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Move your lists to QuickBooks Online

by Intuit•5• Updated 2 months ago

Learn how to import your lists (suppliers, customers, inventory, and chart of accounts) to QuickBooks Online.

You can move your existing lists to QuickBooks Online from QuickBooks Desktop or another QuickBooks Online company. This saves you from having to set up the items from your lists one by one.

In this article, you'll learn how to:

Need to import bank transactions too? Connect your account to QuickBooks to download transactions automatically.

Note: The Products and Services page is not available in QuickBooks Ledger.



Step 1: Export your list reports to Excel

From another QuickBooks Online company:

  1. Sign in to the account that has your lists.
  2. Go to Reports (Take me there).
  3. Depending on which list you need to export, search for and run Account List, Customer Contact List, Supplier Contact List, or Product/Service List report.
  4. Customize the list report's columns. See the info for each report below to check how their columns should be ordered.

Note: The list of columns that you see in your report may vary depending upon the columns you've selected. To modify this selection, go to the Columns icon in the report header and select or clear the columns as required.

Account List Report

  • Full name
  • Account type
  • Account Subtype
  • Description
  • Total Balance

Customer Contact List Report

  • Customer full name
  • Telephone
  • Fax
  • Mobile
  • Email address
  • Billing address
  • Billing city
  • Billing province
  • Billing Postal code
  • Billing country
  • Shipping address

Supplier Contact List Report

  • Full name
  • Telephone
  • Fax
  • Mobile
  • Email
  • Billing address
  • Billing city
  • Billing province
  • Billing postal code
  • Billing country
  • Account number

Product/Service List Report

  • Name
  • Product/Service type
  • Description
  • Sales Price
  • Purchase Price
  • Inventory start date
  • Quantity on hand
  1. After saving your report, export it.
  2. Open the exported report in Excel.
  3. Delete rows 1-4 to remove your company name and report title from the sheet.
  4. Save your report again as Excel or CSV.

From a QuickBooks Desktop company:

  1. Sign in to the QuickBooks Desktop company file.
  2. Go to Reports and select Lists.
  3. Depending on what list you need to export, run Account Listing, Item Listing, Customer Contact List, or Supplier Contact List report.
  4. Export the report to Excel.


Step 2: Import your lists to QuickBooks Online

After you export and save your reports, you can import them to QuickBooks Online.

For detailed steps on importing each list, see these articles:

Note: To see how your Excel files should look, download and open these samples:



Get help with common errors when importing lists

Errors on items that are already in your company

You may get errors on items that are already in your company. For example, the "Hours" and "Services" items that are created by default. The best thing to do is not to import these items. The rest of your items should still get imported.

Errors for non-existent accounts

If importing Products/Services, cancel the import, make sure that those accounts exist, and then try again. To avoid this error, either import your Chart of Accounts first before your Products and Services list. Or if you have just one or two missing accounts, you may want to create them manually after the import.

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