Hello everyone,

I had a long conversation with support this week and was able to get this issue resolve and successfully transfer my data into QBD from QBO and I’ll share it here. Although I didn’t document every single word, I do have a good takeaway that should have most people succeed in this transfer.

A couple gotcha’s...

1). Basic cosmetic company info (name, address, ein, etc.) does not transfer - I had to go into QBD and fill it in manually.
2). If you download cleared transactions from your bank in QBO they will be in the register in QBD but will not show the bank downloaded icon so once you connect your bank and download, you’ll have a whole lot of transactions to go though and clear again.
3). All of my deposits came in with no name in the from field. All other transactions in the register seemed to be fine.
4). Previously I did not use invoking, time tracking or inventory so I can’t speak for that data.

Here are the basics:

1). I don’t care what everyone says here, you absolutely _must_ use Internet Explorer to make this transition. Nothing else will work. For me, I’m on Windows 10 and IE11. You must lower your security preferences, allow ActiveX and, add https://*.intuit.com to the trusted sites list and restart IE.
2). You absolutely _must_ have QDB open, with no company file loaded _before_ you start this process.
3). If you login to QDO and at https://qbo.intuit.com and the Settings icon disappears then remove /homepage from the URL and replace it with exportdata go to direct. This will, at some point, install an ActiveX component that does the transfer.
4). Walk though the QBO->QBD export process and at the end you’ll get a notice that your data is being exported and you need to wait for an email.
5). My data file wasn’t too big and this only took ~20 mins before I got the email. The email instructed me to go back to QBO->Tasks->Download.
6). There was no Tasks menu in my QBO at all so I pointed my browser back to the exportdata page and walked though the wizard again.
7). This time, at the end of the wizard it said a file was already waiting and I could start over or download the file; from here, download the file.
8). Make sure you download the file to whatever directory the ActiveX component chooses (for me it was \Users\brian\Documents) - this file location is prolly one of the most critical steps of the conversion, as there is no means to configure where the data importer looks for the QBXML file.
9). After the download you can start the import, which will prompt to you create a new QBD file. Again, you must create this file in the default location, don’t move it else the import will fail.
10). It is the ActiveX component in IE11 that does the import. It is very, very slow! My QBO file is 4 years worth of bank and credit card transactions and the import took just under an hour to complete. It is slow.
11). Once the import is done, run a P&L in QBO and QBD and make sure they match. If they do, you are golden.

Afterthoughts…

I did this whole thing on a sandbox computer because I just don’t trust IE and ActiveX anymore. When it was finished the very first thing I did was backup the QBD file, move it to my dedicated desktop and restore the backup of my data into a more suitable file location for my structure. All went well and all my data is present as far as I can tell. I should point out that I am by no means and accountant and have no idea how accounting works. My accountant is coming tomorrow to verify everything, reconcile 2019 and prepare my taxes. If we find any problems arising from the import/transfer then I will post back here in an effort to make everyone aware of what to expect.

Hope these suggest help someone else overcome their problems because it was sure a level 10 frustration for me, and still, I do not understand why QBO/QBD support could not post a complete and thorough writeup here rather than repetitively telling everyone to call support. It’s crazy!

-brian