends on how your books are kept.

	QuickBooks export	Accounting sync
Plan	Every plan	Professional
Ledger	QuickBooks Online	QuickBooks Online or Xero
When	When you download the files	Within minutes of each change
What goes	Customers, invoice lines, and costs and other income, tips included	The same, plus your Price Book items, payments, refunds, and Stripe’s payouts with their fees
Accounts	Nothing is mapped: the files carry your categories	You confirm which ledger account each kind of record goes to, once
Connection	None: nothing is linked and no access is kept	Your ledger’s sign-in, kept encrypted until you disconnect

Keep the export when your bookkeeper imports once a quarter and wants to look the files over first, or when the business is on Starter. Use the sync when you want the books current every day — payments and payouts included — without anybody importing anything.

Moving from the files to the sync is safe. Choose a start date after the last file your bookkeeper imported: nothing dated before it is sent. A customer QuickBooks already has from the files is linked to its namesake rather than added again, and an invoice with the same number is linked and left as it is.

Remove it, or add it back

The QuickBooks export is a tool, like Mileage or Reports. A business whose books are not in QuickBooks can take it off the list: on the Tools page, the owner chooses Remove on the QuickBooks export card. The panel leaves the Reports page and its three files leave Import & export, and nothing you have recorded is deleted — the whole-account archive still carries every client, invoice, cost and income the files are made from. Add puts both back. It needs Reports, because its panel is on that page, so adding it where Reports is off adds Reports too, and removing Reports takes the export with it; each asks first.

Every business that had the export when it became a tool kept it, and its page on the Tools page says it was Added when the QuickBooks export became a tool, naming nobody, because nobody chose it. A business that signs up afterwards gets it with its kit, or adds it.

What it costs

It is on every plan. Your records are yours, and getting them into the system your accountant uses is not something to charge for.