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How your books move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Desktop uses different terms than QuickBooks Online for menu options, features, lists, items, transaction types, reports, and other labels. Here's a list of the terminology differences between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online.

Services Include

Initial File Analysis: In this phase, Accounting Therapy evaluates your file to ensure its compatibility with QuickBooks Online. They determine the optimal QuickBooks Online version for your needs and identify specific functions that might require enabling before the conversion. This ensures a seamless transition that aligns with your existing processes.

The Conversion: Accounting Therapy's conversion process migrates your existing QuickBooks Desktop file to QuickBooks Online. This includes transferring all data, such as customer lists, vendor details, item records, class codes, and each transaction.

Post Analysis: Following the conversion, Accounting Therapy meticulously compares your original QuickBooks Desktop data and financials with the newly created QuickBooks Online file. This comprehensive analysis guarantees the accuracy of the conversion and financial parity between your old and new files.

Features - Moves to QuickBooks Online

Budgets

  • Only Profit and Loss budget types will move to QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced.

Inventory

  • Inventory is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.
  • Inventory is imported as First-in, First-out method (FIFO).
  • You'll be asked to set the FIFO start date.
  • QuickBooks Online will make the proper adjustments to recalculate inventory based on the FIFO start date.
  • The recalculated inventory and adjustments will be imported into QuickBooks Online.
  • QuickBooks Online doesn't support units of measure for inventory items.
  • Note: If you use QuickBooks Desktop Mac, your inventory items are migrated as non-inventory items in QuickBooks Online. If you want to migrate them as inventory items, your QuickBooks for Mac file must be converted to QuickBooks for Windows before you convert to QuickBooks online.

Multi-Currency

  • Multi-Currency is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.
  • Multi-currency preferences will move to QuickBooks Online.

Banking

  • Banking rules are moved for both Express and Advanced mode.
  • Auto-recognized rules are moved for both Express and Advanced Mode.

Payroll

  • There are additional payroll tasks that have to be completed after you move to QuickBooks online.
  • Paychecks are moved as regular checks to keep your financial reports accurate. You'll need to enter YTD totals, Per payroll totals, and tax payments paid to setup payroll.
  • QuickBooks Online copy's the current year's paycheck information as lump sums.
  • Liability refunds, adjustment transactions, and opening balance transactions that affect accounts copy to journal entries.
  • All employees (active and inactive) will move to QuickBooks Online
  • Employee addresses - You might need to fix some addresses. Addresses for states outside supported states (such as PR, AS, VI) will be left blank.
  • Date of birth
  • Gender
  • Social Security Number
  • Direct deposit account numbers
  • Bank names
  • Routing numbers
  • Employee bank info (for Direct Deposit)

QuickBooks Payments

  • Your payments account will move automatically from QuickBooks Desktop with Payments only attached (no payroll).

  • Note: To ensure your Payments account is migrated, make sure you are an admin user on both the QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online Intuit accounts.

Sales Tax

  • Sales tax won't copy for all transactions. Some taxes will copy as journal entries.

Features - Doesn't Move to QuickBooks Online

Budgets

  • While all your data does move, budgets aren't recreated in QuickBooks Online due to mapping differences.

Multi-Currency

  • Transactions with 3 different currency types won't move to QuickBooks Online.

Banking

  • Bank Feeds setup doesn't move to QuickBooks Online.

Payroll

  • Payroll history isn't moved over.
  • If you ran payroll in the current calendar year, you'll need to run payroll reports in QuickBooks Desktop to setup payroll in QuickBooks Online. You'll need these reports: Payroll Summary by Employee for the calendar year and last quarter, and Payroll Summary totals for each check date in the current quarter.
  • Once you setup your payroll in QuickBooks Online, you can create paychecks.
  • The details behind the transactions don’t convert. For example, the payroll item breakdown and employee year-to-date numbers.
  • You'll need to setup all work location addresses with physical addresses.

Price Levels

Write Letters

Mileage Tracking

  • You'll need to manually add previous mileage into QuickBooks Online. 

Note:
There's a sales tax payments limitation when you migrate from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online (US only). Payments made in QuickBooks Desktop are applied to the wrong filings in QuickBooks Online companies. As a workaround, customers can delete the migrated sales tax payments, and then recreate them in their sales tax center in QuickBooks Online.

Items - Moves to QuickBooks Online

Assemblies

  • Assembly items are inventory items made from other inventory
    items.
  • Assemblies move as Bundles for sales transactions.
  • All components of assemblies copy for purchase transactions.
  • Each item of the assembly appears on a detail line when you view the transactions.
  • Bundle items aren't tracked as inventory in QuickBooks Online.

Discounts

  • Discounts for early payments move as credit memos. They're applied to a customer's outstanding balance.
  • Discounts taken from vendors for early payment of bills move as vendor credits. They're applied to a vendor's outstanding balance.

Groups

  • Group items move as Bundles.
  • Zero amount lines are at the start and end of where the group item was. You can see which items were part of the group.
  • The top line shows the group name. The bottom line shows the group description.
  • Group total will show on the last line of the invoice in the Description field.

Payroll Items

List - Moves to Quickbooks Online

Chart of Accounts

  • QuickBooks Online has an additional level of account type called Detail type. QuickBooks Online will move your accounts and assign them detail types. You can change this later if you like.
  • QBO only allows for 1 default A/R & A/P account.
  • QuickBooks Online will set the last A/R or A/P account that was used on a transaction as the default.

Customers and Jobs

  • Note: Jobs move to QuickBooks Online as Projects. Some Job fields like email and Bill to address aren't moved. Projects in QuickBooks Online don't support custom fields or 3rd app integration yet.
  • Your jobs move to sub-customers.
  • Customer Name
  • Company Name
  • Mr./Ms.
  • First Name
  • Middle initial (M.I.)
  • Last Name
  • Phone
  • FAX
  • Alt Ph.
  • Customer E-Mail
  • Terms
  • Customer Bill to Address (except Note)
  • Customer Ship to Address (except Note)
  • The Ship To Address converts, but not perfectly. The entire address will be placed in the main address field, leaving City, State/Province, Zip Code/ZIP code, and Country blank.
  • Tax code/item
  • Preferred Payment Method
  • Note (up to 4000 characters)
  • Credit Card Info

Inactive Items

  • Inactive accounts, customers, or vendors move. If they have an open balance, they become active.
  • If there isn't a balance tied to a name, it will move as inactive(deleted).

Other Names

  • QuickBooks Online doesn't have an Other Names list.
  • Other Names in QuickBooks Desktop move as vendors.

Scheduled Transactions

  • Recurring Transactions in QuickBooks Online
  • QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, and Essentials support recurring transactions.
  • Scheduled transactions in QuickBooks Desktop move as Recurring transactions in QuickBooks Online.

Terms

  • In QuickBooks Desktop, a job can't have its own terms. It gets the terms from its parent.
  • In QuickBooks Online, the equivalent to a job (a sub-customer) can have terms. You can edit the terms later to make them different from those of the parent.

Vendors

  • Vendor Name
  • Company Name
  • Mr./Ms.
  • First Name
  • M.I.
  • Last Name
  • Phone
  • FAX
  • E-Mail
  • Terms
  • Print on Check as
  • Address
  • AccountTax

Lists - Doesn't Move to QuickBooks Online

Chart of Accounts

  • For security reasons, bank account numbers and notes won't move to QuickBooks Online.

Customers and Jobs

  • Inactive status (this status remains as long as there are no unbilled charges moved)
  • Contact
  • Alt. Contact
  • Customer Type
  • Rep
  • Price Level
  • Custom Fields
  • Account
  • Credit Limit
  • Job Status
  • Start Date
  • Projected End
  • End Date
  • Job Description
  • Job Type
  • Job Bill to address
  • Job Ship to address
  • Job E-Mail

Custom Fields in Lists

Memorized Transactions

Reminders

Scheduled Transactions

  • QuickBooks Online Simple Start doesn't support recurring transaction templates. To avoid errors, you'll have to delete all scheduled transactions and templates in QuickBooks Desktop before you import to Simple Start.

To Do

Vendors

  • Contact
  • Alt. Contact
  • Note
  • Status
  • Vendor Type
  • Credit Limit
  • Custom Fields
  • Alt. Contact
  • Alt Ph.
  • 1099 ID

Preferences - Moves to QuickBooks Online

Closing Date Password

Layout Customization

  • Your logos will move

Payment roles and permissions

  • Saved credit card info doesn't move over.

Favorites menu

  • Items you've added to the Favorites menu will move to QuickBooks Online and can be found under Bookmarks.

Preferences - Doesn't Move to QuickBooks Online

Layout Customization

  • Custom templates won't
    move.

Shortcut List

  • Your shortcut list and icon bar settings from QuickBooks Desktop won't move to QuickBooks Online.
  • QuickBooks Online has its own keystroke shortcuts. In any window, press Ctrl+Alt+? (or Ctrl+Option+? on Mac) to see the shortcut menu.

Users and Permissions

  • Existing users don't automatically have access to QuickBooks Online. They need to be invited from QuickBooks Online to gain access.

Reports - Moves to Quickbooks Online

Memorized Reports

Reconcile

  • All reconciled transactions in the register will have an R in the cleared column in QuickBooks Online.
  • Cleared transactions will have a C in the cleared column in QuickBooks Online.

Favorite Reports

Reports - Doesn't Move to Quickbooks Online

Audit Trail

Note:
QuickBooks Online doesn't have the same reports as QuickBooks Desktop.

Accrual basis reports in QuickBooks Online will match your reports in QuickBooks Desktop. Cash basis reports may not match.

Transactions - Moves to QuickBooks Online

  • Bills, Bill Payments, and Bill Credits
  • The Bill Received preference doesn't move to QuickBooks Online.
  • A bill discount in QuickBooks Desktop moves to a Vendor credit in QuickBooks Online.
  • The address on bill payment checks is replaced by the Vendor address on your Vendor list.
  • Bill payments made by credit card move to bill payments in QuickBooks Online.

Credit Card Charges

  • Credit card charges in QuickBooks Desktop convert to Expenses in QuickBooks Online.

Estimates

  • Your estimates in QuickBooks Desktop will move to QuickBooks Online.
  • Active estimates are marked as Closed.
  • Inactive estimates are marked as Rejected.
  • Estimates used for progress invoicing won't link to the invoices you created in Desktop.

Finance Charges

  • Your finance charge invoices move to invoices in QuickBooks Online.
  • You can run an open invoice report to see which customers are overdue. Manually add finance charges to appear on the customer's next invoice.

Invoices

  • Logos will move.
  • The PO No field will move to Custom Field 1.
  • Sales Rep will move to a Custom Field.
  • Credit card info saved on an invoice in QuickBooks Desktop.

Item Receipts

  • Item receipts convert to Bills.

Journal Entries

  • You may see some transactions like checks and invoices move as journal entries. This only happens if:

    - Tax rates were entered as flat rates (0.00) instead of percentages.
    - The original transaction can't be created again.

Purchase Orders

  • The switch removes the link between bills and Purchase Orders.
  • Open POs won't reflect items received.
  • The PO will need to be linked to the Bill to reflect items received.

Reimbursable Expenses

  • Reimbursable expenses and unbilled time will move as billable expenses in QuickBooks Online.
  • QuickBooks Online has billable expenses which are similar to reimbursable expenses in QuickBooks Desktop.
  • In QuickBooks Online, you specify the markup percentage when you create the purchase instead of the invoice.

Transactions - Doesn't Move to QuickBooks Online

Invoices

  • Subtotals don't move but are included in the Description field.
  • Progress Invoices (invoices based on estimates) and their extra fields don't move.
  • Other and Other Customer custom fields don't move.
  • Recurring payment transactions.

Item Receipts

  • The switch removes the link between bills and Purchase Orders.
  • Open POs won't reflect items received.
  • The PO will need to be linked to the Bill to reflect items received.

Journal Entries

  • Billable statuses don't move. You can't make a journal entry billable in QuickBooks Online.

Pending Sales

  • Reconcile
  • Your past reconciliation reports don't move to QuickBooks Online.

Quickbooks Desktop Terms

  1. Bank Feeds
  2. Documents / Doc Center
  3. Scheduled Payroll
  4. Unscheduled Payroll
  5. Payment Reminders
  6. Income Tracker
  7. Bill Tracker
  8. Upload & Review Bills
  9. Schedule Online Payment
  10. Forecast
  11. Budgets
  12. Reconcile
  13. Inventory Parts
  14. Non-inventory Parts
  15. Assemblies
  16. Groups
  17. Other Charges
  18. Subtotals
  19. Discounts
  20. Payments
  21. Services
  22. Jobs
  23. Items
  24. Memorized transactions
  25. Leads
  26. Price Levels
  27. Billing Rate Levels
  28. Other Names
  29. Vendors
  30. Fixed Asset Items
  31. Sales Reps (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  32. Vendor Types (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  33. Job Types (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  34. Customer Messages (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  35. Ship Via (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  36. Vehicles (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  37. Templates
  38. Add/Edit Multiple List Entries
  39. Customers
  40. Employees
  41. Classes
  42. Chart of Accounts
  43. Customer Types (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  44. Terms (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  45. Payment Methods (Customer & Vendor Profile Lists)
  46. Memorized reports
  47. Scheduled reports
  48. Commented reports
  49. Custom reports
  50. Company Snapshot
  51. Job & Item Estimates vs Actuals
  52. Bills
  53. Credit Card Charges
  54. Item Receipts
  55. Sales Orders
  56. Credit Memos
  57. Batch Invoices
  58. Receipt Management
  59. Adjust Quantity/Value on Hand
  60. Make General Journal Entries
  61. Make Deposits
  62. Transfer Funds
  63. Enter Statement Charges
  64. Statements
  65. Estimates
  66. Invoices
  67. Receive Payments
  68. Sales Receipts
  69. Checks
  70. Purchase Orders
  71. Pay Bills
  72. Undeposited Funds
  73. Use Register (For Banks/Accounts)
  74. Edit > Preferences
  75. My Company
  76. Weekly Timesheet
  77. Time / Enter Single Activity
  78. Calendar
  79. Set Up Users
  80. To Do List
  81. Reminders
  82. Letters
  83. Customer Groups

Quickbooks Online Terms

  1. Online Banking / Bank Transactions
  2. Attachments
  3. Run Payroll
  4. Run Payroll, Bonus Only
  5. Reminders / Automatic invoice reminders
  6. All Sales
  7. Vendors window
  8. Receipts
  9. Online Bill Pay
  10. Budgets
  11. Budgets
  12. Reconcile
  13. Inventory
  14. Non-inventory
  15. Bundles (Products & services)
  16. Bundles (Products & services)
  17. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  18. Subtotal
  19. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  20. Payments
  21. Services
  22. Sub-customers, Projects
  23. Products and services
  24. Recurring transactions
  25. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  26. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  27. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  28. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  29. Vendors (for all Vendors), Contractors (for Vendors tracked for 1099)
  30. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  31. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  32. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  33. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  34. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  35. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  36. Manage vehicles
  37. Custom Form Styles
  38. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  39. Customers
  40. Employees
  41. Classes (and Locations)
  42. Chart of Accounts
  43. Customer Types
  44. Terms
  45. Payment Methods
  46. Custom reports
  47. Custom reports
  48. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  49. Custom reports (QuickBooks Online Advanced)
  50. Business Snapshot
  51. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  52. Expenses, Bills, Vendor Credits
  53. Expenses, Credit Card Credits
  54. Expenses, Bills
  55. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  56. Credit Memos, Refund Receipts, Delayed Credits
  57. Batch transactions (QuickBooks Online Advanced)
  58. Receipts
  59. Inventory Quantity Adjustment
  60. Journal Entries
  61. Bank Deposits
  62. Transfer
  63. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  64. Statements
  65. Estimates
  66. Invoices
  67. Receive Payments
  68. Sales Receipts
  69. Checks
  70. Purchase Orders
  71. Pay Bills
  72. Undeposited Funds, Payments to deposit
  73. View Register
  74. Settings (gear) > Account and settings, Settings (gear) > Payroll settings
  75. Settings (gear) > Account and settings
  76. Time Entries (If you have the Time tab), Weekly Timesheet (if you don't have the Time tab)
  77. Time Entries (If you have the Time tab), Single Time Activity (if you don't have the Time tab)
  78. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  79. Manage Users
  80. Tasks (QuickBooks Online Advanced)
  81. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  82. Not available in QuickBooks Online
  83. Not available in QuickBooks Online

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