Switch from QuickBooks — full migration guide
PeakBooks has a built-in migration wizard that imports the exports QuickBooks already gives you: chart of accounts, customers, vendors, transaction history, and open invoices & bills. Most businesses finish in an afternoon.
Before you start
- You'll work from QuickBooks exports (CSV or Excel). Everything you need is under Reports and the Customers / Vendors / Chart of Accounts screens in QuickBooks (look for the export icon).
- Decide how much history you want: full transaction history (export the General Ledger report) or a clean start from opening balances (just your account balances as of a cutover date). You can mix: clean start for old years, full detail for the current one.
- Find the wizard in PeakBooks under Settings › Migrate to PeakBooks. Each data type has its own tile with a downloadable template showing the expected columns.
The recommended order
Import in this order so each step can link to the one before it (the wizard nudges you along the same path):
- Chart of accounts: the wizard maps QuickBooks account types (Other Current Assets, Cost of Goods Sold, etc.) to PeakBooks types automatically. Bank and credit-card rows are intentionally skipped here: those are created as accounts in Settings, not categories.
- Customers, then vendors: straight list imports; duplicates are detected case-insensitively and skipped.
- Opening balances: set each bank/credit-card account's starting balance as of your cutover date.
- Transactions: either a flat transaction CSV or the QuickBooks General Ledger export (both the Amount and Debit/Credit flavors work, Excel included). Vendor and customer names on each row are linked, and created if missing. Classes and locations come along too if your export includes those columns.
- Open invoices and open bills: your outstanding A/R and A/P, so unpaid items keep their balances and due dates.
Already-reconciled months
If the months you're importing were already reconciled in QuickBooks, tick “These transactions were already reconciled” in the import preview. PeakBooks creates a completed reconciliation record per account and locks those rows, so you don't redo months of reconciliation work.
Preview before committing
Every import shows a full preview with a checkbox per row. Uncheck anything you don't want, then commit. The result screen reports exactly what was imported, what was linked (vendors, customers, classes), and what was skipped with the reason. Nothing is silently dropped.
After the import: verify
- Open the Balance Sheet as of your cutover date and compare it to the same report in QuickBooks. Bank balances should match to the penny.
- Check the P&L for the current year against QuickBooks'. Category-mapping differences show up here first.
- Spot-check A/R and A/P aging: open invoices and bills should match your QuickBooks lists.
- Then connect your bank with Plaid so new activity flows in automatically from here on.
If something doesn't match
The two usual suspects: a category that mapped to a different type than QuickBooks used (fix it in Settings › Categories; reports update instantly), or a duplicate import (the wizard de-duplicates, but if you committed the same file into two different accounts, delete one batch from the register). Stuck? Email support@peakbooksapp.com with what you imported and what's off. A human will dig in.