Hitch Your Wagons 'Pardner' for the Best Migration Yet

There comes a time when everyone must make a great migration in their lives. For some, that meant migrating from the East to the West and across the Great Plains. For others, it might be from home to college, while others might have had to travel to distant land across oceans deep for military service.

And, the way it looks today, there is a great migration taking place for QuickBooks users. I'm talking about the migration from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.

Migrating your QuickBooks Desktop Data (Pro, Premier or Enterprise) to QuickBooks Online, even QuickBooks Online Advanced is unlike upgrading from 2023 to 2024 QuickBooks Desktop versions.

And while Intuit has been actively recommending, in fact, almost pushing, QuickBooks Desktop users to migrate from Desktop to Online, they also are sure to say that various issues can make migrating anything but smooth.

Intuit adopted the term "migration," which the dictionary defines as "moving from here to there," to make the big switch seem like anything but big.

But the reality is that migrating from the Desktop platform to the Online platform is complex, even though both products are from the same parent company. They differ significantly in terms of their code structure, data structure and file structure.

In addition, the fact that the products offer different features and different ways to accomplish similar tasks and use different terminology for essentially the same functionality further compounds the difficulty of migration from a user standpoint.

As far as I'm concerned, there are three keys to making a successful migration and two fundamental understandings required.

Let's first consider the fundamental understandings:

1. You must fully understand how your QuickBooks Desktop file is structured from a code, data and file standpoint.
2. You must fully understand how your data will be re-structured when it gets to QuickBooks Online from a code, data and file standpoint.

If you don't understand the actual starting and ending points of how your data begins and ends in the migration journey, you have no business making the journey.

Let's compare this to early settlers migrating from the East Coast of the US to the West Coast. If they began their journey in the East with too much or insufficient stuff to reach where they were headed, they were in trouble from the start.

If there was too much stuff weighing down their wagons, they were destined to fail somewhere along the way. 

Too few supplies, the right clothes and the correct tools, including not having a way to feed themselves off the land, most likely meant they were destined to fail.

Migrating between QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online is just like making such a journey—you must be fully able to start, make and settle into the final destination.

Now, let's examine the three keys to that journey: migrating from desktop to online.

1. Getting ready for the journey, the pre-migration step. Intuit provides a long, detailed list of what must be done with every QuickBooks Desktop file that will make the journey from down here on the desktop to up there in the cloud. Too often, desktop users ignore that long, detailed list and the result is a disaster along the conversion journey or when the file is resident online.
2. Then, there is the journey itself, or the actual migration step. Trying to use the in-product prompts to launch one of the migration tools Intuit uses is like picking an inexperienced guide to head up your wagon train. Which tool, what does it mean, too many targets, etc? It's like the wagon train leader, asking, "Which way is West?"
3. Finally, there is the getting there, the post-migration step (maybe better termed "situation" than step). The reality is that "it's a big change" no matter how often your accountant has told you, "There is hardly any difference between the two." Sure, you have the convenience of the cloud, but some things are different. Over time, you will get used to it. Still, the problem is you don't have time to wait. The learning curve should have started before you needed to check every balance, examine every list entry and determine if all, not just some, of your reports match, which they likely won't since it's the first time you tried to make the journey by yourself.

In some ways, it reminds me of Baroness Karen Christenzen von Blixen, aka, Isak Dinesen, traveling from Denmark to East Africa with the expectation that when she arrives, her fiance will have built a dairy for their life together. They find out they are going to raise coffee, when neither of them know a thing about a coffee plantation, as told in her book, Out of Africa₂.

Talk about a migration to something unexpected, so might your huge QuickBooks Enterprise file to QBO Advanced if not better planned.

But, if you are set on moving, determined to get to the cloud and have to migrate from desktop to online, there is a better way, and without an "Out of Africa" surprise at the end.

As time went by, people didn't stop migrating West in wagon trains. They just started using moving companies.

That principle still applies today, whether you are moving from Boston to Los Angeles, Florida to Seattle, or QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.

The best approach is to use somebody skilled at migrating—that is, an expert at moving your most important stuff.

You want—you need—an expert, whether it is a grand piano, or your accounts receivable and customer history.

That's why Insightful Accountant has teamed up with Out-of-the-Box Technologies to provide expert migration for your most important business information, your QuickBooks file. 

It has a keen understanding of the QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online code, data and file structures so it can make your move right the first time.

Before starting the migration process, it knows exactly what needs to be checked, fixed and reconfigured in your QuickBooks Desktop file.

It has the right tools and experts to migrate your data from Desktop to Online without any disasters along the way.

It will ensure your new QuickBooks Online data is correct and fully optimized to meet your expectations and requirements.

And, it won't abandon you like a trail hand who wants to get started back home. It will stick by you and provide the help you need to ensure that your migration to the cloud has been a complete success.

So if you are planning the great migration from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, pick the best trail boss out there to make certain your migration is successful. You'll be glad you hitched your wagon on the way to the cloud with Out-of-the-Box Technologies.

Footnotes

_{1 -} ^{Wagons Ho (reference) is a book about a trip to Oregon, then and now, as told by George Hallowell and Joan Holub published by Albert Whitman & Co.}

_{2 -} ^{Out of Africa is a memoir by the Danish author Karen Blixen. The book, first published in 1937, under Blixen's pseudonym, Isak Dinesen recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then called British East Africa.} 

_{3 -} ^{Wagon Train (title graphic depiction) art by David Sanders.}

Disclosures:

As used herein, QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Advanced, and QuickBooks Desktop (Pro, Premier Enterprise) refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a NASDAQ “INTU” publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).

Other trade names used herein, including any other vendor (app/software) products discussed, may be registered, trademarked, or otherwise held by their respective owners and are now acknowledged accordingly. They have been referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

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