Export in Quickbooks Friendly Format

[GouldyFTW]

Hi,

We have built a solution for a client that tracks expenses within their business. They have now requested we extend the solution so that we can easily export the expenses as a list of transactions and import them into Quickbooks as this will save them a significant amount of time.

We expected this to be a relatively simple case of exporting CSV/Excel from FileMaker and importing a each record/row as an individual transaction into quickbooks. Turns out this is not the case! Quickbooks will only import *.iif files - which I've had a look at and it doesn't look like it's going to be easy to produce those from FileMaker!

Has anybody had any success doing an export from FileMaker which can then be easily imported to QuickBooks? Any advice here will be greatly appreciated, as this would be our preferred solution.

I've also had a quick look at FMBooks connector. We were initially put off this for two reasons, but if it is the only viable solution available we are happy to go back to it. Firstly the it is a fairly costly plugin, particularly as the client isn't sure how long they will be running quickbooks, they're considering changing to alternative software in the near future. Secondly I have downloaded the trial and the plugin seems to be all singing and all dancing (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) so it seems like a bit of an overkill to simply move a few transactions from FM to QB. This also (on first impressions) seems to make it a rather steep learning curve and complex task to integrate it into the our solution - especially considering I have never worked with QB before.

Are there any simpler (as explained above, we only need basic functionality) alternatives to FMBooks connector?

After spending a few hours with the trial of FMBooks connector, I only have a vague understanding of how to integrate it... After a few more hours experience with FMBooks Connector and QuickBooks, will integrating it into our FileMaker solution be a relatively simple task? Or will I need a working knowledge of QuickBooks to get things done effectively?

Thanks in advance for any answers/advice provided.

[bcooney]

I searched the forum for QuickBooks and found this idea from David McQueen. I've used PCI's FMBooks Connector and found it fairly straightforward once you get going. Their support is very good and responsive. Yes, you'll need to understand QB.