I’m often asked, “What is the best manner to convert my COA to the one used by QuickTrainer?” Along these same lines, I’m often asked, “How can I use the QuickTrainer COA when I setup my new QuickBooks file?” The answer to each of these two questions deserves two separate responses.

Converting your COA to our format requires numerous steps. Though the steps required are not difficult, it might be said this action is for the more experienced user. The steps I follow when conducting this conversion are as follows:

1. Make a backup of your QuickBooks data. Making a backup of your QuickBooks data should ALWAYS be a standard operating procedure anytime you are making drastic changes to your data.

2. Delete every account which QuickBooks will allow you to delete. NOTE: QuickBooks will NOT allow an account to be deleted if the account is tied to ANY transaction or is associated with ANY Item within QuickBooks. Therefore, this action is completely safe. To determine if an account can be deleted, highlight an account and then, while holding down the “ctrl” key, press the letter “d” (this sequence of keystrokes is a standard QuickBooks keyboard shortcut and is also known as Ctrl +D). Again, perform this action on every account.

3. Next, make sure QuickBooks is configured to include account numbers. To check this preference setting, click on “Edit”, “Preferences”. Then click on “Accounting” and then “Company Preferences”. On this screen you will see the option “Use account numbers”. Make sure this box is checked. Then click “Ok”. NOTE: You must be logged in as the Admin in QuickBooks to perform this action.

4. From here, beginning at the top of the accounts, edit each account while assigning each account the proper name and number. For a list of the proper names and numbers, click here to download a PDF file of the Chart of Accounts used by QuickTrainer. I personally find the above method works well on the asset, liability, equity, income and cost of goods accounts. However, once you encounter the expense type accounts, I recommend changing the approach slightly. The reason is you are likely to encounter numbers already in use by other accounts.

5. To remedy this, I suggest editing each expense type account and removing the numbers associated with each of these accounts. Do this for ALL of your expense type accounts. Once completed, begin with the first expense account and begin adding the proper number to your expense accounts.

6. At this point, you should have the proper account number and name for each of your existing accounts. However, you are likely missing some very useful accounts. To remedy this, continue to the next step.

7. Right click here and select “Save Target As” to download QuickTrainer’s COA.IIF file. This is a file comprised of the majority of the accounts found in QuickTrainer’s standard COA. Download this file to your desktop. Next, open this file using Excel. When opening in Excel accept the default messages and the file will open without issue.

8. Now here’s the trick. In order to eventually be successful with the importing of the missing accounts, you need to rid the COA.IIF file of all accounts which already exist in your QuickBooks file. Otherwise, each time an import is attempted the import process will come to a halt when it encounters a duplicate name or number. To solve this, print a list of your existing COA.

9. To print this list, click on “Reports”, “List”, “Account Listing”. The only columns you should keep are “Account”, “Type” and “Account Number”. Now, print your list.

10. Comparing the COA.IIF file opened in Excel to your printed list, remove all rows from Excel found on your printed list. Once done, from within Excel, click on “Save”. Click “Yes” when prompted to save. Then, close Excel. When prompted with “Do you want to save the changes you made to COA.IIF”, select “NO”.

11. You are now ready to import your COA.IIF file into QuickBooks.

To do so, from within QuickBooks, go to “File”, “Utilities”, “Import”, “IIF Files…” Navigate to the location where you stored your IIF file (Desktop, if you followed the directions above). Select your file and choose “Open”. If all goes well, your accounts within the COA.IIF file will be imported. If, by chance, you left an already existing account in the COA.IIF file, you will receive an error on line “x”, where “x” is the number of the line within Excel. In this case, re-open the COA.IIF file, and delete the subject offending row PLUS all rows above the offending line, with the exception of the very first row (which is the header row).

The best way to setup a new QuickBooks file which includes the QuickTrainer Chart of Accounts is to simply email us at info@quicktrainer.biz. While it is very possible to import the COA.IIF file described above, in its entirety, the more simple approach is to email us and we will email you back a QuickBooks portable file which already contains the subject COA. Think of this file as a blank canvas, with which you can simply restore, giving it the file name of your choice and begin working with.