Access Import for QuickBooks Data

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5/23/2012 11:34:26 AM
Access Import for QuickBooks Data
By Richard Rost

I have a customer who NEEDS to be able to import QuickBooks data into his Access database on a regular basis. Once a month he wants to download his banking info from his bank's web site which is in QuickBooks format (a pretty standard format) but instead of using QuickBooks, he wants to pull that data into his Access database to track his expenses.

This is a semi-complicated thing to do because although QuickBooks data is a standard TEXT file, you have to read the fields a specific way... then of course you have to check for duplicate entries, and so on.

The reason why I'm posting this here is because I want to know if ANYONE ELSE is interested in seeing how to do this? If a handful of you are interested then I'll make this into a mini seminar. If not, I'll just build it for him and be done with it.

So... if you want to see a mini seminar for this, click here to VOTE FOR IT ON THE WAITING LIST. I put an estimated price of $29.99 for it... but it could be less depending on how long the seminar is. I can't see it being more than a 2 hour seminar... unless I decide to go crazy and add a bunch of cool extraneous stuff like I always do (but remember, I'll NEVER automatically charge you MORE than what is listed on the Waiting List without checking with you FIRST).

Also, feel free to sound off here and post your comments about this seminar. What additional topics would you like to see covered? Should this just be a quickie or would you like to see lots of extra stuff?

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Access to Quickbooks Comment from Colin M @ 2/18/2015

Yes, I found this Intuit article. Haven't tried following it yet. Need a simple process if customers are to do the export and import process.

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Access to Quickbooks Comment from Colin M @ 2/18/2015

I would also love to see a seminar to export access customers, vendors, orders, invoices and purchase orders and import to Quickbooks. I am developing an order entry system, and need to include this feature to make it marketable. Intuit says that it needs to be in Intuit Interchange (.IIF) format. Quickbooks has an import utility in the File menu, but like anything Intuit it is as clear as mud.

I might even be open to a custom solution.

Reply from Alex Hedley:

I'm not sure this has had many votes but worth a mention, it might spur others to request it to.

One option would be to export a file from QB, then look at the file in a text editor.
You could then write a VBA function to build this ASCII file and just save as the IIF extension.
(Can't remember if this has been covered in an Access tut or seminar but a text file is created in VB202 Which shouldn't be hard to translate.)
Prob take some trial and error to get right but sounds do-able.

Have you seen this Article?

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Access to Quickbooks Comment from John Hirschy @ 9/23/2014

I would be much more interested in taking transaction data from Access to QuickBooks. I want to make journal entries by importing from Access.

Reply from Rick Rost:

I'll be honest, I haven't used Quickbooks in several years, but I'm pretty sure there's a way to import data from external sources (like Excel sheets). Access can export in pretty much any format. So that should solve your problem right there.

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Willem @ 6/29/2012

Not really interested in the quick books, but in the import without duplicates and maybe and update of the tables according to the data file

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Debbie @ 6/28/2012

i've purchased the qodbc drivers for quickbooks and if you ever do any seminars on running queries and reports with the qodbc drivers i'm in!

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Phil @ 6/13/2012

I think this is great, it would also be helpful if we could import inventory and general Quickbooks data export files and do useful things with them.

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Judy B @ 5/28/2012

I would be very interested in the parsing of the text file.
Referencing the Statements , I thought (if... apples to apples) using ODBC connections would update data fields for statements directly from QuickBooks. Again, assuming access to QuickBooks files.

Reply from Richard Rost:

That is true, but I'm not really interested in attaching directly to QuickBooks. What I want to do is provide a way for people who DON'T USE QUICKBOOKS (like me) to download their transaction history from their BANK WEB SITE and import that into Access. Most banks offer a QuickBooks or Excel file download of your last 6 months of transactions. The QuickBooks file is plain text and easy to read in. I could probably show Excel too, but my bank only provides QB, so... :)

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Judy B @ 5/27/2012

Richard,
Will you be using odbc to accomplish this?
I am a Diamond QuickBooks Pro Advisor and I am always looking for options for my clients. I am familiar with the QuickBooks database and it can be tricky.
I can see this being a very helpful course.
Judy

Reply from Richard Rost:

I might show the option of using ODBC. Honestly, I was just going to parse their text file... just like pulling in XML data. Very easy to do once you understand basic file I/O.

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Access Import for QuickBooks Data Comment from Rob Miller @ 5/24/2012

Richard, YES! I would like to see importing QuickBooks data into Access. Our church uses QuickBooks and I use Access to send Giving Statements to our members on behalf of our church and I need to be able to pull the financial data from QuickBooks on a regular basis to do the Giving Statements. It is always a hassle in doing do because I have to manually clean up the data (removing duplicates, etc.) before importing. Doing this programatically would be most helpful!

Thank you for your consideration!
Rob

Reply from Richard Rost:

Sounds good. Anybody else?

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