QuickBooks General Ledger History

What to Export

When importing General Ledger history into Centerbase from QuickBooks, the primary report that should be exported is called Transaction Detail by Account. 

In QuickBooks Online, this can be accessed most easily by going to the Reports section and searching for it.  In QuickBooks Desktop, you can find this under Reports -> Accountant & Taxes -> Transaction Detail by Account.

Choosing the Proper Settings

For Quickbooks Desktop, in order to adjust the settings on the report, click the Customize Report button in the upper left corner.  In Quickbooks Online, the Customize button is in the upper right corner.

The first thing to verify is you have chosen the proper accounting method.  Even if you sometimes run reports in multiple modes, you will want to run this with whatever your PRIMARY accounting method is (Cash or Accrual).

VERY IMPORTANT: Next, we want to disable Grouping in the report.  In QuickBooks Online, simply change the Group By option at the top to be None.  QuickBooks Desktop doesn't always have this option, so instead there is a drop-down for Total By that can be changed to Total Only. This step is CRUCIAL. If you skip this step, your file will be rejected, delaying your import.  

Finally, we want to make sure we have the proper columns.  The recommended columns are below.  Some will say X or Y meaning that depending on your version of Quickbooks the column may be called one thing or the other.

• Date
• Account
• Transaction Type or Type
• Num or Reference Number
• Name
• Class
• Memo or Description
• Debit
• Credit
• Clr or Cleared Status

Things to Watch Out For

These files typically need to be exported one year at a time.  QuickBooks has a limit on how much data can be exported at once and normally splitting the report by year is enough.  After exporting you can open the exported spreadsheet and if there was a problem, it will have a message at the top saying "not all data was exported, please try a different filter".  If this happens you might need to separate certain larger years into January - June and July - December (depending on the number of transactions in your GL).

The file can be exported either as an Excel file or CSV.