PDF to QuickBooks ® Tutorial

PDF to QuickBooks Desktop

Both 2qbo Convert Pro and pdf2qbo Convert allow you to take a PDF bank statement and import the transactions automatically into a QuickBooks®-ready .qbo file. Not only can this save many hours of drudgery, but also reduce the chance of error associated with manual-entry bookkeeping.

Getting Started

MoneyThumb converters work with both scanned and downloaded statements. 2qbo Convert Pro and pdf2qbo Convert will convert most downloaded statements, as downloaded statements are generally text-based PDF. For scanned, image-based, or encrypted documents, you will need PDF+, which comes bundled with 2qbo Convert Pro+ and pdf2qbo Convert+. If you’re not sure which type of PDF you need to convert, see https://www.moneythumb.com/pdf-types/.

This tutorial is based on a short bank statement containing 1 check, 4 withdrawals, and 2 deposits. The converter will work equally well on statements with hundreds of transactions.

Step I - PDF Converter Setup

Run either 2qbo Convert Pro/Pro+ or pdf2qbo Convert/Convert+

1. Select the Settings button to bring up the Settings dialog
2. The Settings menu is divided into three columns. In the left column you should specify the QuickBooks account type, lookup the FID of the bank to import into, and specify the account number. If your bank is not listed, then QuickBooks will not import transactions using that bank name, and you have to select a different bank. But you can still name the account anything you want. For our example we will just use the name 'National Bank' which is the name of a bank in Texas.
3. In the middle column, if you have a scanned image, it is good idea to select the option for Always run PDF+ text recognition (OCR). The converter will automatically run PDF+ when the file only has scanned images, but some scanners will automatically run a built-in OCR, and the scanned file will then have both text and images (a searchable PDF). In that case you need to specify that PDF+ should run regardless of whether there is text in the PDF. The other options can generally be left as defaults.
4. On the right column you should select the correct date type (month-day vs. day-month). The option to switch signs is generally set correctly based on your account type (bank vs credit card), you can review that later. The checkbox to use the assigned column names should be unchecked the first time you run a conversion with a new bank, and then will automatically be checked on subsequent conversions.

Step II - Extract Transactions and Create the .qbo file

1. Run the conversion by selecting the big Convert button, which will bring a file chooser. Select the PDF statement to be converted. The first time you run the converter you should select the Preview button to make sure the data is correctly identified. Subsequent conversions with statements from the same bank can be converted in a single step by selecting the Convert to .qbo button.
   • If you are running 2qbo Convert Pro you can also use the Convert to csv button to create a CSV file, editable in Excel® or other spreadsheet software, in order to make manual adjustments and tweaks to your data. Then select the .csv file and convert it to .qbo format. In 2qbo Convert Pro you can also select multiple files for conversion. Use Shift-Click or Ctrl-Click to do that.

   

   The converter will extract financial transactions from the statement, automatically discarding extra headers, footers, summaries, ads, and other extraneous information in the statement. The converter will display a log with setting information, a summary of each transaction that was extracted, and a reconciliation report.

1. Preview mode will bring up a spreadsheet-like dialog for confirming the transaction information extracted from the PDF Statement. At the top right is a summary of the information found in the statement; this is automatically updated as you make changes.
2. Verify the account type as a bank or credit card. You can also change the QuickBooks account information from this screen.
3. Verify the names of each column, using the pull down menus at the bottom of each column to specify the type of data in that column. This is the most important aspect of preview mode. Most of the columns will automatically be correctly identified, but sometimes the names need to be modified.
   • There should be one Date column
   • Amounts can either be in one column, or two columns with one for Credits and one for Debits. If there is one column with both credits and debits and all the amounts are positive then there should be another column that contains the transaction Type i.e. credit/debit or cr/db.
   • The Payee name is taken from the left most description column and/or the first line of each transaction. Some banks have very long payee names, prefaced by things such as “Check card payment on …” Because .qbo format limits the payee to 32 characters, useful information can be lost. One solution for that is to put the payee in both the payee field and the start of the memo field. We will use the Payee & Memo column name to put information in both fields – the QuickBooks Payee will have the first 32 characters and the QuickBooks Memo will have the entire string. Other banks use that first column more like a transaction type (Deposit, Credit etc.) and you will need to select a different column as the Payee name.
   • The Memo field contains text from additional lines in the transaction, or additional description columns. Sometimes there are two such columns and you can use Memo Add-on to specify that a second field be concatenated to the Memo field. You can combine Payee & Memo, Memo, and Memo Add-on to merge the contents of 3 columns; the .qbo memo field can contain up to 256 characters.
   • The rightmost column labeled Use determines whether a transaction will be output to the .qbo file or skipped. You can select or unselect all the transactions by selecting the selecting the Use box in the footer.
   • Each column name can only be used once - if you need to make many changes, use the Clear button at the bottom to clear out all the column names and start over.
   • In our example the only change we will make is to identify the column with the description as Payee & Memo. Since some descriptions are longer than 32 characters this will ensure that we get the full description into QuickBooks.
4. Verify that the signs of amounts are correct. Checking accounts normally have charges as negative numbers and credit card statements have charges as positive numbers. QuickBooks wants all charges as negative numbers. Use the checkbox for Switch signs of amounts if necessary.
5. If you either have PDF+ installed or are running 2qbo Convert Pro
   you can also edit individual transactions. Select and edit each field as you would in a spreadsheet. Transactions shown in yellow by PDF+ should be corrected, or possibly ignored. You can also create new translations using the Add Transaction button.
6. When everything looks correct select the Create .qbo button to create a .qbo file containing all the transactions for input into QuickBooks®. The log will update to show the number of transactions written to the .qbo file.

Step III - Import the .qbo file into QuickBooks Desktop

Note that this procedure is for QuickBooks Desktop. For QuickBooks Online please click the other tab above.

1. Open the .qbo file in QuickBooks.
   For QuickBooks desktop, you can do this either by double-clicking the .qbo file in a folder listing, or from within QuickBooks, select Banking menu, Bank Feed, and Import Web Connect File.
2. The first time you import a .qbo file from a new bank, QuickBooks will offer to create new account. QuickBooks will identify the bank name from the FID you selected in the converter. However, you can still name the account with whatever bank name you want. Enter a name for the account and create the account. In this example we used the FID from National Bank, which is a bank in Texas.
3. After importing, QuickBooks will show a message that there are transactions are waiting to be added into QuickBooks.
   Select the Transaction List button which will bring up a list of the transactions such as below. The column labeled Downloaded As is the payee name or description from the PDF statement.
4. For each transaction you will need to assign a QuickBooks Payee and a QuickBooks Account. This process is simplified as QuickBooks can automatically create rules as you make these assignments. In the example, click in the Payee column on the first transaction, and enter a payee of Kanawha Insurance. Then click in the Account column column on that transaction and select an account such as Insurance Expense. Next in the action column, select Quick Add to add the payee and accept that transaction. Depending on your setup, QuickBooks may prompt you to create a rule, or create a rule automatically.
5. Once a rule has been created, QuickBooks will automatically set the Payee and Account for another transaction with the same downloaded payee name.
6. For the other transactions, assign QuickBooks payees if desired and select an appropriate account. After all the transactions have been accepted, go to the account register and view the transaction data that come from the PDF Statement. You can also verify that account balance verifies with the account balance from the original PDF bank statement.

PDF to QuickBooks Online

Both 2qbo Convert Pro and pdf2qbo Convert allow you to take a PDF bank statement and import the transactions automatically into a QuickBooks®-ready .qbo file. Not only can this save many hours of drudgery, but also reduce the chance of error associated with manual-entry bookkeeping.

Getting Started

MoneyThumb converters work with both scanned and downloaded statements. 2qbo Convert Pro and pdf2qbo Convert will convert most downloaded statements, as downloaded statements are generally text-based PDF. For scanned, image-based, or encrypted documents, you will need PDF+, which comes bundled with 2qbo Convert Pro+ and pdf2qbo Convert+. If you’re not sure which type of PDF you need to convert, see https://www.moneythumb.com/pdf-types/.

This tutorial is based on a short bank statement containing 1 check, 4 withdrawals, and 2 deposits. The converter will work equally well on statements with hundreds of transactions.

Step I - PDF Converter Setup

Run either 2qbo Convert Pro/Pro+ or pdf2qbo Convert/Convert+

1. Select the Settings button to bring up the Settings dialog
2. The Settings menu is divided into three columns. In the left column you should specify the QuickBooks account type, lookup the FID of the bank to import into, and specify the account number. If your bank is not listed, then QuickBooks will not import transactions using that bank name, and you have to select a different bank. But you can still name the account anything you want. For our example we will just use the name 'National Bank' which is the name of a bank in Texas.
3. In the middle column, if you have a scanned image, it is good idea to select the option for Always run PDF+ text recognition (OCR). The converter will automatically run PDF+ when the file only has scanned images, but some scanners will automatically run a built-in OCR, and the scanned file will then have both text and images (a searchable PDF). In that case you need to specify that PDF+ should run regardless of whether there is text in the PDF. The other options can generally be left as defaults.
4. On the right column you should select the correct date type (month-day vs. day-month). The option to switch signs is generally set correctly based on your account type (bank vs credit card), you can review that later. The checkbox to use the assigned column names should be unchecked the first time you run a conversion with a new bank, and then will automatically be checked on subsequent conversions.

Step II - Extract Transactions and Create the .qbo file

1. Run the conversion by selecting the big Convert button, which will bring a file chooser. Select the PDF statement to be converted. The first time you run the converter you should select the Preview button to make sure the data is correctly identified. Subsequent conversions with statements from the same bank can be converted in a single step by selecting the Convert to .qbo button.
   • If you are running 2qbo Convert Pro you can also use the Convert to csv button to create a CSV file, editable in Excel® or other spreadsheet software, in order to make manual adjustments and tweaks to your data. Then select the .csv file and convert it to .qbo format. In 2qbo Convert Pro you can also select multiple files for conversion. Use Shift-Click or Ctrl-Click to do that.

   

   The converter will extract financial transactions from the statement, automatically discarding extra headers, footers, summaries, ads, and other extraneous information in the statement. The converter will display a log with setting information, a summary of each transaction that was extracted, and a reconciliation report.

1. Preview mode will bring up a spreadsheet-like dialog for confirming the transaction information extracted from the PDF Statement. At the top right is a summary of the information found in the statement; this is automatically updated as you make changes.
2. Verify the account type as a bank or credit card. You can also change the QuickBooks account information from this screen.
3. Verify the names of each column, using the pull down menus at the bottom of each column to specify the type of data in that column. This is the most important aspect of preview mode. Most of the columns will automatically be correctly identified, but sometimes the names need to be modified.
   • There should be one Date column
   • Amounts can either be in one column, or two columns with one for Credits and one for Debits. If there is one column with both credits and debits and all the amounts are positive then there should be another column that contains the transaction Type i.e. credit/debit or cr/db.
   • The Payee name is taken from the left most description column and/or the first line of each transaction. Some banks have very long payee names, prefaced by things such as “Check card payment on …” Because .qbo format limits the payee to 32 characters, useful information can be lost. One solution for that is to put the payee in both the payee field and the start of the memo field. We will use the Payee & Memo column name to put information in both fields – the QuickBooks Payee will have the first 32 characters and the QuickBooks Memo will have the entire string. Other banks use that first column more like a transaction type (Deposit, Credit etc.) and you will need to select a different column as the Payee name.
   • The Memo field contains text from additional lines in the transaction, or additional description columns. Sometimes there are two such columns and you can use Memo Add-on to specify that a second field be concatenated to the Memo field. You can combine Payee & Memo, Memo, and Memo Add-on to merge the contents of 3 columns; the .qbo memo field can contain up to 256 characters.
   • The rightmost column labeled Use determines whether a transaction will be output to the .qbo file or skipped. You can select or unselect all the transactions by selecting the selecting the Use box in the footer.
   • Each column name can only be used once - if you need to make many changes, use the Clear button at the bottom to clear out all the column names and start over.
   • In our example the only change we will make is to identify the column with the description as Payee & Memo. Since some descriptions are longer than 32 characters this will ensure that we get the full description into QuickBooks.
4. Verify that the signs of amounts are correct. Checking accounts normally have charges as negative numbers and credit card statements have charges as positive numbers. QuickBooks wants all charges as negative numbers. Use the checkbox for Switch signs of amounts if necessary.
5. If you either have PDF+ installed or are running 2qbo Convert Pro
   you can also edit individual transactions. Select and edit each field as you would in a spreadsheet. Transactions shown in yellow by PDF+ should be corrected, or possibly ignored. You can also create new translations using the Add Transaction button.
6. When everything looks correct select the Create .qbo button to create a .qbo file containing all the transactions for input into QuickBooks®. The log will update to show the number of transactions written to the .qbo file.

Step III - Import the .qbo file into QuickBooks Online

For QuickBooks Online

1. When logged in, select Transactions from the main menu, and lower down, Banking. On the right hand side of the page select File Upload. This bring up an Upload File page. Browse to the the .qbo file created in Step II, select the file, and then at the bottom of the page click Next.
2. QuickBooks Online will then bring up the Select an account screen for you to select a QuickBooks account for the upload. The first time this will most likely be a new account, so under QuickBooks Account select Add New. Specify the account name and select Save the new account and then select Next , and then Finish.
3. In the Select an account screen select Next and then when you get the message that the file was successfully uploaded select Finish and QuickBooks Online will bring up the list of transactions that can be accepted. The column labeled Description is the Payee from the PDF converter. You will also see that QuickBooks Online will simplify the Description name, sometimes to the point that it is meaningless. You can use Settings (the gear symbol) to display the full bank detail (memo), and get additional information.
4. For each transaction you will need to assign a QuickBooks Payee and a QuickBooks Account. This process is simplified by QuickBooks Online automatically creating rules as you make these assignments. In the example, click in the Payee column on the first transaction, and enter a payee of Kanawha Insurance. Then click in the Account column column on that transaction and select an account such as Insurance Expense. Next in the action column, select Add to add the payee and accept that transaction. QuickBooks will automatically create a rule for all other transactions for that payee.You should make sure that under Settings (the gear icon on the right site) that Copy Description is on so that the memo is copied into the transaction. Select Add to accept that transaction. QuickBooks will automatically create a rule and correctly set the payee and category for all the transaction fees.
5. For the other transactions, assign QuickBooks payees if desired and select an appropriate account Now all the transactions are ready to be accepted. Select the checkbox in the upper left to select all the transactions, then click Batch Actions and Accept Selected to add all the transactions to the bank account register.
6. You can now display the account register and view the transactions. QuickBooks payee names and accounts will be shown as entered, as well as the full Memo field with information from the PDF statement . You can also verify that account balance verifies with the account balance from the original PDF bank statement.