We see many companies inquiring if and how they should convert their QuickBooks Enterprise Desktop company file to QuickBooks Online. The answer is yes this conversion can be accomplished with Intuit’s built in conversion tools. Below are some of my suggested steps of how to go about the decision making process of moving to QuickBooks Online along with how to complete this process. This article was the result of a client of ours having questions about this conversion and Stacy Kildal and Woody Adams of The QBO Show provided me with a wealth of information.
Step Number One: Take A Free Test Drive of QuickBooks Online
The QuickBooks Online user interface is much different than QuickBooks Enterprise. However, Intuit makes it very easy for you to take a free easy painless test drive here. If for some reason this link does not work type the following words into a Google Search: QuickBooks Online free test drive.
Step Number Two: Research Differences in Functionality between QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Online
There are pluses and minuses to each program. For instance QuickBooks Enterprise has support for Advanced Inventory and Advanced Reporting. Whereas QuickBooks Online has incredible bank feeds, supports a location field, has mobile time tracking and access is free to your Accountant anytime/anywhere. You can find a great matrix of all the features on the QBO Show’s website here.
Step Number Three: Review any Third Pary Applications that Currently Interface with your QuickBooks Enterprise File
Take an inventory of any third party products and inquire of the vendor to see if they have a QuickBooks Online integration or look on Intuit’s Apps website to see if there are other third party tools available to help with the integration. If you do not see a QuickBooks Online integration you could use our Transaction Pro Importer to import transactions and lists from Excel or csv files to QuickBooks Online.
Step Number Four: Export your Data From QuickBooks Enterprise to QuickBooks Online and Do Some More Testing
You will find a helpful video on the QuickBooks Intuit site that specifically deals with QuickBooks Enterprise imports.
In addition here is a great slide deck that Stacy Kildal of Kildal Services prepared on QuickBooks Online conversions. The voice that you hear in the presentation is Woody Adams of Intuit.
Finally here is a short video on specifics to the Enterprise conversion from The QBO Show.
My suggestion is to continue to do your daily work in QuickBooks Enterprise in parallel while working with the data that you uploaded to QuickBooks Online. This will give you an idea of how your data will look in QuickBooks Online.
Step Number Five: Final Import into QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Enterprise
You can continue to do fresh imports from Enterprise to your QuickBooks Online company file for 60 days. So once you have made the decision to go completed with QuickBooks Online do an final import of your data from QuickBooks Enterprise.
I hope this helps. For those of you that have gone through this process feel free to add your comments below.