---
title: QuickBooks Online
description: "Move your company from QuickBooks Online into TBA: export a handful of reports, drop them in one at a time, and TBA checks everything before importing."
url: "https://theasst.com/docs/quickbooks-online/"
updated: "2026-10-26"
category: Setup / Data Import
---

# QuickBooks Online

The QuickBooks Online import moves your company from QuickBooks Online into TBA. You export a handful of reports from QuickBooks Online, drop them onto this page one at a time, and TBA checks them, then imports your accounts, customers, vendors, items and your whole transaction history. You need the Import permission (see [Users and Permissions](https://theasst.com/docs/users-and-permissions/)). Using QuickBooks Desktop instead? See [QuickBooks Desktop](https://theasst.com/docs/quickbooks-import/).

Open it from **Setup → Data Import → QuickBooks → QuickBooks Online**. If you are setting up a new company, you can also choose *I’ll import my own data from QuickBooks Online* in the [Quick Start Setup Wizard](https://theasst.com/docs/quick-start-setup-wizard/).

## Before you start

- Sign in to QuickBooks Online as a user who can run reports (an Admin is simplest). Keep it open in another tab or window.
- Plan on an hour or so for a company with many years of history. Most of it is waiting for QuickBooks to export.
- Reports download to your computer as files (usually your Downloads folder). You drop those files onto TBA — you don’t need to open or change them.
- You don’t need to finish in one sitting. See *Saving your place* below.

## How the page works

The page walks you through one report at a time and shows **Step 4 of 16** at the top. Each step tells you which report to run in QuickBooks and how to export it. Then:

1. **Drop the file** onto the dashed box, or click **choose a file**. You can drop an Excel file (.xlsx), a CSV file, or a .zip of them.
2. **TBA checks it at once.** A green line tells you what was read (for example “4,812 transactions”). A red line tells you what is wrong — the wrong report, a file from a different company, a Summary report where the Detail report is needed — so you can fix it right away.
3. Click **Next**. Optional steps have a **Skip this step** button.

If a file you drop belongs to a different step (for example a .zip that holds your customer, vendor and employee lists together), TBA files each report under the right step and tells you so.

The reports marked **Required** are needed for the import. **Optional** ones add detail (inventory costs, open purchase orders, estimates) and can be skipped.

### Saving your place

Click **Save and finish later** at any time. Your files and your place are stored by TBA, so you can close the page, shut down the computer, and come back tomorrow — from any computer — and TBA picks up where you stopped. **Remove** deletes a file you added by mistake, and **Start over** (bottom of the page) deletes everything you have added.

## The reports

QuickBooks Online moves its menus around from time to time. If a menu name below does not match what you see, search **Reports** for the report name — the names are what matter. To export any report, click the **Export** icon at the top right of the report (a square with an arrow) and choose **Export to Excel**. Most reports in QuickBooks Online refresh by themselves when you change the dates; if one does not, click **Apply Changes**.

> **Always choose the Detail version.** Several reports come in a Summary and a Detail form — for example *Accounts receivable aging summary* and *Accounts receivable aging detail*. TBA needs the Detail report, which lists each invoice or bill individually. If you drop a Summary, TBA tells you.

### Step 1: Chart of Accounts (required)

Open **Reports**, search for **Account List** and export it to Excel. (You can also go to **Settings → Chart of accounts**, click **Run Report**, then use the Export icon.) This gives TBA each account’s name and type.

### Step 2: Customer list (required)

Search Reports for **Customer Contact List** and export it to Excel. It carries each customer’s contacts, phone numbers, email and addresses.

### Step 3: Vendor list (required)

Search Reports for **Vendor Contact List** and export it to Excel. It also carries tax IDs and whether the vendor gets a 1099.

### Step 4: Employee list (optional)

Search Reports for **Employee Contact List**. Skip this step if you don’t keep employees in QuickBooks.

### Step 5: Products and Services list (required)

Go to **Sales → Products and services** and click the **Export** icon above the list. This list only exports as a **CSV** file — that is fine, drop the .csv file onto the page. It carries prices, costs, accounts and the quantity on hand.

### Step 6: Terms list (optional)

Search Reports for **Terms List** and export it. This brings over your payment terms such as Net 30.

### Step 7: Trial Balance as of today (required)

Search Reports for **Trial Balance**. Set the report date to **today** — the heading must read *“As of <today’s date>”* — and leave it on **Accrual**. Then export to Excel. These balances become your opening balances in TBA.

Use a single date for today. **Do not choose “All dates.”** TBA tells you if the report is not an “As of” report.

### Step 8: Journal (required)

The Journal lists every transaction in your books. Search Reports for **Journal**, set the **Report period** to **Custom**, pick a start and end date, then export to Excel. Repeat for the next period until you reach today. Start with about three years at a time.

**If QuickBooks says “Some of your files were too big to export”**, export one report at a time and only a limited date range. Use shorter periods — one year, or even one quarter if a busy year still fails. You can export as many files as you need and drop *all* of them on this step; TBA reads them all together.

- Use periods that follow each other without overlapping (for example 2014–2016, then 2017–2019).
- Put the dates in each file name, so you can see at a glance that nothing is missing.
- TBA checks the files you add and tells you if two overlap (the repeated transactions are counted once) or if there is a gap between them.

### Step 9: Sales by Product/Service Detail (required)

This gives the item, quantity and price on every invoice line. Search Reports for **Sales by Product/Service Detail**, set the **Report period** to **Custom**, **one year at a time** (January 1 to December 31), and export each year to Excel. Add every year’s file on this step. TBA compares them with your Journal, so a missing year is flagged.

### Step 10: Purchases by Product/Service Detail (required)

This gives the item, quantity and cost on every bill line. Search Reports for **Purchases by Product/Service Detail** and set the **Report period** to **All dates**. Then click **Customize** → **Rows/Columns** → **Change columns**, tick **Product/Service full name**, and click **Apply Changes** before exporting. The *Product/Service full name* column is required — without it TBA can’t tell which item a bill line was for.

### Step 11: Accounts Receivable Aging Detail (required)

Search Reports for **Accounts receivable aging detail** (not the summary). Set the date to today, then export to Excel. It shows which customer invoices are still unpaid and how much is left on each.

### Step 12: Accounts Payable Aging Detail (required)

Search Reports for **Accounts payable aging detail** (not the summary), date set to today. It shows which vendor bills are still unpaid.

### Step 13: Inventory Valuation Detail (optional)

If you track inventory, search Reports for **Inventory Valuation Detail**, set the period to **All dates**, and export it. It gives the cost of what you have in stock.

### Step 14: Open Purchase Order Detail (optional)

If you use purchase orders, search Reports for **Open Purchase Order Detail**. QuickBooks starts this report on a short date range — change the **Report period** to **All dates**, or older purchase orders will be missed.

### Step 15: Estimates by Customer (optional)

Search Reports for **Estimates by Customer** with the period set to **All dates**. QuickBooks Online does not export the lines of an estimate, so each estimate comes over as a single total with its customer, date and expiration date.

## Step 16: Check everything

The last step lists every report and shows what you added. Anything marked **!** is required and still missing — click **Go to this step** to add it. When everything required is in, click **Check my files**. TBA reads all the files together and checks that they agree with each other — for example that every Journal transaction balances, that the Journal adds up to your Trial Balance for every account, and that your open invoices and bills match your Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable aging reports. This takes a minute or two for a large company, and you can leave the page open while it works.

Nothing is imported or changed in TBA at this point.

The results are color-coded:

- **Green** — a check passed.
- **Gray** — information for you.
- **Yellow** — worth a look, but the import can go ahead.
- **Red** — a problem that has to be fixed first. TBA does not prepare the import until the red items are resolved. The message says what to do, usually to export a missing report or date range again; use **Back** to return to that step and replace the file.

## Continue to the import

When the check passes, click **Continue to the import**. This opens the import page, titled **QuickBooks Online**, with your files already prepared — you don’t upload anything again. From there the import works as described in [QuickBooks Desktop](https://theasst.com/docs/quickbooks-import/): choose what to import, review the field mapping if you wish, set up your [Default G/L Settings](https://theasst.com/docs/default-g-l-settings/) and [General Options](https://theasst.com/docs/general-options/), then run the import and read the results.

## What comes over, and what does not

Everything in your QuickBooks Online reports comes over: accounts, customers (including jobs), vendors, employees, items, terms, and your history of invoices, credit memos, sales receipts, bills, vendor credits, checks, card charges, payments, deposits, journal entries and open purchase orders. A few things work differently from a QuickBooks Desktop import, because QuickBooks Online does not export them:

- **Which invoice a payment paid.** QuickBooks Online does not say. TBA works it out: a payment first settles an invoice of exactly that amount, otherwise the oldest open invoices of that customer. The same is done for bill payments and credit memos. Your open invoices and bills match QuickBooks’ aging reports; only the link between an older, already-paid invoice and the payment that settled it is a best match.
- **Vendor credits.** QuickBooks Online records a vendor credit being used on a bill as a bill payment of $0.00 that names neither the credit nor the bill. TBA works out which bills each credit settled and applies it, so the credit and the bill both show correctly. Credits that were never used stay open on the vendor.
- **Voided transactions.** When QuickBooks Online voids a check, bill, invoice, payment or journal entry it sets every amount to zero and keeps the document, and the original amounts are not in any report. TBA imports each voided document as history, **marked void with no amounts**, so your check numbers and document numbers have no gaps. Voided items do not affect any balance or report.
- **Payroll.** Payroll that you posted to your books comes over as ordinary journal entries and checks. The paychecks and per-employee payroll detail do not come over, and neither do payroll tax filings or year-to-date totals. If payroll periods are missing from your books, add them with [Payroll GL Import](https://theasst.com/docs/payroll-gl-import/), which lists the payroll already posted so you do not enter a period twice.
- **Estimate lines.** Estimates come over as a single total each (see Step 15).
- **Sales tax rates and agencies, customer terms, payment methods.** These are not in the reports. Set up your [sales tax](https://theasst.com/docs/default-g-l-settings/) and review customer terms after the import.
- **Deleted customers, vendors, accounts and items.** If an old transaction used something you later deleted in QuickBooks, TBA creates it again as an *inactive* record so the history stays intact.
- **Inventory value.** If you moved to QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Desktop, the value on the Inventory Valuation report can differ from the inventory account on your Trial Balance. TBA treats your Trial Balance as correct, shows you the difference, and uses the Valuation report for item costs. QuickBooks Online does not say when an item was created, so TBA dates your starting stock to the day of your first transaction.
- **Attachments** (scanned receipts, files attached to transactions) are not included.

## After the import

When the import finishes, the results page lists everything that was imported and anything that needs a look. A few offers appear when they apply:

- **Download Verification Checklist (PDF)** — every item worth confirming, in one document.
- **Match credit memos…** — when a credit memo was applied straight to an invoice, TBA can match the pair by amount and date.
- **Assign payees…** — checks and card charges that had no payee are imported as plain journal entries; here you can give them a vendor, employee or client.
- **Starter data (recommended)** — if you skipped importing something TBA needs to be usable, the list is shown with a checkbox for each and the choice to add TBA’s usual starting entries (payment terms, departments, personnel groups, pay codes, work types, leave types, In/Out statuses). Tick what you want and click **Add selected**, or click **No thanks**. You can change or delete them later.

## Opening balances and fiscal year

Account balances start from your Trial Balance as of the date you ran it. Older transactions are kept so you can look them up and run profit and loss reports for past periods. TBA also works out the month your fiscal year starts from your Journal and shows it in the results; check it against [Fiscal Year and Year-End Closing](https://theasst.com/docs/fiscal-year-and-year-end-closing/) when you set up your fiscal years.

## Troubleshooting

- **“This is the Accounts receivable aging SUMMARY” (or payable).** You exported the summary. Run the *detail* report instead.
- **“This report is for a different company.”** All the files must come from one QuickBooks company. Check which company you are signed in to.
- **“Please run the Trial Balance for today’s date.”** The report was run for a range or for All dates. Set a single date and export again.
- **A Journal file “does not balance” or “looks cut off.”** Export that period again, using a shorter date range.
- **The Journal does not add up to the Trial Balance.** A Journal period is usually missing, or the Trial Balance was run for a different date than the end of your last Journal file. The message names the accounts that differ.
- **The numbers in my Excel file are all zero.** That is how QuickBooks writes its Excel files — the real numbers are stored in a form Excel only shows after you click *Enable Editing*. TBA reads the real numbers either way, so you don’t need to open or change the files.
- **A bill number looks different (for example a leading zero is missing).** QuickBooks drops leading zeros in some of its exports. TBA uses the bill number from the Purchases report, which keeps it intact.
- **The import stopped, or the page says it stopped unexpectedly.** Reload the page and run the import again. Anything already imported is skipped, and the import continues where it stopped.

## Related

- [QuickBooks Desktop](https://theasst.com/docs/quickbooks-import/) (the same import page, and the second half of this process)
- [Payroll GL Import](https://theasst.com/docs/payroll-gl-import/)
- [Trial Balance](https://theasst.com/docs/trial-balance/), [AR Aging](https://theasst.com/docs/ar-aging/) and [AP Aging](https://theasst.com/docs/ap-aging/) — compare them with QuickBooks after the import