To switch from QuickBooks to Xero, choose a conversion date, usually the start of a month or financial year, then move your lists, balances and open invoices and bills. Xero's conversion partner can carry two years of transactions for free, or you can start fresh from balances. After that, connect bank feeds and import any older bank months yourself.
Three ways to switch from QuickBooks to Xero
Xero describes three routes on its page about converting from QuickBooks: an automated conversion through its partner Jet Convert, a fresh start from your balances, and a Conversion Toolbox that works from CSV files. All three bring your essential lists, including the chart of accounts. They differ in how much history comes along and who does the work.
| Route | What comes across | Who does it | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jet Convert | Chart of accounts, contacts and historical transactions such as invoices and bills | The partner, from your QuickBooks file | A live business that wants its recent history in Xero |
| Fresh start | Lists plus account balances, entered from your most recent tax return | You or your accountant | A simple business, or books that need a clean slate |
| Conversion Toolbox | Whatever you prepare in CSV files | An accountant or bookkeeper, who Xero says it suits | Unusual cases, or more history than the free conversion covers |
Xero says the automated migration takes between 20 minutes and five business days. That range matters for planning, because you want the converted file ready before your first month in Xero closes.
Which route to start with
Start by asking whether anyone will need to look up a QuickBooks invoice from last year inside Xero. If yes, the automated conversion saves real time. If your old books are messy, a fresh start avoids carrying the mess forward, and you keep the old file for lookups.
How much QuickBooks history should come with you to Xero?
Most small businesses need the current financial year and the one before it, and no more. That happens to be what Xero says it migrates for free: the current and prior fiscal year of transaction data.
Xero notes that moving more than two years may cost extra, and it asks you to contact it for several years of data or more than 6,000 items.
Think about who actually uses old history:
- Your tax preparer wants the current year complete and last year for comparison.
- A lender may ask for two years of accounts, which the free conversion already covers.
- You mostly want to look up what a customer paid and when, which a saved report from QuickBooks answers just as well.
Bank history is a separate question from accounting history. A converted file brings across the bank transactions that were recorded in QuickBooks, but the bank feed in Xero starts on its own date. The guide to how much bank history to move to new software weighs the import work behind each choice.
Picking a Xero conversion date that matches your QuickBooks books
The conversion date is the first day your books live in Xero. Everything before it stays in QuickBooks or arrives as a balance; everything on or after it is entered in Xero. Choose the first day of a month, and ideally the first day of a financial year, so no period is split between two programs.
A month start works because the closing figures of the month before are easy to prove. You can reconcile every QuickBooks bank account to its statement for that month, close the period, and carry the reconciled balances across. Picking a mid-month date forces you to reconcile to a date your bank never printed a balance for.
Questions to settle before you fix the date
- Is every QuickBooks bank and card account reconciled through the month before the conversion date?
- Have all sales and bills for that month been entered, even ones that arrived late?
- Are payroll runs for the period finished, since payroll does not migrate?
- Does your accountant agree with the date, especially if it is not a year start?
Saving QuickBooks reports and lists before you cancel
Save a full set of reports and lists from QuickBooks before you cancel, whichever route you take. In QuickBooks Online, Intuit's guide to exporting reports, lists and more shows the Export data option under the Settings gear, which bundles the reports and lists you pick as Excel files in one zip file.
The reports worth saving, at a minimum:
- Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet for every year you might be asked about.
- A general ledger or transaction detail report for the same years.
- Open invoices (accounts receivable aging) and unpaid bills (accounts payable aging) as of the day before the conversion date.
- A reconciliation report for each bank account at its last reconciled statement.
- The customer, vendor and product lists.
Estimates, purchase orders and attachments sit outside that bundle in QuickBooks Online and have their own export steps, according to the same Intuit guide. Do those too if you rely on them.
Xero bank feeds and statement imports after the QuickBooks switch
Bank lines in Xero come from two places: a live bank feed for new activity and statement files for anything the feed does not reach. Connect each bank account in Xero first, note the date of the first line the feed delivers, and fill any gap between your conversion date and that first line with imported statement files.
Closing the gap between conversion and feed
Feeds usually deliver only a limited stretch of recent history. If your conversion date is the first of the month and the feed's first line is the tenth, the first nine days are missing. The fix is a statement file covering exactly those days.
Xero takes statement imports as files, and a CSV is the easiest to check before upload. If your bank gives you a PDF statement, it has to become a file first; SimpleBankConvert is being built to produce a CSV in the layout Xero's statement import expects, and the get started page puts you on the early access list. If what you have is a spreadsheet the bank exported, an Excel to OFX converter is another way to turn rows into a bank file.
Do not double the converted months
A converted file already holds the bank transactions recorded in QuickBooks before the conversion date. Importing bank statements for those same months on top creates duplicates. Only import statements for dates the conversion did not cover.
Which QuickBooks data will not reach Xero?
Payroll is the clearest gap: Xero states that payroll information will not migrate in any of its conversion methods. Beyond that, anything the chosen route does not carry stays behind, such as older history under a fresh start or attachments you did not save. Plan to keep the QuickBooks reports for those.
A few other things tend to need rebuilding by hand:
- Bank rules. Categorization rules you built in QuickBooks are tied to that program.
- Recurring templates and repeating invoices. Set these up again in Xero and check the next due dates.
- User access. Each person who worked in QuickBooks needs a new Xero login with the right role.
- Integrations. Payment, point-of-sale and payroll apps have to be reconnected to Xero.
If you later find Xero is not the right fit, the reverse move has its own steps; switching from Xero to QuickBooks Online covers them. And if you are coming from Quicken rather than QuickBooks, the questions about history are different, as switching from Quicken to QuickBooks Online explains.
A QuickBooks-to-Xero cut-over timeline for one month
A cut-over is the short stretch where both programs matter: QuickBooks still holds the last month to close, and Xero starts taking new activity. Laying it out by date keeps you from entering the same week twice. The timeline below is an example for a business converting on November 1.
| Example date | Task | Program |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 20 | Sign up for Xero, invite your accountant, request the conversion | Xero |
| Oct 31 | Last day of entries for October | QuickBooks |
| Nov 1 | Conversion date; new sales and bills go into Xero from today | Xero |
| Nov 1 to Nov 5 | Enter late October bills, reconcile October bank statements | QuickBooks |
| Nov 6 | Export final reports and the aging lists as of Oct 31 | QuickBooks |
| Nov 7 | Connect bank feeds; note each feed's first line date | Xero |
| Nov 8 | Import a statement file for any days between Nov 1 and the feed's first line | Xero |
| Nov 30 | Reconcile November in Xero against the bank statements | Xero |
The test that the switch worked is the November reconciliation. If Xero's bank balance on November 30 matches the statement, the opening balance, the converted data and the new lines all agree.
Keep QuickBooks open in read-only use until your accountant has finished the year that the conversion date falls in. Cancel only after the tax return for that year is filed, or after you are certain the saved reports cover every question you might be asked. The choices for holding on to the old file, from read-only access to backups and saved reports, are set out in keeping old QuickBooks data after switching.
Where cut-overs usually slip
The most common slip is a sale entered in both programs during the first week, because someone kept using QuickBooks out of habit. Tell everyone who enters data the exact date QuickBooks stops taking new work. The second is a feed that reaches back past the conversion date and pulls in lines already in the converted file. Check the first page of each feed's lines on the day you connect it, and delete any that fall before the conversion date.