I recently transitioned my Quickbooks Online company file to Quickbooks Desktop 2020 for Mac. It would be an understatement to say that this entire process was difficult....it was an absolute nightmare! Most of this is due to the fact that Intuit only allows you to export your QBO data from within Internet Explorer (IE). It’s 2020: IE sucks. Moreover, the majority of users transitioning to QB Desktop for Mac don’t have easy access to IE….but I digress.
Here are the 4 main issues that I encountered and how I "solved" them:
Issue #1:
I couldn’t access the “Export Data” option - the Settings dropdown doesn’t load correctly in IE (11).
**Solution: Log into your QBO account in IE and in the URL bar, replace “/app/homepage” with “/app/exportqbodatatoqbdt” and hit Enter. This will take you to the Export Data page. Continue through the steps.
Issue #2:
“Congratulations! Your QuickBooks Online Simple Start data...is ready to be downloaded”. This email mentions that when you login into your QBO account you will see a task to download this file, but no Task List is shown.
**Solution: Repeat the solution for Issue #1 to export the data “again” and then you will see an option to Download the file. Then continue through the remaining steps.
Issue #3 (note: this might not be an issue for all users - but it was for me and a few others I saw in the forums):
If you get to Step 4 in the Download data process and see a “Convert Now” button, the page will tell you that you will need to accept a security certificate prompt from within Quickbooks Desktop for Windows. This is supposed to be automatic. I attempted this several times, but it never worked...and even with Quickbooks Desktop open before I tried this step, I never saw the prompt.
**Solution: Close both IE and QB Desktop programs. Right-click the IE shortcut and select “Run as Administrator”. Do the same for QB Desktop. Then repeat the process of downloading the backup file and converting.
Issue #4:
Once I was able to accept the security certificate prompt I opened the file in QB Desktop (for Windows) to make a copy for MAC. I did this successfully, however, once I tried to import the Mac copy into my QB Desktop for Mac program, it asked for a password. I was never prompted to add/create a password during the backup process!! Ugh!
**Solution: Before you create a copy of the QB company file for Mac, make sure you have added a user/password. To do so, click on the Company menu item >> select User & Passwords >> then choose Change Password. This will be the password that you use when importing the copy file into QB Desktop Mac.
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I hope this helps solve some future headaches for some people….and good luck to all!
