What the import brings in
- Chart of accounts. Each account becomes a BlueTac account of the same type. An account already in your books with the same name and type is matched and left as it is, and a number BlueTac already uses gets the next free number. Non-posting accounts, such as estimates and purchase orders, are skipped.
- Vendors, with their contact, email, phone, address, payment terms and 1099 tracking.
- Customers. Each becomes a client with no sites and invoicing off, until you link its sites and set up its invoicing.
- Opening balances. Your trial balance as of one date becomes a single opening journal entry. Its debits and credits must match, and each of its accounts must already be in your books.
What stays behind
- Transaction history: past invoices, bills, payments and journal entries. Full QuickBooks history migration is not available yet.
- Open invoices and bills are not brought in as documents. Ask your accountant how to carry them forward from your start date.
- Products and services, sales tax settings, attachments and employees.
- Bank connections. Bank feeds (automatic bank and card connections) are not available yet.
- Payroll. BlueTac does not process payroll; approved time records can be exported for your payroll provider.
- A live connection. BlueTac does not connect to QuickBooks: you export the files and choose them in BlueTac, and later changes in QuickBooks do not follow.
Before you start
The import is in Accounting, on the Import from QuickBooks tab. It is open to the primary owner, and other owners or managers the primary owner has given financial access.
If the books are not started yet, choose Start the books first. BlueTac creates a starting chart of accounts for a security company, and the import adds your QuickBooks accounts beside it, matching the ones with the same name and type.
In QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop, the four files are the chart of accounts (account list), the vendor contact list, the customer contact list and the trial balance report, each exported as a CSV file.
How the import works
- Import the chart of accounts first, then vendors and customers, and the trial balance last.
- Choose one CSV file at a time, up to 2 MB. BlueTac shows every row before anything is saved: what it will create, what is already in your books, what it skips and each row’s problem.
- A file with a problem in any row is not imported. Fix those rows in QuickBooks or in BlueTac, export again and choose the file again.
- Importing the same file again adds nothing twice: accounts, vendors and customers already in BlueTac are matched by name and never changed, and a trial balance is posted once.
- For opening balances, run the trial balance as of the day before you start in BlueTac. Only one QuickBooks opening entry can be in the books at a time; to bring a different one, reverse the first in the journal.
One file holds up to 500 accounts, 1,000 vendors or 1,000 customers.
Your sites and team
The QuickBooks import does not bring sites or employees. Import those from CSV files: see Moving from spreadsheets. Import your QuickBooks customers first, and the sites file matches each site’s client to them by name.
Going the other way
If your accountant keeps the books in QuickBooks Online or Xero, BlueTac can also write files for them: see Export to QuickBooks Online or Xero.
QuickBooks is a trademark of Intuit Inc. BlueTac is not affiliated with or endorsed by Intuit.