Conversion from Quickbooks Pro

Tommy Trussell tommy.trussell at gmail.com
Wed Mar 19 10:41:27 EDT 2014


On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 8:27 AM, <gnucash at ware4.com> wrote:

> I'm spanking
> new to Gnucash - just downloaded it. I want to convert from Quickbooks and
> get away from that monopoly, but from what I've read, there's no automatic
> method to convert from Quickbooks Pro (2011) to Gnucash.or is there? I
> suppose that would be question #1 for all you Gnucash gurus. Question #2
> would be: is there anyone for hire that can do it for me? From what I read,
> it appears to require printing reports to Excel and post-processing the
> files, dealing with Journal Entries in a special way, etc.
>
> I have the software smarts to do the import since I'm a former software
> programmer, but I don't have enough accounting smarts to know if the end
> result is correct and, importantly, what needs to be tweaked in the final
> files to make sure I'm using Best Practices. If there's no automatic import
> and nobody to help, then Question #3 is: is there a partially-finished or
> abandoned project that I can complete? I don't mind dusting off my 'C' for
> the greater good. But it needs to be done by May 31 - that's when my
> Quickbooks will stop downloading and they're going to force me to purchase
> QB 2014.
>


I am going to make a contrary suggestion --

Why don't you just start USING GnuCash with your current books, and as you
have time, go back to the beginning of the current fiscal year and MANUALLY
enter your data so it's current in GnuCash. You should also keep entering
your current data in QuickBooks.

This will give you two things:

1) Experience with GnuCash, and
2) Some data to play with.

Using these two things, you can try the existing GnuCash reports, see if
the existing processes work for you, AND (until the end of May?) COMPARE
with your QuickBooks data.

THEN if you feel you MUST have your historical data in GnuCash, you can
look at what it takes to import it.

I converted from Quicken to GnuCash quite a few years ago, and my strategy
for the old data was to import one or two previous years, but keep all my
oldest historical data in an archived QIF export file. When I need to find
something, I open the QIF in a text editor, search for the relevant
strings, and puzzle out what the relevant QIF means.

I don't know if QuickBooks can create QIF, but if it can, GnuCash may be
able to import it. It just may not be worth the effort for really old data.

You might also talk to an accountant to find out how far back you need to
keep your data, and what data you might need to be able to produce on
demand. You might just print each years' reports to an
electronically-readable file back as far as your accountant recommends, and
store those on a USB drive that you keep in a safe place.



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