Find how much you have
Sign in to QuickBooks Online with an admin login. Intuit says the primary admin can access everything in the account, and company admins have the same broad access apart from a few tasks reserved for the primary admin. Go to Reports, then Standard reports, and open Transaction List by Date from the Find report by name box.
Set the Report period to cover your whole history, or a custom range starting at your first entry. Run the report. Intuit lists limits for Excel exports of 1,024 columns, 400K cells with data and 10 MB, and suggests narrowing the report period when a report is too large, so a long history may need one run per year.
Export each run to Excel and count the rows across the files. Spot-check one month against what you know to be true before you trust the total. This is your transaction count.
If you use Projects (included with QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite), open All apps, then Projects, then Projects, and count the projects. Intuit says a project groups the transactions, estimates and expenses for a single customer in one place.
On QuickBooks Desktop for Windows, open Reports Center, run the transaction report you want, and use the Excel dropdown to export it. On Mac, use the Export button on the report. You can also press F2 or Ctrl+1 (Command+1 on Mac) and read Total Targets under File Information. Intuit uses that figure for import limits when moving a file to QuickBooks Online and does not define it as a transaction count, so do not enter it as one.
Note the date of your earliest transaction. If you moved from Desktop, check whether the old years came across as individual transactions or as summaries.
What to put on your intake
Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for QuickBooks.
- What does it hold?
- Your books: invoices, estimates, bills, expenses, payments, reconciliations and, if you use Projects, income and cost by project. Say whether projects or jobs are tracked in QuickBooks or only in another system, for example: invoices, bills, payments and monthly reconciliations, with costs by project.
- Data types
- Structured records. Add Text or Image only if you attach files and are willing to license them, since attachments are exported separately and are excluded by default.
- How big is it?
- Choose Transactions and enter the row count from your Transaction List by Date exports. Put the number of projects, if any, in the description.
- Verified or estimated
- Verified when the count comes from reports covering your full date range. Estimated when you multiplied up from one year or one transaction type.
- Records start
- The date of your earliest transaction. If the file was condensed or converted from an older system, say so, because early years may be summaries rather than individual transactions.
Exporting the full history
If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of QuickBooks.
A buyer export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which years, which transaction types, whether job costing is in, and whether attachments are in. Separately, Intuit says a cancelled subscription keeps only read-only access for a limited time, so export your own copy first.
In QuickBooks Online, an admin clicks Settings (the gear), then Export data in the Tools column. On the Reports and Lists tabs, switch items on or off, set the date range on the Reports tab, then export. You get Excel files bundled in one .zip. This covers transactions that affect account balances, such as invoices, receipts and bills.
Run the items that tool does not cover separately. Estimates and purchase orders are exported from their own transaction lists with Export to Excel. Customer statements go out one customer at a time. Run the Account List, the Recurring Template List and your products and services reports as well.
Attachments are optional and separate. Go to Settings, then Attachments under Lists, select the files, open Batch actions and choose Export. They download as a zip. Attachments are the most likely place for customer details, so we agree up front whether they are in scope.
On QuickBooks Desktop, export each report from Reports Center (Excel dropdown on Windows, Export button on Mac). Intuit says reports can be exported as Excel workbooks, CSV spreadsheets or PDFs. The IIF option under File, Utilities, Export is a Lists to IIF Files export, and Intuit says you cannot export transactions with it. Make a backup of the company file first.
Developers can also read the data through the QuickBooks Online API, within Intuit's throttling limits. Under the license, customer and vendor identifiers, payroll and bank details are removed before anything reaches a buyer.
We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.
Limits to know
- There is no single export of everything. Export data covers reports and lists as Excel files in a zip. Non-posting transactions such as estimates and purchase orders, customer statements and attachments each need their own steps, and Intuit's article does not describe one export for all transactions.
- Excel exports of reports are capped at 1,024 columns, 400K cells with data and 10 MB. Narrow the report period when a report is too large, which for a long history means one run per period.
- The audit log keeps events for two years, shows 150 records at a time, and Intuit lists admin access as a requirement to view it. Intuit's audit log article does not describe exporting it, so it will not give you older change history.
- After you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription you have read-only access for one year and can export during that time. If you cancel during a free trial or it expires, data is available for 90 days and you must export in that window. If a payment is declined, access is suspended after 14 days until you resubscribe.
- Role limits matter. The View reports role cannot see the audit log or underlying transactions. Intuit describes custom roles in QuickBooks Online Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite. Intuit's pages do not list which roles may use Export data, so ask Intuit if the option is missing for an admin.
- Intuit says Projects are available with QuickBooks Online Plus, Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite, and it describes project estimates and estimate-versus-actuals tracking for Advanced. Intuit's profitability article says the Project profitability report uses only payroll expense data and is not accurate if you only track hourly time costs, though the same article mentions a Customize option for hourly costs, so check which basis your report uses. If your jobs live in other software, QuickBooks may hold only the invoices and bills.
- On QuickBooks Desktop, the IIF export is a lists export, and Intuit says you can import transactions with IIF but cannot export them. Intuit describes the Condense Data utility as removing closed transactions on or before a date you choose and summarizing them, after saving an archived copy of the file. If anyone ever ran it, keep that archived copy, because the removed years may no longer exist as individual transactions in the working file.
- The QuickBooks Online API allows 500 requests per minute per company, 10 requests per second per company and app, and returns HTTP 429 when throttled, after which Intuit says to wait 60 seconds. Batch requests are throttled separately, at 40 per minute per company and app and 120 per minute per company.
This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.
Why buyers value it
QuickBooks is where a small business keeps its books. Invoices sit next to the payments that cleared them, bills sit next to the approvals and expenses behind them, and bank reconciliations show how each month was closed. Years of this show what was actually billed, paid and written off, along with margins, payment timing and seasonality, for an agency, a software company, a distributor or a contractor alike. Where Projects is used, it ties revenue and cost to a single client engagement or job.
Buyers building bookkeeping, close, cash-flow forecasting and pricing tools need that kind of ground truth. It is strongest when paired with the system where the work itself was recorded, such as a CRM, a practice management tool or field software, because then each invoice has a scope behind it.
What stays private
Customer and vendor names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses are removed from invoices, bills and project records before delivery, along with any names typed into memo and description fields. Bank, card and routing numbers, tax IDs and anything from payroll are excluded, including employee pay, withholdings and personal details.
Attachments such as receipts, signed contracts and statements are excluded by default. Your login details, user list and permissions, and bank feed connections are not part of the license.
Common questions
Sources
Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with QuickBooks.
- Intuit: Export your QuickBooks Online data (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Common custom reports (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Fix a report that is too large to display (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Use the audit log in QuickBooks Online (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Understanding user roles and access rights (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: What happens to my QuickBooks Online data after I cancel? (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Create projects in QuickBooks Online (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Track hourly labor costs and profitability by project (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Export reports as Excel workbooks in QuickBooks Desktop (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Export, import, and edit IIF files (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit: Condense your QuickBooks Desktop file (opens in a new tab)
- Intuit Developer: API call limits and throttles (opens in a new tab)