Bringing books over
The import has to prove itself.
Moving years of history into new software is the part people put off, because you can't easily tell whether the result is right. So Due North checks: it won't call an import finished until your new numbers agree with your old ones exactly.
01Export from your current software
A handful of exports: your accounts, your transactions, your names, and the balance sheet and P&L you want to check the result against. The wizard walks you through which reports to run and which columns to switch on, one screen at a time.
02Upload them together
Everything comes in as one labelled import you can see before you keep it. Accounts arrive with their types, transactions keep their dates, memos, names and categories, and split transactions stay split. Uploading the same file twice won't double-count anything.
03Check it against your own reports
This is the step that matters. Due North rebuilds your balance sheet and P&L from what it just imported and compares them to the reports you exported — every account, not just the totals. Match to the cent and the import is marked verified. A cent out and it tells you which line, and by how much.
04Keep it, or throw all of it away
An import that doesn't reconcile is one you delete in a single click and try again with a better export. Nothing partial is left behind for you to find in March.
Why the checking step exists
Real files are stranger than you'd think.
None of these are hypotheticals. Each one quietly broke a real import before we found it, and each is now something the importer handles for you.
Coming from QuickBooks
- The exports keep changing. Two exports of the same company six months apart came out in completely different layouts. Both of them import.
- Some amounts arrive backwards. Depending on the account, QuickBooks reports the same figure with the opposite sign — which is exactly the sort of thing that turns a loan balance into a windfall if nobody checks.
- Classes are left out by default. Export your transactions without switching that column on and your per-property tags are simply gone. The wizard catches it before you waste an afternoon.
- Future-dated entries count. Rent entered ahead of time sits in the future, so the totals are compared the same way QuickBooks adds them up.
Coming from Quicken
- Categories have to be read, not guessed. Guessing income from expense by looking at the first transaction got 32 categories wrong on one real file — a refund at the top is enough to flip one. The file says which is which, so we use that.
- Loans hide. Quicken tucks loan accounts away differently from everything else. Missing them lost a $200k mortgage and filed the rest as ordinary bank accounts.
- Transfers show up twice. Paycheck deductions and loan payments appear in both accounts, itemised on one side and lumped together on the other. Pairing them up correctly is what keeps five figures of money that doesn’t exist out of your books.
- Every account is checked against itself. Each imported balance is compared to the sum of its own transactions, so a quiet gap in one account can’t hide behind a total that happens to look right.
Honest limits
What doesn't come across
Better to read this now than discover it later.
- Individual stock and fund trades. Investment accounts come across holding the cash you moved into them, which is what cash-basis books need, but the buys and sells inside them don't.
- Receipts stored inside a Quicken file. Receipts exported from QuickBooks do come across — include the zip with your other files and each one is matched back to its transaction.
- Payroll detail. Paychecks import as transactions; tax tables and filings do not.
- Budgets, memorised transactions, saved report layouts and scheduled reminders.
- Transfers pointing at accounts you deleted years ago. They're imported and flagged so you can put them somewhere sensible.
Bring the messiest file you have.
Run the import, read the comparison, and judge it on whether your own totals come back exactly. If they don't, throw it away — it costs you an afternoon and nothing else.