Migrating from AccountEdge to QuickBooks: a step-by-step guide

AccountEdge has a loyal base, but plenty of firms eventually move clients to QuickBooks for the ecosystem, integrations and cloud access. The migration is very doable — the trick is respecting how AccountEdge structures its data so nothing gets flattened on the way across.

Before you export

• Pick a cutover date on a reconciled period end.
• Choose your destination — Desktop or Online (our comparison helps).
• Run and save an AccountEdge trial balance, receivables and payables reports as of the cutover date. These are your source of truth for reconciling later.

Understand the card-file structure

AccountEdge keeps customers, vendors, employees and personal contacts as “cards.” QuickBooks separates customers and vendors into distinct lists, so part of the job is splitting cards into the right destination list and dropping anything that doesn’t belong (inactive personal cards, for example). Do this cleanly and de-duplicate before import.

The migration, in order

1. Chart of accounts first — map each AccountEdge account to a QuickBooks account and, crucially, the correct account type.
2. Customers and vendors from the card file, de-duplicated.
3. Items and price levels, with tax codes mapped to QuickBooks tax items.
4. Opening balances as a single journal dated the day before go-live, with AR and AP loaded as itemised open invoices and bills.
5. Reconcile the QuickBooks trial balance to AccountEdge, account by account, before you go live.

AccountEdge-specific gotchas

• Jobs and categories don’t map one-to-one — decide whether they become QuickBooks classes or jobs before you convert.
• Tax codes need deliberate mapping to QuickBooks tax items so tax lands in the right liability account.
• Historical detail — decide up front whether you’re bringing full transaction history or just open items and balances.