Why QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online Migrations Fail
Throughout the year, I get many requests from clients to help with QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online migrations. The most challenging ones have involved converting QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions company files, which tend to be very large and complex. Unfortunately, businesses try to do these conversions on their own or even with the help of Intuit support, only to find out after several attempts and hours and hours of support that the migration failed.
It is not very clear as to why a migration fails based on the email received from Intuit, but here are are some of the reasons that I have seen over the years:
The file is too large, or specifically, the total transactions links or targets are over 2,000,000.
The file is corrupted. Sometimes even rebuilding the QuickBooks file does work and errors need to be manually fixed.
Negative inventory, issues with FIFO (QBO) vs Average Cost (Desktop).
Missing payroll, year-to date totals not matching, employee information including direct deposit not coming over.
Issues with lists elements such as Customers, Vendors, Items, etc.
It is also important to perform the following necessary pre-migration steps:
● Reconcile all accounts
● Generate key reports (P&L, Balance Sheet, Sales Tax Liability)
● Handle outstanding sales tax liabilities
● Ensure company file is saved locally, and not hosted
● Document workflows
● Identify any add on services, such as:
○ Quickbooks Time
○ Merchant Services
○ Payroll
To ensure a smooth transition from QuickBooks Desktop (any product) to QuickBooks Online, please consider hiring me to help with this process from start to finish. Even before attempting the migration, I can go over the key differences between Desktop and Online and what gets converted and what does not. I can also provide recommendations of specific apps to use for functionality not available or not recommended to use in QuickBooks Online such as complex inventory, syncing eCommerce, importing transactions or payments from 3rd party processors, etc.
This process can take a few weeks to over several months with proper planning, including the actual migration which may take up to 24 hours. This includes training and prepping your employees so that when going live with the successful conversion to QuickBooks Online, the outcome is seamless and painless. We start with a diagnostic charged at a fixed rate to go over your company’s needs and expectations and evaluate your QuickBooks Desktop company file. Then, I can provide a quote that averages around $2,500, higher or lower depending on the results of the diagnosis.
