Updated 01/20/2015
Hello, first of all let me explain what a .QBO file is. This is the File your bank usually allows you to manually download bank activity into QuickBooks “Online Banking” or “Bank Feeds”. Therefore if the bank gives you access to this file, then you really do not need to read this article any longer…
However, sometimes the Bank will give you transaction information in Excel or CSV format. Paypal is one example of this, you can download all the activity in Excel/CSV and no QuickBooks compatible format. In other cases you may have the banking information already in spreadsheet format because you manually entered it or maybe copy/pasted from the website. In any case, as long as you have the following columns (fields):
- Date
- Check# / Reference Number
- Payee
- Description/Memo
- Amount (single amount as negative or positive… or a debit and credit column)
…Then you are in luck. Thanks to a software maker by the name of ProperSoft, there is a utility called CSV2QBO. For $57 you can have a tool that gives you unlimited conversions from CSV to .QBO format (they also have a bunch of other tools like CSV2IIF. Great for people working with small banks that do not have QuickBooks download format option, or even for brining data entry from excel for non-bank related transactions such as a petty cash log.
The converter reads the spreadsheet, asks for mapping information (matching the spreadsheet column labels with QuickBooks compatible data) and presto! a .QBO is saved in your computer…. Then you would import the .QBO manually
And there is even a MAC version:
Other tool I have used called: 2qbo Convert Pro (which can also convert from PDF!) are also very good, I will probably write another article contrasting the three tools soon. But what I love about this one is three things: one is less than $50, two it works “outside” of excel, so it may work for more batch-style transactions, and lastly it works on MAC!!! Mac Support is very difficult to find on any QuickBooks related add-ons, so big plus!
Read my other article that discusses other types of excel data import into QuickBooks
