A chart of accounts is an index or listing of various financial accounts identified in an organization’s general ledger. Creating it in QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online saves time and efforts. Still, it is a complex process and you don’t wish to do it again and again. One solution to address this concern is to export the chart of accounts from QuickBooks to Excel, preserve it in a standard format and import it back to QuickBooks whenever required. A simple process for exporting to Excel is described below.
Exporting the File
Step 1: Open the QuickBooks or QBO company file that contains the chart of accounts you plan to export.
Step 2: Follow the route: File > Utilities > Export > List of IIF Files.
Step 3: Select Chart of Accounts from the window that pops up. It will open a ‘Save As’ dialogue box.
Step 4: Use ‘Save As’ drop-down box to browse to the folder where you wish to save the file.
Step 5: Choose an appropriate name and save the file.
By following these steps, you have exported the Charts of Accounts file to a different location.
Convert to MS Excel
Step 1: Open Excel and click ‘Text Import Wizard’. In case you are using an older Excel version, you have to follow: Data > From Text.
Step 2: As the Import Text Files box pops up, browse to the folder you saved the file to in the previous section. Open the saved file.
Step 3: Follow the steps: First, choose Delimited as the file type. Second, choose Tab as the delimiter. Third, choose General as the column data format.
Step 4: A pop-up box will ask you where to import the data. Choose ‘the existing worksheet’ and click ‘Ok’.
Step 5: Click File > Save As and save the file choosing an appropriate name in the desired folder. That’s it! The file will be saved in Excel format with .xls extension. You can import it back to QuickBooks as and when required.
While this is a simple QuickBooks to Excel conversion, many complex conversions to and from QuickBooks require experts like MMC Convert team which ensures that needs like customized conversions, multi-currency conversions and previous years accounting data conversions are fulfilled. We deal in accounting data conversion to and from Sage, Wave, QBO, Book Plus, MYOB and other popular accounting software.
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