Migrate From QuickBooks to Zoho Books

Zoho Books is a powerful accounting software which helps you manage your business end-to-end. In this guide, we wish to help you migrate your data from QuickBooks Online, including your customers, accounts, items, and other modules into Zoho Books, using our DIY migration solution.

Prerequisite: You should have a Paid/Active subscription with QuickBooks Online.

Limitations on Migrating Your Data From QuickBooks to Zoho Books

Before migrating your QuickBooks Online data into Zoho Books, it’s important that you’re aware of the limitations of the migration. They include:

To read all the prerequisites and limitations on migrating your data from QuickBooks to your Zoho Books organization, refer to our help document.

Steps To Migrate Your Data From QuickBooks to Zoho Books

1. Connect to QuickBooks

To migrate your data into Zoho Books, you should connect your QuickBooks Online organisation with your Zoho Books organisation. Here’s how:

Connect to QuickBooks Select your Company

You will now be redirected to the QBO migration module, and your QuickBooks organisation will be connected to your new Zoho Books organisation.

2. Add Tax Details

Note: If your business is not registered for VAT, you can skip this section and proceed to the Fetch Primary Modules section.

If your business is registered for VAT, you can add your VAT details in Zoho Books. Here’s how:

Go to Tax Settings Save Tax Settings

Once you have configured your taxes, go to the QBO Migration Module to fetch your primary modules.

3. Fetch Primary Modules

Once you configure your preferences, you should fetch your data including your items, contacts, vendors, and chart of accounts into Zoho Books. Here’s how:

Fetch Primary Modules Fetch primary modules popup

This will fetch all your primary modules into your Zoho Books organisation.

Once your primary modules are fetched, you will receive a confirmation notification in the app.

Download Failed Records

The modules fetched in this section are:

4. Fetch Transactions

After fetching your primary modules, you should fetch your sales and purchase transactions from your QuickBooks organisation. Here’s how:

Fetch Transactions Fetch Transactions

This will fetch all your transactions into your Zoho Books organisation.

Once your transactions are fetched, you will receive a confirmation notification in the app.

Note: You can fetch transactions into Zoho Books only after you resolve the errors and upload the updated files under Fetch Primary Modules.

Download Failed Transactions

The modules fetched under Purchase transactions are:

The modules fetched under Sales Transactions are:

The modules fetched under Others are:

5. Fetch your Transaction’s Attachments

After you fetch your transactions into Zoho Books, you should fetch the documents attached to different transactions from your QuickBooks organisation. Here’s how:

Fetch your Transaction's Attachments

This will fetch all your attachments into Zoho Books.

Once your attachments are fetched, you will receive a confirmation notification in the app.

Note: You can fetch your transaction’s attachments into Zoho Books only after you resolve the errors and upload the updated files under Fetch Transactions.

Download Failed Attachments

6. Verify Opening Balances

Opening Balances in Zoho Books are the closing balances of different accounts in your QuickBooks Online organisation.

To verify the current year’s opening balances that you’ve imported from your QuickBooks Online organisation:

Verify Opening Balances

You will be redirected to the Opening Balances module under Settings where the opening balances for all the default accounts will be auto-populated.

Opening Balances

Note: The Migration Date will be the date you select as the Transaction Fetching Date in the Fetch Transactions popup. Your opening balances will be calculated based on the transactions recorded in your QuickBooks organization before the migration date. Once you click Continue, you won’t be able to modify the opening balance by changing the migration date manually.

You can manually update the opening balances for an account in Zoho Books any time. Learn how.

7. Verify Closing Balances

You should verify your closing balances to check if the closing balances calculated by QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books are the same. Here’s how:

Verify Closing Balances

In the next page, you’ll see a summary of the closing balance in Zoho Books, QuickBooks, and the net difference in closing balances.

Verify Closing balances page

When you select an account, you can see all transactions recorded in Zoho Books and those imported from QuickBooks.

Verify Closing Balances

Ensure that there is no mismatch between the transactions recorded in Zoho Books for that account and the transactions imported from QuickBooks If there is a mismatch, click the Adjust Difference dropdown on the top-right corner of the page and:

Click Adjust Difference Create a new journal entry

Refer to our help document on Manual Journals for more information.

Create a new transaction Adjust opening balance

Refer to our help document on Opening Balances for more information.

If the trial balance you imported is incorrect, you can change it. Here’s how:

Click Re-Import Trial Balance

After importing the trial balance and verifying the closing balances, ensure that the net difference in the closing balance in Zoho Books and the closing balance in QuickBooks is zero for all the accounts.

Click Complete Migration

This will complete the migration process and you can start using Zoho Books to manage your business finance.

Troubleshooting Errors

When you migrate your data from QuickBooks into Zoho Books, you may encounter errors in certain cases. To help, we’ve outlined common errors, what they mean, and how to fix them.

Module Error displayed What went wrong? What can you do?
Items Inventory tracking is disabled. You have enabled inventory tracking for the selected item in your QuickBooks organization but not in Zoho Books. To import the item, you have to enable inventory tracking in Zoho Books. Here’s how:

Go to Settings > Preferences > Items > Enable Inventory Tracking and enable inventory tracking for your item.
Items Items can be associated only with income accounts. You’ve selected Sales as the Item Type for the item but have associated a Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) or expense account with it. Select Income in the Account column and import the item into Zoho Books.
Items Purchased items can be associated only with Cost of Goods Sold(COGS) accounts. You’ve selected Purchase as the Item Type for the item but have associated an Income account with it. Select Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) in the Account column and import the item into Zoho Books.
Bills Bills should not be present more than once in the payment You have associated multiple vendor payments to the same bill. Remove the additional vendor payments associated with the bill in your file and import the bill into Zoho Books.
Bills/Invoices The due date should be after the bill/invoice date The due date is the same as the invoice or bill date. Modify the due date to a later date and import the invoice or bill into Zoho Books.
Bills/Invoices The amount entered is more than the balance due for the selected invoices/bills. The total amount of the invoice or bill is less than the payment received. Ensure that the total amount of the invoice or bill and the amount entered in the Amount Applied To column are the same.
Bills/Invoices This error is related to Row 1,090 - Invoice/Bill Number The invoice number or bill number in one of the rows is in text format. Re-import the error file to identify which row contains the error.

Then, change the format of the invoice or bill number to number or general in your import file to import the invoice or bill into Zoho Books.
Transactions Invalid Row The account associated with an item in your transaction isn’t available or active in Zoho Books. Ensure that the account associated with the item in the transaction you’re importing is available or active in Zoho Books. If not, create a new account and import the transaction into Zoho Books.
Accounts Duplicate row found in your CSV/TSV file You tried to import an account with the same name as the one in Zoho Books. Rename the account with the same name in your file and import it into Zoho Books.
Accounts Sorry, you cannot add any accounts of type Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable. You tried to import accounts of the type Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable. You cannot import accounts of the type Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable since we have default accounts of the same name in Zoho Books.

Remove these accounts from your file and import it into Zoho Books.
Accounts Creation of sub account is not supported for this account You tried to create sub-accounts for Bank, Payment Clearing, Credit Card or Overseas Tax Payable accounts. Remove the parent account from the Parent Account column for this account and import the file into Zoho Books.
Accounts The parent that you’ve chosen does not support sub accounts You tried to create sub-accounts for Bank, Payment Clearing, Credit Card or Overseas Tax Payable accounts. Remove the parent account from the Parent Account column for this account and import the file into Zoho Books.
Credit Notes Credits cannot be applied to invoices in the closed status You applied credit notes to invoices that are in the status Closed or Paid Change the invoice number and import the credit note into Zoho Books.

or

Create a refund for the credit note.
Credit Notes The credits applied to the invoice is more than the invoice balance The amount applied from the credit note is more than the invoice balance. Ensure that the total amount of the invoice is the same or less than the value in the Amount Applied To column of the credit note in the import file.
Credit Notes The credits applied is more than the credit note balance The value of the credits applied is greater than the total amount of the credit note. Ensure that the amount applied from the credit note is the same or less than the value in the Amount To column of the credit note in the import file.

What You Can Do after Migrating

Now that you have migrated to Zoho Books successfully, you can customise your organisation further. You can set up payment gateways to accept online payments or integrate with other apps such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics.

Zoho Books also has many features that you can utilise to streamline your accounting process, here’s some of them to get you started:

Note: If you have any queries, or if you’re facing any issues with the migration process, write to us at support.mx@zohobooks.com and we will help you migrate from QuickBooks to Zoho Books.

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