Move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online the right way — real transactions entered, every account reconciled to the penny, and zero downtime while we do it.
Cost & timeline
One fixed price, quoted free after we see your file’s vital statistics — size, targets, years, payroll and inventory use. Clean small files convert in days; large or damaged files that need pre-conversion surgery take longer, and you’ll know which yours is before spending anything. Compare that against the real cost of a botched DIY run: weeks of unreconciled books, a payroll history you can’t drill into, and re-doing the conversion anyway. The fee includes the reconciliation pack and 30 days of post-move support.
Numerawise converts QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online for US businesses — the full company file, not summary balances. We enter your real transactions, reconcile every bank and credit-card account to the penny, match A/R and A/P invoice by invoice, and keep you running in Desktop until Online is verified. With Intuit phasing out several Desktop products, moving to the cloud is increasingly the right call — here is exactly what transfers and how we do it.
Your chart of accounts, customers and vendors, open invoices and bills, and account balances all carry across. Detailed transaction history transfers within the scope you choose; QuickBooks Online has practical limits on how much detail imports automatically, so we bring in full detail for recent years and monthly balances for older periods, reconciled either way.
Some Desktop features don’t have a one-to-one match in Online — things like certain memorized transactions, complex inventory/assemblies, payroll history, and some report formats. We map these deliberately rather than dropping them: rebuilding recurring transactions, reconciling inventory, and setting up your app stack (Bill.com, Expensify, and payroll) on the Online side.
1. We review your Desktop file and agree scope and cutover date. 2. We set up QuickBooks Online correctly and enter transactions in the background — you keep working in Desktop. 3. We reconcile every account to the penny against your Desktop numbers. 4. Only once everything ties do we switch you over, with your integrations reconnected and a books-ready handover.
Most single-entity conversions run about 2–3 weeks end to end, priced as a flat, all-inclusive fee once we see rough transaction volume — no per-transaction or hourly add-ons. See all our conversion services or read our guide on converting QuickBooks Online back to Desktop.
Can you convert QuickBooks Desktop to Online with full history?
Yes. We enter real transactions and reconcile to the penny. We bring in full detail for recent years and monthly balances for older periods, so your reports and balances tie out exactly.
Will my business have downtime during the conversion?
No. You keep operating in QuickBooks Desktop for the entire project. We only switch you to Online once every account has been verified against your Desktop file.
What doesn't transfer from Desktop to Online?
Some memorized transactions, complex inventory/assemblies, payroll history, and certain report formats don't map one-to-one. We rebuild or reconcile these by hand rather than losing them.
How much does a QuickBooks Desktop to Online conversion cost?
It's a flat, all-inclusive fee based on your file's transaction volume — no hourly billing. Send us your file details and we'll scope it the same business day.
Will our reconciliation history survive the move to QuickBooks Online?
No — reconciliation reports don't transfer with Intuit's tool; every account arrives showing as never reconciled. We archive your Desktop reconciliation reports and re-establish a clean reconciliation baseline in QBO as part of the engagement.
The free tool vs a real migration
Intuit’s built-in Desktop-to-Online migration is free and, for small clean files, genuinely fine. Know its edges before you rely on it: files beyond roughly 750,000 targets won’t convert directly at all, and even successful runs leave things behind — payroll history arrives as lump-sum journal entries rather than per-employee detail, reconciliation reports don’t carry (every account shows as never reconciled), inventory moves to FIFO and frequently needs revaluation, and memorized reports, custom templates and audit trails stay in Desktop. Sales tax setup usually needs rebuilding rather than trusting.
Our rule of thumb, honestly offered: if your file is small, service-based, without payroll or inventory, run Intuit’s tool yourself — you don’t need us. If your file is large, old, inventory-carrying, payroll-heavy, or has ever been condensed or repaired, that’s when the free path produces a QBO file that looks migrated but doesn’t reconcile — and unwinding that later costs more than doing it right once.
We take the file through conversion with the failure points handled: pre-conversion file health check and cleanup, the conversion itself (direct or rebuilt where the tool can’t cope), inventory revalued, payroll and sales tax re-established correctly, and a trial-balance, AR and AP reconciliation against the original Desktop file — documented and handed over. Fixed price, known before we start, with 30 days of post-move support.
Numerawise runs the full conversion — real transactions entered, every account reconciled to the penny, zero downtime. Tell us your file and we’ll scope it same business day.