What the file is
Return Ready exports the books as a QuickBooks IIF file: a chart of accounts followed by one general journal entry per posting, every entry balanced, every account named in a form QuickBooks accepts. It is the same journal that is on the screen and in the Excel workbook, so the figures agree by construction. Account names are kept to QuickBooks' 31-character limit and each entry carries the client's own description as its memo.
QuickBooks Desktop
- Make a backup of the company file first. An IIF import cannot be undone with one click.
- Prefer a fresh company file for a cleanup year. Importing a year of entries into a file that already has entries for that year gives you both.
- File → Utilities → Import → IIF Files, choose the file, and let it run. Accounts that do not exist yet are created from the list at the top of the file.
- Open the trial balance report for the year end and compare it to the one in the workbook. They should match to the cent; if they do not, the usual cause is an account that already existed under a slightly different name, which QuickBooks will have created a second of.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online does not read IIF files. Two routes work:
- Import the journal. The Excel workbook's Journal sheet lists every entry with its lines; QuickBooks Online's journal-entry import takes a spreadsheet in that shape. Map the columns once and import.
- Enter the year-end position. For a cleanup year most firms do not want every posting in the live file; they want the year to start right. Post the year-end trial balance as one opening journal in QuickBooks Online and keep the full ledger in the workbook as the record.
Most preparers skip QuickBooks entirely
For a tax return the books do not need to be in QuickBooks at all. Lacerte, ProSeries, UltraTax, Drake and CCH all import a trial balance from a four-column file: account number, name, debit, credit. That file is one of the three downloads, and it is what a preparer actually needs on the day. QuickBooks matters when the business is going to keep books there going forward, in which case a bank connection in Return Ready keeps them current without anybody importing anything.
See what your CPA needs for the full list, or the firm view.
Questions people ask
- Does the import include the bank transactions themselves?
- Each statement line is in the journal as a posting, with the bank's description as the memo. It does not import as a bank feed; there is nothing to "match" afterwards.
- Will my chart of accounts match?
- The chart is a standard small-business chart with numbered accounts. If your QuickBooks file already uses different names, reclass in Return Ready before exporting, or import into a fresh company. Two slightly different names become two accounts in QuickBooks.
- Xero?
- Xero imports a manual journal from a spreadsheet; the workbook's Journal sheet is the source. The trial-balance CSV also goes into Xero's conversion balances for a clean start.
- Who does the import?
- Usually the preparer or their bookkeeper; it is a ten-minute job for someone who has done it before. If you are doing it yourself, do it in a fresh company file first.