A Detailed Guide

Transitioning from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online can be a game-changer for your business. With the cloud-based platform, you gain access to your financial data from anywhere, automatic backups, and seamless integrations with other apps. Here’s a detailed guide to help you migrate your data smoothly and efficiently.

Step 1: Prepare Your QuickBooks Desktop Data

Before you start the migration, ensure that your QuickBooks Desktop software is up-to-date. Create a backup of your company file to prevent any data loss. Clean up your data by reviewing accounts, deleting unnecessary entries, and ensuring that all transactions are correctly categorized. This preparation will make the transition smoother and help avoid discrepancies post-migration.

Step 2: Sign Up for QuickBooks Online

If you don’t already have a QuickBooks Online account, sign up for one. QuickBooks offers a 30-day free trial, which is perfect for testing the waters. Choose the plan that best fits your business needs. Once you have your account set up, you’re ready to begin the migration process.

Step 3: Export Your Data from QuickBooks Desktop

Open your QuickBooks Desktop and navigate to the “Company” menu. Select “Export Company File to QuickBooks Online.” You’ll need to log in to your QuickBooks Online account to start the export process. Follow the on-screen prompts to map your QuickBooks Desktop data to the correct fields in QuickBooks Online.

Step 4: Verify and Complete the Migration

Once the export is complete, log in to QuickBooks Online and review your data. Check your balances, accounts, and transactions to ensure everything transferred correctly. It’s crucial to compare the financial reports from both versions to spot any discrepancies. Address any issues immediately to ensure your data integrity.

Step 5: Set Up Your Preferences and Integrations

After verifying your data, customize your QuickBooks Online settings to match your business processes. Set up user permissions, connect your bank accounts, and integrate other apps you use for your business operations.

Conclusion

Migrating from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online can seem daunting. However, with careful planning and execution, it can be a smooth and beneficial transition. By following this detailed guide, you can ensure your data is accurately transferred, allowing you to enjoy the benefits of QuickBooks Online’s cloud-based platform.

Last month, we created records for products and services. Now, we’ll talk about where they’re used in QuickBooks Online.

If you’ll recall, we went over two product-related concepts in QuickBooks Online in last month’s column. We first discussed getting the site ready for creating and using product and service records. You click the gear icon in the upper right and select Account and Settings, then click the Sales tab to indicate your preferences.

To create a product or service record, you hover your mouse over Sales in the left vertical pane on the main page and click Products and services. Click New in the upper right corner and open a blank record for an Inventory or Non-inventory part, a Service, or a Bundle (assembly). Once you complete a record and save it, it will appear in the list back on the Product and services page.

Working with Products and Services

That’s where we’ll start today, on the Products and services screen. This is a comprehensive table, a dashboard (or home page) for your products and services. It displays real-time information about your items’ pricing and inventory levels, as well as their type and tax status. At the top of the page, you’ll see big, colorful buttons that provide a total of the number of items that are low on stock or out of stock. When you click on one, a list of those products appears.

QuickBooks Online’s Products and services page displays inventory levels and warns you when your stock is low and at zero.

Each row on this screen contains details about the item listed there, like Description, Sales Price and Cost, and Qty On Hand. If you look down at the end of the row, you’ll see options for several types of Actions: Edit, Make inactive, Run report, and Duplicate. Click the gear icon above the table to modify the columns in the table. 

The More menu at the top of the screen contains more options: Manage categories, Run reports, and Price rules. If you want to know what actions you can take on multiple items simultaneously, check the box in front of each and click the Batch actions menu, over to the right (Adjust quantity, Reorder, etc.).

Warning: Be very careful using the Adjust quantity option. There are legitimate reasons for employing it, but you need to make very sure that you understand how this will affect other areas of your accounting. Please ask us if you’re unsure.

Using Products and Services in Transactions

Once you start using product and service records in transactions, you’ll see why we suggested that you create those early on and make them as comprehensives as possible. While you can add products and services in the process of creating an invoice, for example, it’s much easier if you have them ready to go.

Let’s look at a sales receipt to see how this works. Click +New in the upper right corner and select Sales receipt. Select a Customer in the first field and verify that the related fields on the form were filled out correctly. Check and make any changes necessary in the Sales receipt date, Payment method, and Deposit to fields. 

Once you’ve built up a list of products and services, they’ll be available when you create transactions.

Enter the Service Date, and then click the down arrow in the field under Product/Service. The top of the list has an entry labeled +Add new. Click it if you need to add a product or service on the fly, or just select the existing one that you want. QuickBooks Online will fill in the Rate, Amount, and Tax (status). You only have to enter the Qty (quantity) that you’re selling. 

If you have more items or services to add, you can do so on the next line(s). When you’re done, check the numbers in the lower right and save the transaction. QuickBooks Online will adjust your inventory to account for any items you just sold. You can see this change by going back to the Products and Services screen. Or you can run reports, including:

• Sales by Product/Service
• Product/Service List
• Inventory Valuation Detail
• Physical Inventory Worksheet

Supply Chain Woes?

It seems that the serious supply chain problems we were experiencing in previous months have eased up some, but you may still be having trouble stocking some items. We hope this isn’t affecting you too much. 

QuickBooks Online, though, can help ensure that you know ahead of time when you must reorder. Its inventory-tracking capabilities can also alert you to items that aren’t selling well, so you don’t get overstocked on anything. And the ability to pull up product and service records when you’re creating transactions saves time and keeps your inventory levels accurate. Please let us know if you need assistance with this element of your accounting – or any of QuickBooks Online’s other tools.

It’s important to categorize transactions, but it takes time. If every day brings several dozen into QuickBooks Online, you can automate this process.

One of the cardinal rules of accounting is this: Go through your new transactions every day. If you wait until there are too many of them, you’re likely to give them short shrift. You may miss problems, just as you might skip categorizing some of them because it simply takes too long.

But correct categorization is essential. Your income taxes and reports will not be accurate if you fail to assign the right category to all of your transactions. QuickBooks Online makes this easy.

The site also provides a way for you to accelerate the process by automating it. It allows you to create Rules. That is, if a transaction contains a specific piece of information, a name or an amount, QuickBooks Online allows you to indicate how it should be categorized. This kind of automation will save you time and may even prevent errors – as long as you use it carefully. Here’s how it works.

Defining Your Rules

We’ll use an easy example to explain how QuickBooks Online’s Rules work. Let’s say your shipping costs have started to increase lately, and you want to make sure you’re seeing any UPS transactions that go above a specified dollar amount, and that they’re categorized accurately. Hover your mouse over Transactions in the toolbar and click on Banking (assuming you’re downloading your bank transactions). Select an account to work with by clicking on it, and make sure the For review bar is highlighted. 

Click on a transaction to open it. (If you’ve never explored what you can do with a downloaded transaction, study this box carefully while you’re there, and contact us with any questions.) On the bottom line, you’ll see a link labeled. Create a rule. Click on it, and a panel slides out from the right, as pictured below:

The upper half of the Create rule panel

This portion of the Create rule panel is fairly self-explanatory. Give your rule a descriptive name (we entered UPS 25 Plus) and indicate whether it should be applied to Money in or Money out. If you want to select a specific bank account or card, click the down arrow in the field to the right and select it. Otherwise, choose All bank accounts. Next, decide whether a transaction has to meet Any of the conditions you’re going to specify or All of them. In this case, we want All. 

Now you have to describe the conditions under which a transaction will be affected. We want transactions whose Description Contains The UPS Store. We also want to identify purchases from The UPS Store whose total is more than $25. So you’d click + Add a condition. In the row that opens, click the down arrow in the Description field and select Amount. Click the down arrow again in the next field and choose Is greater than. The final field in the row should contain 25.00.

You could keep adding conditions, but that’s all we need for this rule. You can click Test rule if you want to find out how many transactions in your For review list would meet your specifications.

Next, you want to Assign attributes to the transactions selected. Your options here are Transaction type, Category, Payee, Tags, Class, and Memo. The first two are required and the third is recommended. The last three are optional. If you want QuickBooks Online to automatically confirm transactions this rule applies to, click the Auto-confirm button so it’s showing green. If you choose this option, your matching transactions will be modified to meet your criteria and moved directly into the Categorized queue. You won’t see them in For review. So consider this carefully.

When you’re done here, click Save.

The lower half of the Create rule screen

Warning: QuickBooks Online allows you to create new categories directly from this window. But accurate categorization is so critical that we’d rather you schedule a session with us to go over your list of categories and make any modifications necessary.

To recap: Any expense over $25 that comes into your For review queue whose Description reads The UPS Store will be automatically categorized and moved into the Categorized queue.

QuickBooks Online’s Rules can save you time, but if they’re not created correctly, you may have errors in your company file without even knowing it. We recommend that you let us help you set these up from the start to avoid this. If you’re new to downloading transactions onto the site, you may also want to consult with us.