Conversion from Quickbooks Pro

Wed Mar 19 13:27:49 EDT 2014

On 19 Mar 2014, at 15:27, Jeff Earickson <jaearick at colby.edu> wrote:

> 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

I support this method too, Tommy.

I had been using TAS Books in my business and for my own personal accounts, and had to decide whether to pay up for the annual upgrades when I retired.

I ran both TAS Books and Gnucash in parallel for one full financial year, and then abandoned TAS Books.

There is no way of importing TAS Books files into Gnucash, but during the overlap year I entered transactions into TAS while continuing to print out a transaction log after each session - I’d been doing this in any case, as a form of backup, but it made the chore of entering the same transactions twice much less onerous, as the transactions were neatly listed in a consistent form, and I could just mark each one as I put it through Gnucash.

I recommend that you set up a chart of accounts in Gnucash, with opening balances etc., exactly mimicking the state of your finances at the beginning of your current financial year - presumably 1st June 2013? - and populate your Gnucash file by keying in transactions from the Quickbooks from the same date. As you go, you should reconcile your bank and credit card accounts, and pick up and correct any discrepancies. This way you’ll become familiar with Gnucash while still having the comfort blanket of your existing software and the ability to cross-reference.

You’ll find a wealth of experience here to support and guide you.

Michael

> 
> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
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