Learn how features and data 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:

These features move to QuickBooks Online:

• Attachments/Document Centre docs
  • _{Attachments that are 30MB or smaller}
  • _{Attachments on your computer's hard drive}
  • _{To learn more, check out Move your attachments from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.}
    
• Budgets
  • _{Profit and Loss budget types}
    
• Inventory
  •  _{Note: Inventory is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.}
  • _{Inventory (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.}
  • _{Recalculated inventory and adjustments}
    
• Multi-Currency
  • _{Note: Multi-Currency is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.}
  • _{Multi-currency preferences}
    
• Online Banking
  • _{• Banking rules for Express and Advanced mode}
  • _{• Auto-recognized rules for Express and Advanced Mode}
    
• Payroll - with QuickBooks Online
  • _{Note: QuickBooks Online copies the current year's paycheque information as lump sums.}
  • _{Paycheques (as regular checks)}
  • _{Liability refunds, adjustment transactions, and opening balance}
  • _{Transactions that affect accounts (copied to journal entries)}
  • _{All employees (active and inactive)} 
    • _{Note: Inactive employees that have current tax year payments become active post-migration.}
  • _{Employee addresses} 
    • _{Note: 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 Insurance Number}
  • _{Company Direct deposit account numbers}
  • _{Bank names}
  • _{Routing numbers}
  • _{Employee bank info (for Direct Deposit)}
  • _Wages
  • _{YTD balances}
  • _Items
  • _{Full employee setup}
    
• Payroll - Stand-alone (QBOP)
  • _{All employees (active and inactive)} 
  • _{Employee addresses} 
    • _{Note: 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 Insurance Number}
  • _Company
  • _{Direct deposit account numbers}
  • _{Bank names}
  • _{Routing numbers}
  • _{Employee bank info (for Direct Deposit)}
  • _Wages
  • _{YTD balances}
  • _Items

• QuickBooks Payments
  • _{Your account will move automatically from QuickBooks Desktop with Payments.}
    • _{Note: To help 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
  • _{Some taxes move as journal entries. Sales tax won't copy for all transactions.} 
    • _{Note: There's a sales tax payment limitation when you switch from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online. Payments made in QuickBooks Desktop apply to the wrong filings in QuickBooks Online. As a solution, delete the migrated sales tax payments, then recreate them in their sales tax centre in QuickBooks Online.}
      
      

These features don’t move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Budgets
  • _{Data transfers}
    • _{Note:  Budgets aren't recreated in QuickBooks Online due to mapping differences.}
      
• Inventory
  • _{Units of measure}
    
• Multi-Currency
  • _{Transactions with 3 different currency types} 
  • _{Any transactions that use currencies in QuickBooks Desktop that don't exist in QuickBooks Online}
    
• Online Banking
  • _{Bank Feeds setup}
    
• QuickBooks Time
  • _{Timesheet data}
  • _{Pay Item Mappings}
  • _{Settings & Preferences}
    • _{Note: If you migrate to QuickBooks Payroll Premium or Elite, QuickBooks Time is included with your subscription, and a new account is created for you. For help with merging your new account with your old account, contact us.}
      
• Price Levels
  
• Write Letters
  
• Mileage Tracking
  • _Mileage
  • _{Note: You'll need to manually add previous mileage into QuickBooks Online. Learn how to track mileage in QuickBooks Online.}

These items move to QuickBooks Online:

• Assemblies
  • _{Assemblies become Single Inventory Item on Sales Transactions}
    • _{Note: Assemblies appear on the Products and Services screen as Inventory. Each item of the assembly appears on a detail line when you view the transactions. All assembly components move for purchase transactions.} 
    • _{Note: Bundle items aren't tracked as inventory}.
      
• Discounts
  • _{Discounts for early payments (become credit memos)} 
    • _{Note: They’re applied to a customer's outstanding balance.}
  • _{Discounts taken from suppliers for early payment of bills (become supplier credits)}
    • _{Note: They're applied to a supplier's outstanding balance.}
      
• Groups
  • _{Group items (become 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
  
  

These items don’t move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Inventory Items
  • _{Manufacturer's Part Number (MPN)}
  • _{Desktop inventory item fields}

• Non-Inventory Items
  • _{Manufacturer's Part Number (MPN)}
  • _{Desktop inventory item fields}

These lists move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Chart of Accounts
  • _{QuickBooks Online has an additional level of account type called Detail. QuickBooks Online moves your accounts and assigns them Detail types. You can change this later if needed.}
  • _{QuickBooks Online will set the last A/R or A/P account that was used on a transaction as the default.}
  • _{Note: QuickBooks Online only allows for 1 default A/R & A/P account.}
    
• Customers and Jobs
  • _{Note: Jobs (sub-customers) will move as Projects in Plus and Advanced versions. If jobs in Desktop need to stay as sub-customers in QuickBooks Online, first sign up for QuickBooks Online Essentials. Then, convert the Desktop data to QuickBooks Online. After that, you can upgrade to QuickBooks Online Plus or Advanced, if needed. The sub-customer will remain sub-customers after the upgrade.}
  • _{Your jobs (become 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)}
    • _{Note: The Ship To Address converts, but not perfectly. The entire address will be placed in the main address field, leaving City, State/Province, Postal Code/Postal code, and Country blank. If you have multiple Ship To addresses, only the default transfers.} 
  • _{Tax code/item}
  • _{Preferred Payment Method}
  • _{Note (up to 4000 characters)}
  • _{Credit Card Info}
    
• Inactive Items
  • _{Inactive accounts, customers, or suppliers}
    • _{Note: If a customer has an open balance, they become active.}
  • _{If there isn't a balance tied to a name, it will move as inactive (deleted).}
    
• Memorized Transactions
  • _{Memorized Transactions will convert into Recurring Transactions.} 
  • _{Other Names (become suppliers)}
    
• Scheduled Transactions
  • _{Note: QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced, Essentials, and EasyStart support recurring transactions.}
  • _{Recurring Transactions}
  • _{Scheduled transactions  (become recurring transactions)}
    
• Terms
  • _{Note: 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.}
    
• Suppliers
  • _{Supplier Name}
  • _{Company Name}
  • _Mr./Ms.
  • _{First Name}
  • _M.I.
  • _{Last Name}
  • _Phone
  • _FAX
  • _E-Mail
  • _Terms
  • _{Print on Check as}
  • _Address
  • _AccountTax
    
    

These lists don’t move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Chart of Accounts
  • _{Bank account numbers and notes (security reasons)}
    
• 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
  • _{Memorized Transaction Groups don’t move because Groups don’t exist in QuickBooks Online.}
    
• Reminders
  
• Scheduled Transactions
  • _{QuickBooks Online EasyStart doesn't support recurring transaction templates.} 
  • _{Note: To avoid errors, you'll have to delete all scheduled transactions and templates in QuickBooks Desktop before you import to EasyStart.}
    
• To Do
  
• Suppliers
  • _Contact
  • _{Alt. Contact}
  • _Note
  • _Status
  • _{Supplier Type}
  • _{Credit Limit}
  • _{Custom Fields}
  • _{Alt. Contact}
  • _Alt-Ph.
  • _{1099 ID}

These preferences move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Closing Date Password
  
• Layout Customization
  • _{Your logos}
    
• Favourites Menu
  • _{Items you've added to the Favourites menu (can be found under Bookmarks)}
    
    

These preferences don't move to QuickBooks Online: 

• Layout Customization
  • _{Custom templates}
    
• Payment roles and permissions
  • _{Saved credit card info}
    
• Shortcut List
  • _{Your shortcut list and icon bar settings} 
  • _{Note: 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
  • _{Note: Existing users don't automatically have access to QuickBooks Online. They need to be invited from QuickBooks Online to gain access.}

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.

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.

These reports move to QuickBooks Online:

• Reconcile
  • _{Note: 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.}
    
• Favourite Reports
  
  

These reports don't move to QuickBooks Online:

• Audit Trail
  
• Memorized Reports

These transactions move to QuickBooks Online:

• Bills, Bill Payments, and Bill Credits
  • _{Note: The address on bill payment checks is replaced by the Supplier address on your Supplier list.}
  • _{A bill discount in QuickBooks Desktop (becomes a Supplier credit)}
  • _{Bill payments made by credit card}
    
• Credit Card Charges
  • _{Credit card charges (convert to Expenses)}

• Estimates
  • _{Note: 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 (become invoices in QuickBooks Online)}
  • _{Note: 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 
  • _{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}
    
• Item Receipts
  • _{Item receipts (convert to Bills)}
    
• Journal Entries
  • _{Note: You may see some transactions like checks and invoices move as journal entries. This only happens if:}
    • _{Tax rates are entered as flat rates (0.00) instead of percentages.}
    • _{The original transaction can't be created again.}
      
• Reimbursable Expenses
  • _{Reimbursable expenses and unbilled time (become billable expenses)}
  • _{Note: 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.}
    
    

These transactions don't move to QuickBooks Online:

• Bills, Bill Payments, and Bill Credits
  • _{The Bill received preference}
    
• Invoices
  • _{Subtotals don't move (but are included in the Description field)}
  • _{Progress Invoices (invoices based on estimates) and their extra fields.}
  • _{Other and Other Customer custom fields} 
  • _{Recurring payment transactions}
    
• Item Receipts
  • _{Open purchase orders (PO) (won't reflect items received)}
  • _{The link between bills and POs}
  • _{Note: The PO will need to be linked to the Bill to reflect items received.}
    
• Journal Entries
  • _{Billable statuses.} 
  • _{Note: You can't make a journal entry billable in QuickBooks Online.}
    
• Pending Sales
  
• Purchase Orders
  • _{Open POs won't reflect items received.}
  • _{The PO will need to be linked to the Bill to reflect items received.}
    
• Reconcile
  • _{Your past reconciliation reports}