How To Convert Your QuickBooks Desktop File To QuickBooks Online

Published on 2 September 2020 at 10:05

Just how to Convert Your QuickBooks Desktop File To QuickBooks Online

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Moving Very First Client From QuickBooks Desktop to Online

The relocate to the cloud is within full swing! Many accounting professionals and small enterprises are moving to QuickBooks® Online. This is basically the first in some articles that may help you create an action policy for moving your customers to QuickBooks Online; this 1 is targeted on identifying which clients to transform first.

I’m a long-time QuickBooks Desktop user, and I also knew it inside and outside. In fact, I started teaching QuickBooks seminars in 1999, written books, presented numerous training courses and co-authored the Advanced Certification. I happened to be wary about QuickBooks Online, initially. However, after learning more info on QuickBooks Online, navigating tips plus much more, I now love and prefer QuickBooks Online over desktop. If you want to know about Convert Your QuickBooks Desktop File To QuickBooks Online then call our Proadvisors.

In fact, now the idea of working with desktop clients seems painful. The wasted time sending files back and forth, fretting about compatibility between versions of QuickBooks, data file problems and many other things are all a thing of history in the event that you utilize QuickBooks Online.

If you haven’t checked out QuickBooks Online within the last 12 months, you really need to do something! Focus on joining the QuickBooks ProAdvisor® Program which has had an absolutely free membership level for QuickBooks Online. Next, I really encourage someone to become a professional QuickBooks ProAdvisor for QuickBooks Online. Working out and certification is roofed (all free) and you might do so all online. Plus, there are a few other training resources supplied by Intuit’s Accountant University to aid accounting professionals find out about QuickBooks Online, converting and much more. Intuit® invests a lot to help accounting professionals enhance our knowledge and skills to ensure that people can confidently support our clients which help them proceed to QuickBooks Online.

Which Clients to transform First?

How will you start converting desktop clients to QuickBooks Online? First, begin by converting your personal firm. This will help you gain confidence and knowledge of the method. Once you donate to QuickBooks Online Accountant (free for accounting professionals), you have a free QuickBooks Online Plus subscription to work with for your firm’s books.

Next – which will be really important – recognize that you don’t need to convert all of your clients at the same time. You might do a couple of on top of that to simply help ease the transition. I would suggest you select the simplest ones first and save the difficulties for a later time, after you have more experience converting simple and easy clients from desktop to QuickBooks Online.

How will you determine which clients to convert first? Consider clients who:

you need/want to fairly share the details using the client;
have owners or workers in several locations and have to talk about the information;
are tech savvy as well as perhaps asking to go towards the cloud;
are tech challenged or don’t want to manage their particular server or IT;
have workers on the go who would reap the benefits of entering invoices, receiving payments, entering expenses and even more from a good phone;
are a service based businesses – they are easier to change; and
might not require a third-party app.
Perform a Needs Assessment

Next, you’ll choose to ensure QuickBooks Online is likely to be suitable for your prospects plus in case there are any third-party apps to take into account to aid enhance QuickBooks Online. A needs assessment helps identify specific requirements, along with identify possibilities to streamline and automate their processes. Have conversations along with your clients and/or their staff to quickly attain a knowledge of the way they operate in every areas: sales and receivables, purchase and payables, operations and inventory, payroll, other special needs regarding the business, and much more. I discussed performing a needs assessment and determining which QuickBooks is suitable for your customers in a recently available QB Power Hour webinar, and I also encourage someone to watch it for substantially more details.

Differences Between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online

While QuickBooks Online (alone or with third-party apps) may meet the needs of all the clients, understand that it's not exactly like QuickBooks Desktop. There are several features in desktop that are not accessible in QuickBooks Online right now (there are monthly updates to QuickBooks Online, and this may improvement in the long term). When you have a client who needs these features, then you’ll need to use a third-party app. You will find hundreds for sale in the App Center.

A few key features to be familiar with include:

Robust Inventory – QuickBooks Online has basic FIFO inventory (vs. average cost in desktop) and no groups, assemblies, or units of measure.
Robust Job Costing – QuickBooks Online Plus allows you to do basic job costing, reimbursable expenses, customizing of an income & loss by customer/job, income by customer, summary, and much more. However, you merely can not allocate payroll to the customer/job without doing it manually, doing progress invoicing (without a cumbersome workaround that I don’t recommend), or getting all of the desired reports.
Sales Order – In QuickBooks Online, you can enter an Estimate, you cannot create a Purchase Order from an Estimate. In QuickBooks Premier and QuickBooks Enterprise, you are able to create a Purchase Order from a Sales Order.
Price Levels – Not available without a third-party app.
I suggest utilizing the QuickBooks Online road test for testing to learn whether or not it's planning to meet the needs of the clients. Here, you'll be able to enter sample transactions and run reports, for instance. There's nothing saved together with system resets every time you open it. Tip: Share the web link for the road test together with your clients in order for them to practice with QuickBooks Online, too.

In addition, QuickBooks Desktop users might want to utilize the QuickBooks Online app for Windows or Mac. This desktop app provides a “special browser” to access QuickBooks Online without coping with Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox or any other browser. The app also allows you to have multiple windows opened (just like tabbed browsing in Chrome or Firefox), but it auto refreshes the windows, that is helpful. The app also supports keyboard shortcuts and contains a menu bar with drop-down menus like the ones located in the desktop type of QuickBooks. This can ease the transition to QuickBooks Online for long-time desktop users, especially clients on a Mac that will be seasoned desktop app users.

Converting a Desktop File to QuickBooks Online

Very often, the particular conversion process is truly fast and simple. First, you’ll want to set up the subscription for QuickBooks Online from your own QuickBooks Online Accountant dashboard (free for accounting professionals). Next, within the QuickBooks Desktop file, click on Company > Export Company File to QuickBooks Online and stay glued to the conversion wizard prompts. Finally, you could receive a contact confirmation notifying you the information was converted.

That’s the essential, easy conversion process. I encourage anyone to use the first faltering step – convert your own company or very first client to QuickBooks Online today!

Action Steps you may need to take:

Join the ProAdvisor Program – FREE and begin getting Certified (FREE)
Sign up for QuickBooks Online Accountant – FREE
Download the three-part Accountant’s Guide to Moving Clients Online
Watch Firm in to the future: Parts 1 & 2 – access it the Cloud recordings here
Convert your firm or very first client to QuickBooks Online
As time goes on articles, we’ll discuss additional information about converting to QuickBooks Online and talk about it to learn more and details.

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