After your conversion has completed, there are some essential steps to do before getting started with the QuickBooks Online (see the details for each step below):
1 - Configure your QuickBooks Online account
2 - Reconcile your bank accounts
3 - Enable VAT in the QuickBooks Online
4 - Verify the conversion
5 - Change Petty Cash account in QuickBooks Online (Optional)
6 - Match the unmatched entries
7 - Check retained earnings
8 - Check and change your account types
9 - If you used multi-currency, revalue your foreign nominal codes (and banks)
10 - Check for specific post-conversion tasks for your source system
Step 1 - Configure your QuickBooks Online account
1. Set the start of your financial year
The most important setting is the start of your financial year.
1. Login to QuickBooks Online
2. Click on the cog in the right top
3. Go to Account and Settings
4. In Advanced settings - set your start of the financial year to the correct month (this has to align with your old settings in the previous system)
2. Reconnect your bank accounts
You will also have to reconnect your bank accounts in QuickBooks Online (via their regular process).
Step 2 - Reconcile your bank accounts
After the conversion, the QuickBooks Online does not know the state of the transactions on the bank accounts. As far as the QuickBooks Online is concerned, all bank accounts are unreconciled, hence we need to reconcile them and to align the QuickBooks Online.
For each bank account, follow these steps:
1. Open the bank account
Open the bank account by clicking on it in the overview of the home screen (or from the left side menu: Accounting > Chart of Accounts).
2. Click "Reconcile" in the right top
Click "Get started" in the wizard.
If a popup appears, select "Maybe later".
3. Fill in the fields and click "Start reconciling"
In the Ending balance use the ending balance of the account. (This should match the last reconciled balance in the source system, for example, Sage50).
You should have it in the reports if you have followed the pre-conversion checklist for your system.
If you did not do it, just take the balance from the balance sheet available from the left side menu: Accounting > Chart of Accounts.
The Ending date is the date of the last reconciliation performed in the source system.
4. Select the transactions to reconcile
If you followed the pre-conversion checklist and reconciled your bank account fully, you can select all transactions for reconciliation. Else, you might need to deselect some transactions (the ones you did not reconcile).
If all transactions were reconciled, select all transactions by clicking the radio button on the right hand side. The QuickBooks Online will ask you to confirm if you want to select all transactions. Click "Yes, select all".
You can still deselect any transactions, if needed, by clicking the radio button on the right hand side of the respective transaction.
5. Finish reconciling
To finish reconciling click "Finish now".
Now the QuickBooks Online will track the bank transactions.
Step 3 - Enable VAT in the QuickBooks Online
Since Dataswitcher does not convert VAT to prevent differences between the conversions (and loss of information), we need to enable VAT.
1. Click "Taxes" or "GST" (depending on your country terminology conventions) in the left hand menu.
2. Click "Set up VAT" or "Get started"
3. Follow the wizard steps till finish.
QuickBooks is not aware of any VAT before the conversion period. This is why you have to follow the following guide for the first time to finalise enabling VAT.
Click here to read more about your first VAT report.
Step 4 - Verify the conversion
After you have finished the post-conversion steps above, you will need to double check your conversion.
Click here to find out how to check your conversion.
Step 5 - Change Petty Cash account in QuickBooks Online (Optional)
Optionally you can change the Petty Cash account in the QuickBooks Online to be reflected as a bank account.
Select the cash account and do the following changes:
1. Change the account type to "Cash at bank and in hand"
2. Change the Detail type to "Cash on hand"
to make the account appear in your bank accounts overview on the dashboard.
Step 6 - Match the unmatched entries
Because of the limitations in the QuickBooks Online API, you will need to manually link journal entries to bills, or in some cases also to sales invoices.
The final balance of the supplier should be fine. If you do not link the journal entries (for example, purchase on accounts) to the invoices, the trial balance will show wrong balances because the trial balance uses this information to determine the open supplier amounts.
For every supplier follow these steps:
1. Open a supplier
2. If the open amount does not equal the overdue amount, go to step 3, otherwise go to the next supplier
3. Click "New cheque" in the right top
4. Click "Add all"
5. QuickBooks will automatically make a payment linking the journal entries and the bills (amount paid should be 0.00)
6. Click Save and close
Please be aware of this limitation, as the limitation might also mean your trial balances for debtors for the conversion might not be correct. The reason is because this single payment you are making is actually dated as of today.
You might also need to do this in some cases, where the journal entry was not linked to a sales invoice.
You can also read this article for more information about the root cause of this issue.
Step 7 - Check retained earnings
Make sure you agree to the retained earnings before the conversion date. More detailed instructions if applicable are in the post-conversion tasks of your source system.
Step 8 - Check and change your account types
Dataswitcher brings over the main types for nominal codes, but not the specific types (subtypes) if those exist in your source system. You are free to change the nominal codes types after the conversion to something you see better fitting.
Also in some cases, if your ranges were incorrect in the source system, we brought balance accounts over as Profit and Loss accounts. This might have affected the retained earnings of previous years.
Step 9 - If you used multi-currency, revalue your foreign nominal codes (and banks)
Refer to this support article if your source system did not support the multi currency conversion and the conversion was done in home currency.
If you converted from the source system that does and checked multi currency option, you can follow the steps below.
The foreign balances of the conversion line up, but the home currency amounts do not (depending on when you did your last revaluation in the source system). To correct this:
1. Go to the top menu
2. Pick "Currencies"
3. For each foreign currency, pick "Revalue currency":
In the following screen you can revalue the bank accounts and nominal codes of that currency, to have the correct end balances (in the home currency). You do this by backtracking to your latest exchange rate and filling this in the custom field.
When you click revalue and save, the QuickBooks Online will automatically create a journal entry for you, so that the home currencies are correct from that point on.
Please note that we might have to move some amounts from bank accounts to revaluations. This is because some data in the source systems might be corrupt. It should, however, not be more than a couple of pounds or dollars.
Step 10 - Check for specific post-conversion tasks for your source system
Check the articles on the right hand side in the Related articles section or check in our Knowledge base - Post-conversion category section.
Click here to go to the Knowledge base - Post-conversion category