QuickBooks Migrator in ERPNext: Migrating Your QuickBooks Online Data

The QuickBooks Migrator lets you bring your QuickBooks Online data into ERPNext accounts, items, customers, suppliers, and transactions. This page covers how to set it up, how to run the migration, and exactly what happens to each kind of record when you fetch the data.

How to set up the QuickBooks Migrator

Create a QuickBooks Online App

1. From the awesome-bar, go to the QuickBooks Migrator doctype.
2. Go to the Intuit Developer Portal and sign in (or sign up).
3. Open the My Apps page and click Select APIs.
4. Under QuickBooks API, check Accounting.
5. Click Create App, you’ll land on your app’s dashboard.
6. Go to the Keys tab, then the Production Keys section, and complete the requirements.
7. A Redirect URL is generated in the QuickBooks Migrator doctype  add it to the list of Redirect URIs in your Intuit app (under Production Keys) and save. Make sure the URL starts with https.
8. From Production Keys, copy the Client ID and Client Secret into the QuickBooks Migrator doctype.
9. Save the QuickBooks Migrator.

Connect to the QuickBooks Online API

1. Click Connect to QuickBooks.
2. A new browser tab opens and asks you to log in.
3. If you have more than one company, select the one you want to migrate, then click Connect.
4. On successful authorisation, the tab closes and the indicator shows Connected to QuickBooks.
5. In the QuickBooks Migrator, select the Company you want to migrate your data into, and save.

Migrate the data

1. Click the Fetch Data button.
2. The indicator changes from Connected to QuickBooks to In Progress, with progress bars showing the migration status.
3. This takes a few minutes depending on the size of your data.
4. When complete, the indicator changes to Complete or Failed.

What happens when you click Fetch Data?

The sections below explain how each type of QuickBooks record is handled as it’s brought into ERPNext.

Account

Existing Chart of Accounts: ERPNext creates a chart of accounts when a company is made, and those accounts are kept.

Account naming: to avoid collisions with existing accounts, all QuickBooks accounts get a “- QB” suffix. For example, Job Expense becomes Job Expense – QB. ERPNext also encodes account names with the company abbreviation, so it becomes Job Expense – QB – AZ (assuming AZ is the company abbreviation).

Root accounts: five root accounts Asset, Equity, Expense, Liability, Income are created, and every account becomes a child of one of these depending on its type.

Group accounts: QuickBooks allows transactions on group accounts, which ERPNext doesn’t. To handle this, each group account gets a child with a hyphenated name,  so Job Expenses and Job Materials become Job Expenses, Job Expenses – 1, and Job Materials.

Name collisions: QuickBooks allows multiple accounts with the same name, which ERPNext doesn’t. Each duplicate gets a hyphenated name so a second Job Materials becomes Job Materials – 1.

Item

Naming: all items get company-encoded names Pen becomes Pen – AZ.

UOM: all items are assigned Unit as the default UOM, and Unit is allowed to hold fractional values.

Inventory: regardless of whether an item is an Inventory or Non-Inventory item in QuickBooks, no inventory-related information is kept.

Customer and Supplier

All customers and suppliers get company-encoded names, e.g. a name like Pen becomes Pen – AZ.

Invoice

Variants: QuickBooks has four transactional variants of Invoice, all saved as a Sales Invoice:

• Invoice → a Sales Invoice.
• Sales Receipt → a POS Sales Invoice.
• Credit Memo → a return Sales Invoice (Credit Note).
• Refund Receipt → a return POS Sales Invoice.

Discount and markup: QuickBooks uses special accounts for markup and discount; ERPNext handles these differently, so instead all items reflect the change in their income accounts.

Shipping: for invoices with shipping, an item named Shipping is added to the item table.

Round off: ERPNext rounds differently from QuickBooks, so for invoices with tax and a currency different from the company currency, the Sales Invoice grand total may differ from the QuickBooks invoice.

Special case: if a QuickBooks invoice is linked to a Delayed Charge or Statement Charge, an equivalent Journal Entry is created for it.

Bill

QuickBooks has two transactional variants of Bill, both saved as a Purchase Invoice:

• Bill → a Purchase Invoice.
• Supplier Credit → a return Purchase Invoice.

Other

The following are saved as Journal Entry: Advance Payment, Bill Payment, Cheque, Credit Card Credit, Expense, Inventory Qty Adjustment, Journal Entry, Payment, and Tax Payment.

Tax

For every QuickBooks Tax Rate, an ERPNext account is created.

Custom Fields

The QuickBooks Migrator adds the following custom fields:

• Company field — on Customer, Item, and Supplier.
• QuickBooks ID field — on Customer, Item, Journal Entry, Purchase Invoice, Sales Invoice, and Supplier.

Related Topics

• Chart of Accounts
• Sales Invoice
• Purchase Invoice
• Journal Entry
• Company