Learn How to Migrate Xero to QuickBooks Online Easily

Are you wondering how to move your accounting data from Xero to QuickBooks Online? Switching accounting software is a very big and complex step for any business. This involves migrating your crucial data, which cannot be moved entirely to a different software.

However, Intuit maintains a partnership with Dataswitcher, which specializes in accounting software conversions that simplify the process with data security.

Explore this guide to learn how you can convert Xero to QuickBooks Online. As each software works differently, it is crucial that you first understand what the conversion entails, its limitations, and the risk of data errors. 

Why Businesses Migrate from Xero to QuickBooks

Businesses often migrate from Xero to QuickBooks Online (QBO) as they scale, seeking more robust inventory management, deeper reporting capabilities, and a wider, more mature ecosystem of integrations. While Xero is praised for its ease of use and flexibility, QuickBooks is generally perceived as better suited for complex accounting needs and larger, growing organizations.

Businesses often migrate from Xero to QuickBooks due to differences in features, integrations, pricing structures, and scalability. QuickBooks—developed by Intuit—offers a broader range of tools for inventory management, payroll, advanced reporting, and industry-specific add-ons, which can better support growing businesses.

Many companies also find QuickBooks easier to integrate with third-party applications and more familiar to accountants and bookkeepers, particularly in regions where it has a larger market share. As businesses expand or require more detailed financial control, they may switch to QuickBooks to benefit from its extensive ecosystem, stronger reporting capabilities, and wider professional support network. 

Xero vs QuickBooks

Below is an overview of the differences between the accounting software Xero and QuickBooks. This will help you analyze which one suits your business requirements and determine whether migrating from Xero to QuickBooks Online is the right decision for you.

	QuickBooks Online	Xero
Pricing(per company file/EIN)	Simple Start: $19/mo, Essentials: $37.50/mo, Plus: $57.50/moSave 50% for 3 months*	Early: $15/moGrowing: $42/moEstablished: $78/mo
User Limits (role-based access means tighter security control)	Simple Start: 1Essentials: 3Plus: 5Advanced: 25	unlimited
Live Support (phone, live chat, help articles, how to videos)	✓	✓ no direct phone number or chat support
General Accounting (chart of accounts, journal entries, financial statements, sales tax)	✓	✓
Accounts Payable (vendor portal, purchase orders, expenses, bills, recurring bills)	✓	✓ usage limits on Early Plan
Accounts Receivable (customer portal, estimates, invoices, recurring invoices)	✓	✓ usage limits on Early Plan
Inventory Management (track products, add markups, view QTY on hand, etc)	✓ requires plan	✓
Project management (tag income/expenses to a specific job)	✓  requires plan	✓ requires Established
E-Commerce Management (connect to Shopify, eBay, and Amazon)	SS: 1 connectionEss: 3 connectionsPlus: All connections	✓ Shopify only requires Growing or Established
Time & Payroll (manage W2 & 1099, track time, paychecks, and payroll tax)	✓	❌
Live Bookkeeping (get expert help with your books and preparing for tax time)	✓	❌
Accept Payments (take credit card or ACH payments via invoice or card reader)	✓	✓ no card reader option
Banking and Capital (open a business banking account or apply for a business loan)	✓	❌

How the Conversion Process Works and System Requirements

Below, we have mentioned some requirements that you must meet to ensure the conversion process goes smoothly without any data damage. You will also learn how to prepare for the process and how it works.

Plan ahead

If you are unfamiliar with accounting transactions, Intuit highly recommends consulting a certified accounting professional, such as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. These professionals can help you with the existing books, conversion, or even verify your data after the migration.

It is also recommended to convert the books after the quarterly or yearly book is reconciled. This helps minimize the impact or the risk of losing your transactions.

The conversion process can usually take from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the required effort for pre- and post-conversions. When processing data from Dataswitcher’s conversion wizard, the time spans usually range from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the amount of data you just received.

You must export reports from Xero and save them in a safe location, even after the conversion, for your tax or financial audits. For assistance, consult with your accountant and/or tax advisor.

Requirements

Product version requirements

• Xero: You must use a Xero US account.
• QuickBooks Online: A paid QuickBooks Online US subscription is required. Make sure your plan includes the features needed for a smooth data conversion:
  • If your Xero chart of accounts contains more than 250 accounts, you must use QuickBooks Online Advanced. 
  • To use classes, you need QuickBooks Online Plus or QuickBooks Online Advanced. If you have over 40 classes, Advanced is required.
  • For inventory tracking, you must have QuickBooks Online Plus or QuickBooks Online Advanced.
  • To manage bills, your plan must be QuickBooks Online Essentials, Plus, or Advanced.

User permission levels

The person responsible for carrying out the conversion must have the appropriate user permissions to complete the process.

• Xero US: standard or advisor role
• QuickBooks Online: company admin permission

What Will Be Migrated and Migration Charges 

Dataswitcher offers a free service that enables users to convert and migrate selected financial data covering up to two fiscal years from Xero to QuickBooks Online. This service allows businesses to transfer their accounting information between the two systems efficiently, at no additional cost.

• Opening balances
• Invoices and credits (AR)
• Bills and credits (AP)
• Bank account transactions
  • Spend money
  • Receive money
  • Transfers
• Matched payments (AR and AP)

Lists 

• Chart of Accounts*
• Customers list
• Vendors list
• Inventory Items list, specifically:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Cost – Sales price/rate
• Non-Inventory items
• Item Sales Tax
• Tracking categories*

Transactions

The Dataswitcher tool also offers optional features that can be converted for an extra fee, including:

• Additional years of fiscal data
• Inventory items
• Tracking categories and options (Classes & Locations in QuickBooks)
• Company information (address, email, phone number, etc.)
• Any applicable charges will be shown in the Dataswitcher conversion wizard before you start the conversion.

If you decide not to include extra fiscal years, transactions from earlier periods will be combined into a single automatically calculated opening balance.

Xero Data that Will Not Be Converted

• Assembly builds
• Budgets
• Memorized transactions
• Deleted transactions
• Draft or unposted journals
• Jobs that are not attached to transactions
• Closed or partially closed estimates and purchase orders
• Bank reconciliation history
• File attachments
• Invoice template and other templates
• Terms list
• Employees list
• Payroll information, if any (employee details, pay calendars, tax information, pension, etc.)
• Project details, if any (quotes and estimates, tasks and expenses, profitability, etc.)
• Fixed assets management

Conversion Limitations

As Xero and QuickBooks handle things slightly differently, it’s not always possible to convert everything or all of our accounting periods. Learn which can be converted and understand the conversion limitations given below: 

Customized chart of accounts

All the system accounts (e.g., Retained Earnings, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, etc.) that you renamed or customized in Xero might be converted to QuickBooks Online, with the suspense accounts appearing as Customers or Vendors. You can remap these later.

However, renaming the normal balance sheet accounts in Xero won’t be impacted or have any implications. 

Multi-currency transactions

The Dataswitcher will convert transactions in different currencies in Xero to the home currency, which you can configure later in QuickBooks Online. If the transactions are in euros in Xero and the home currency is US dollars in QuickBooks, all these transactions will be converted to US dollars using the exchange rates in Xero.

Your customers and vendors will not incur any unrealized gains or losses from foreign currency fluctuations. Any small rounding differences from currency conversions will appear as a profit-and-loss item in QuickBooks Online.

Journal merge 

The recorded journals for your Credits, prepayments, and Overpayments in Xero will be automatically merged with the accurate balance for each account during the data conversion in QuickBooks Online. 

Tracking categories and options

Tracking categories and options in Xero will become Classes and Locations in QuickBooks Online. You can only allocate one Department/Location per transaction in QuickBooks Online. When converting to location, if you have transactions using multiple options per line item in Xero, the line item 1 of those options applies across all line items because only a single location per transaction is allowed in QuickBooks Online.

AR and AP transactions 

If the Account Receivables and Account Payables Aging balance does not match with your AR/AP GL balances (rarely happens), the discrepancy will be posted to Customers or Vendors.

Sales tax 

The dataswitcher tool converts the sales tac as a lime item in QuickBooks Online. Sales tax items are also converted; the default sales tax codes assigned to customers in Xero will not be converted. Learn more about QuickBooks Online Sales Tax.

How We Protect Your Business Data

Intuit protects your business data in the following ways:

• Until Intuit uploads the data to the designated Dataswitcher conversion wizard, our data will be protected using industry-standard SSL encryption.
• Intuit’s Data Stewardship Principles govern the data.

Conversion Process From Xero to QuickBooks Online 

To ensure a smooth and error-free migration, it is important to complete a few preparation steps before starting the conversion. The following checklists will help you prepare both your QuickBooks Online and Xero accounts, followed by the conversion process and post-conversion verification.

1. Pre-conversion checklist for QuickBooks Online

Make sure your QuickBooks Online company file is empty before starting the conversion. Having company details, users, and permission settings is fine. Still, the file should not contain financial transactions or a customized Chart of Accounts, as the imported data may overwrite these.

If your company file already has transactions or a customized chart of accounts, you can purge the data and configure the following settings before conversion: 

If your company file has financial transactions or a customized chart of accounts, you can purge company data and configure the following settings in your QuickBooks Online file.

• Confirm the home currency.
• Turn off taxes.
• Enable tracking for classes and locations (only if you are converting classes), and set it to per line item (the default).

2. Pre-conversion checklist for Xero

To ensure the most accurate and smooth conversion, prepare your Xero data by following the steps below in the exact order. This helps guarantee that your data is in optimal condition before migrating to QuickBooks Online.

a. Reconcile your accounts in Xero (mandatory)

Reconciling bank accounts in Xero before conversion:

• Reconcile all your bank accounts in Xero to ensure they transfer cleanly to QuickBooks Online.
• After reconciling, note the ending balances of each bank account. These balances will be needed when performing the post-conversion reconciliation in QuickBooks Online. This step is especially important if you use cash basis accounting.
• Completing a full reconciliation in Xero beforehand simplifies the post-migration process. In QuickBooks Online, the imported accounts will appear as unreconciled, but if everything was reconciled in Xero, you can mark all transactions as reconciled at once.

b. Extract data for auditing purposes in Xero (mandatory)

Before migrating, extract your Xero data and store it securely. Not all information may transfer when switching accounting systems, so keeping a backup ensures you have access for tax or audit purposes.

Export the following reports for all accounting periods:

• Sales Tax report
• Account Transactions (select all columns, include a date range that captures all transactional data, and remove grouping)
• Trial Balance
• Other reports that you deemed necessary

c. Extract data for post-conversion validation (mandatory)

Before converting, extract the following reports from Xero as of the conversion date. This will allow you to compare and verify your data in QuickBooks Online after the migration is complete.

• Income Statement (aka Profit and Loss in QuickBooks Online)
• Balance Sheet (includes Bank Account Balances)
• Trial Balance
• Aged Receivables Summary (aka Accounts Receivable Aging Summary in QuickBooks Online)
• Aged Payables Summary (aka Accounts Payable Aging Summary in QuickBooks Online)
• A list of Outstanding Invoices of your customers and vendors
• Only needed if either of the Aged Summary reports does not tie out. 

d. Other pre-conversion notes (optional)

• Clean up accounts and account codes in Xero before conversion to avoid transferring unnecessary data into QuickBooks Online.
• Review the suspense account in Xero, which holds transactions with uncertain classification. After the conversion, ensure these transactions are assigned to the correct accounts.
• Match all outstanding payments and sales to their respective invoices in Xero. Unmatched payments will be imported as journal entries in QuickBooks Online, requiring manual reconciliation after conversion.
• Ensure historical A/P and A/R accuracy by applying credit memos to the correct invoices. Unmatched entries can affect your balances and degrade the conversion quality.
• If you use Cash Basis accounting, it’s best to migrate immediately after closing and reconciling a tax period. Converting mid-period can make post-conversion adjustments in QuickBooks Online more time-consuming.
• Complete a tax report for the current period in Xero before converting. For example, if your quarterly tax report ends in March and you convert on April 14, generate a tax report in Xero for April 1–14. After conversion, you can combine this report with QuickBooks Online data to produce a complete tax report for the full period.

3. Get started converting your data to QuickBooks Online

• Follow the step-by-step instructions in the Dataswitcher wizard to choose your migration options.
• Connect to your Xero account (the source system) and select the correct company.
• Connect to your QuickBooks Online account (the destination system).
• Start the conversion process and wait for it to finish.
• You will receive an email notification once the conversion is complete.

4. Post-conversion checklist for QuickBooks Online

Once the conversion is complete, you should perform a few important checks to confirm that your data has been transferred correctly into QuickBooks Online.

a. Verify the converted data

• Verify your conversion in QuickBooks Online by reviewing key reports:
  • Profit and Loss
  • Balance Sheet
  • Trial Balance
  • Accounts Receivable Aging Summary
  • Accounts Payable Aging Summary
• Check the Dataswitcher summary report that compares balances in Xero and QuickBooks Online:
  • Search for “Dataswitcher” in your Vendors list under Expenses.
  • Open the vendor details and locate the attached file named report.pdf.
• Open the Balance Sheet and Trial Balance as of the conversion date to compare closing balances and balances at different points in time. This ensures that balances are accurate across multiple periods. Minor shifts between periods can occur, but the final converted balances should be correct.

Note: If you use Cash Basis accounting, compare the trial balances with the Accrual. Dataswitcher transfers all data accurately, but different accounting systems may recognize income and expenses on different dates, which can cause temporary differences on certain dates.

• Review outstanding vendor and customer balances by selecting random customers and vendors in the Accounts Receivable (AR) Aging Summary and Accounts Payable (AP) Aging Summary reports to ensure there are no discrepancies.

Note: If any customer or vendor appears with a “zCustomer” or “zVendor” label in the AR or AP reports, it usually means the source system had multiple A/R or A/P linked accounts. QuickBooks Online only allows one A/R and one A/P account, so duplicates are automatically renamed during conversion.

• Review QuickBooks Online system accounts and remap if necessary:
  • During conversion, Dataswitcher uses a suspense account (usually account code 1299) to record payments, especially if your plan supports individual payments.
  • By the end of the conversion, this suspense account should have a zero balance.
  • If any amount remains in the suspense account, you will need to remap or reassign those transactions to the correct accounts.

b. Set up QuickBooks Online

2. Set up your fiscal year and starting month.

• Go to Settings and select Account and Settings.
• Open Advanced.
• Set the first month of your fiscal year to the appropriate month.

2. Reconcile the transferred bank transactions.

• After the conversion, bank transactions will appear as unreconciled in QuickBooks Online. It’s recommended to reconcile them in bulk to ensure they match the records in the source system.
• First, go to Bank Connection to reconnect your bank accounts in QuickBooks Online. Then reconcile each account by following these steps:
  • Go to Settings, then select Reconcile.
  • Click Get started.
  • Enter the required details and select Start reconciling.
  • In the Ending balance field, enter the account’s ending balance. This should match the last reconciled balance in Xero (from the reports gathered during the pre-conversion checklist). The Ending date should be the date of the last reconciliation completed in Xero.
  • Choose the transactions you want to reconcile. If your bank account was fully reconciled before the conversion, you can select all transactions. Otherwise, deselect any transactions that were not previously reconciled.
  • Click Finish now to complete the reconciliation.

Once this is done, QuickBooks Online will begin tracking your bank transactions correctly.

c. Other post-conversion tasks

Here are some additional tasks you may want to complete in QuickBooks Online, depending on your specific situation.

Change Petty Cash account in QuickBooks Online

You can modify the Petty Cash account in QuickBooks Online so that it appears as a bank account by updating its account settings:

• Select the Petty Cash account.
• Change the Account Type to Bank and set the Detail Type to Cash on Hand.
• Once updated, the account will appear in the Bank Accounts section on the Home dashboard.

Check and change your account types

Dataswitcher transfers the main account code types during the conversion, but it does not always carry over the more detailed account subtypes that may exist in the source system. After the conversion is complete, you can update the account types in QuickBooks Online if you feel another type is more appropriate.

In some situations, if the account ranges were incorrectly configured in the source system, certain balance sheet accounts may have been imported as Profit and Loss accounts. This could affect the retained earnings from prior years.

Revalue your foreign accounts (and banks) for multi-currency transactions

If the source system is multi-currency-enabled, the foreign currency balances may match after the conversion, but the home currency balances might not. This difference can occur depending on when the last currency revaluation was performed in the original system. 

• Create a home-currency adjustment in QuickBooks Online.
  • Go to Settings and select Currencies.
  • Locate the currency that needs adjustment.
  • In the Actions column, click the small arrow icon.
  • Select Revalue Currency.
• After you save the change, QuickBooks Online will automatically generate a journal entry to correct home-currency balances going forward.

Note: In some cases, small adjustments may need to be moved from bank accounts to revaluation entries. This can happen if the source system contains minor data inconsistencies, but the difference is usually only a few dollars.

Turn on sales tax

Because Dataswitcher does not migrate Sales Tax data—this is done to avoid discrepancies or potential data loss during the conversion—you will need to enable Sales Tax in QuickBooks manually.

To turn on Sales Tax:

• Go to All apps, then select Sales Tax, and open Overview.
• Click Set up Sales Tax or Get started.
• Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup.

Conclusion

Data conversion may seem simple, but it’s complicated, and there are limitations, too! With this detailed guide, you will learn how you can move from Xero to QuickBooks Online accounting software, including a pre-checklist, a post-checklist, and even a comparison table to understand which software suits you well.

There may be situations when you need professional assistance when moving from one software to another. In such a case, you must consult QuickBooks professionals available at QuickBooksSupportNet. Connect with a certified expert now at (866) 500-0076!

Frequently Asked Questions 

What is Xero?

Xero is an accounting software for small and medium-sized businesses to manage their accounting and financial data, such as invoicing, bookkeeping, reconciliations, and even payroll. You can track your data, stay updated with the latest changes, and even pay your employees on time via direct deposit. 

Can you convert Xero to QuickBooks?

Yes, you can convert from Xero to QuickBooks using the Dataswitcher tool, a partnership with Intuit. This allows you to easily import your data into QuickBooks Online, but there are some limitations to consider before proceeding.

What is better, QBO or Xero?

Whether QBO is better or Xero depends on the complexity, size, and your requirements. QuickBooks Online is generally considered better for established businesses that require complex, robust reporting and deep, native, US-based app integrations.

However, Xero is considered better for startups or small-sized businesses and creative industries that value an intuitive interface and a cost-effective approach to supporting multiple users. 

How similar is Xero to QuickBooks?

Xero and QuickBooks Online are considered highly similar to each other. Both software offer advanced and robust features for businesses to manage their accounting and finances. They both feature online dashboards, automatic bank feeds, invoicing, inventory management, and app integrations, making them strong competitors in the same market space. 

Is Xero similar to Tally?

Xero and Tally are so similar in that they both offer comprehensive accounting solutions for small to medium-sized businesses, but they operate on fundamentally different technologies. Moreover, Xero is cloud-based accounting software, whereas Tally is desktop-based.

How do I migrate from Xero to QuickBooks Online?

Migrating from Xero to QuickBooks Online (QBO) involves exporting your data from Xero—including the Chart of Accounts, customers, suppliers, and transaction history—and importing it into QBO, either manually via CSV files or by using automated conversion services.