Import QuickBooks financials

QuickBooks financials import is the cleanest way to recreate a company's historical accounting spine in LedgerHQ. The import uses two files from QuickBooks Online: the Chart of Accounts list and the Journal report. The Chart of Accounts file tells LedgerHQ which accounts exist. The Journal report tells LedgerHQ which posted entries and lines should be recreated.

This is a financial-history import. It is not trying to copy every QuickBooks screen, attachment, customer record, vendor record, invoice workflow, product, or payroll detail. The purpose is to give LedgerHQ enough structured accounting history to produce financial statements, support account registers, and let the team continue bookkeeping from a reliable ledger baseline.

Before You Start

Create or select the LedgerHQ company that will receive the import. Make sure you are inside that company workspace before opening Settings > Import & Export. The active company matters because the import writes accounts, journal entries, journal lines, and bank or credit card register structure into that selected company.

Plan to use a complete QuickBooks Journal report whenever possible. For a normal migration, choose All Dates in QuickBooks so the LedgerHQ company has the historical entries needed to support opening balances and comparative reports. A shorter date range can be useful for testing, but it may not produce complete financial statements unless opening balances have already been handled.

Export The Chart Of Accounts From QuickBooks

In QuickBooks Online, open the Chart of Accounts list and export it to CSV. The file should include the account names and account types as QuickBooks uses them. Account numbers are helpful when available, but not every QuickBooks file uses them consistently. LedgerHQ can still import accounts without account numbers.

Do not manually rename accounts in the CSV unless you are intentionally cleaning up the chart before import. The Journal report lines must still be able to match the Chart of Accounts names. LedgerHQ also understands the common QuickBooks pattern where a deleted account appears with a trailing (deleted) marker, but the safest import is still one where the Chart of Accounts and Journal report come from the same QuickBooks company at the same time.

Export The Journal Report From QuickBooks

In QuickBooks Online, run the Journal report for the period you want to bring into LedgerHQ. For a full migration, use All Dates. Export the report to CSV. The Journal report should include the transaction date, transaction type or identifier, account, memo or description when available, and debit and credit amounts.

The import expects a real double-entry report. Each transaction that is brought into LedgerHQ needs to balance after zero-dollar lines and non-posting noise are removed. If the preview finds unbalanced entries, treat that as a file-quality problem first. Re-exporting the report is usually better than editing a large CSV by hand.

Preview The Files In LedgerHQ

In LedgerHQ, go to Company Workspace > Settings > Import & Export. In the QuickBooks financials card, choose the Chart of Accounts CSV and the Journal report CSV. Select Check Files before importing.

The preview is the safety step. It shows the number of accounts, source journal transactions, posting lines, imported entries, skipped zero-dollar lines, date range, missing accounts, and unbalanced entries. A clean preview means LedgerHQ can map the Journal report lines to accounts and recreate balanced posted entries.

Missing accounts usually mean the Journal report references an account that is not present in the Chart of Accounts file. Unbalanced entries usually mean the Journal export is incomplete, filtered strangely, or includes rows that do not represent a complete transaction. In either case, fix the export before running the import.

Complete The Import

After the preview is clean, select Import QuickBooks Financials. LedgerHQ creates the chart accounts, posted journal entries, and journal lines. For QuickBooks Bank and Credit Card accounts, LedgerHQ also provisions the matching register structure so the company can move into bank feeds and reconciliation without rebuilding those accounts manually.

When the import finishes, the recent import table shows the job status and row counts. A completed job means LedgerHQ accepted the files and wrote the financial history. It does not mean the company has been fully reviewed. Always do a short post-import review before treating the file as ready for client work.

Replacement Warnings

If LedgerHQ detects existing accounts or journal entries, the preview may ask you to confirm replacement before importing. This exists to prevent accidental overwrites. Replacement is appropriate when you are intentionally redoing a migration because the earlier file was wrong, incomplete, or only a test.

Replacement is not appropriate when users have already continued live work in LedgerHQ unless you are certain the new import should reset that ledger activity. When in doubt, stop and create a support ticket from Tally with the company name, file names, and why you are considering replacement.

What To Verify After Import

Open the Chart of Accounts and confirm that the major account groups look right. Run an Income Statement and Balance Sheet for the imported period. Then spot-check the Journal Entries page with the source filter set to imported history. If bank or credit card accounts were imported, confirm that the related registers are available for bank feeds and reconciliation.

If the import flow proposes a final statement-period cutover window, review it carefully. That setup can leave only a specific final period open for reconciliation while keeping older imported history treated as already settled. It is meant to support the first LedgerHQ Bank Rec without reopening every old QuickBooks row.

This review does not need to be exhaustive. The goal is to catch obvious export or date-range problems before the team starts coding live bank feed activity on top of the imported history.