How to Export Chart of Accounts
Still struggling to export your chart of accounts from Quickbooks? The chart of accounts is essentially an organization tool that has a complete listing of every account attached to your Quickbooks account. Whether it’s a vendor, customer or client (or both), it will be listed in the chart of accounts. Because this document contains so much helpful information, it’s not uncommon for users to export it. But how exactly do you export a chart of accounts from Quickbooks?
Let’s first go over the basics of chart of accounts, because this is an element that confuses many users. Intuit gave a pretty good definition, comparing it to a game of Jenga.
“A chart of accounts is a lot like the game Jenga. If you take a block away from one section of your business, you have to add it back someplace else. This is because accounting systems are created in the hope that there will always be a balance between your total assets (what you own) and your liabilities (what you owe). While this is rarely the case in reality, as you may know, the difference between what you own and what you owe is your equity. The goal, of course, is to own more than you owe, so that your equity looks positive on the books and can provide for you later,” wrote Intuit on its website.
There’s actually a quick and easy way to export chart of accounts from Quickbooks. To do this, log into Quickbooks and choose File ? Export ? list as IIF. Next, select your chart of accounts from the company file and choose File > Import IIF files > and navigate to your file. Sorry if you were expecting more, but that’s all it takes to export a chart of accounts!
Keep in mind that chart of accounts should be modified in a manner that will streamline your accounting needs. There’s really no single “best” way to produce a chart of accounts since every business has different needs. A proper chart of accounts should contain all of the accounts you use on a regular basis, along with other helpful data.
Were you able to export your chart of accounts using this method? Let us know in the comments section below!