Conversion from Quickbooks Pro

[Jeff Earickson]

I will second this suggestion.  I converted from Quicken 2007 (not
Quickbooks) in mid February.  I fought with qif import/export for a bit,
ended up with huge numbers in the Imbalance-USD category that I didn't know
what to do with -- frustration.  Then I decided to just start fresh from
January 1 and reenter my data manually from that point (using bank
statements from Dec 31 as "Opening Balance"). I did this for checking and
savings first, then expanded to other accounts later.

Yes, it was a fair amount of tedium and work.  But I learned about Gnucash
in the process, how to create accounts, etc.  The Gnucash guide proved to
be a great resource for the "how do I do this?" issues.

I am still keeping Quicken around to refer to prior years data, but I have
successfully made the switch to Gnucash going forward.  I'm happy with the
results.

Jeff

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:41 AM, Tommy Trussell
<tommy.trussell at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
> > -----
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>