Moving Lists Between QuickBooks Online Companies: Export, Import, and the FIFO Catch
QuickBooks Online users can move customers, vendors, accounts, and inventory between companies via Excel import, if they match the column layout.
QuickBooks Online users who open a second company keep running into the same wall. The customers, vendors, accounts, and products they spent years entering sit in the old file, and nobody wants to retype them. The accepted answer in community threads, drawn from recently updated vendor guidance, is a two-step move: export four standard reports to Excel, then import them into the new company.
The lists you can move
The scope is narrower than people hope. The move covers the chart of accounts, the customer contact list, the vendor contact list, and the product and service list. Bank transactions are excluded on purpose. Link the bank account instead, the guidance says, and let transactions download and sort themselves.
Excel and CSV files do the carrying. Each list travels on its own, so plan on four passes rather than one. The payoff is real: a company’s entire contact and account structure arrives in minutes instead of weeks.
Sign in as an administrator first
The export step checks your role before anything else. You must be signed in as the primary administrator or a company administrator, both for permissions and for account security. Confirm which profile is active before you start. If the export option stays hidden, the role is the first thing to question.
Export the four reports from the old company
Work begins in the Reports area, under Standard reports. A keyword search by report type saves scrolling. Open the account list, the customer contact list, the vendor contact list, or the product and service list, one at a time.
Before exporting anything, choose Customize, then Columns. The layout has to match exactly what the importer expects. Tick or clear the checkboxes beside the column headings to add or drop fields, and drag the headings to reorder them. Apply the changes, give the report a name you will recognize, and save it out to Excel.
The column layout the importer expects
| Report | Columns, in order |
|---|---|
| Account list | Account, Account name, Type, Detail type, Description, Total balance |
| Customer contact list | Customer, Full name, Email, Phone, Website, Billing street, Billing city, Billing state, Billing ZIP, Billing country |
| Vendor contact list | Vendor, Company, Email, Phone, Website, Billing street, Billing city, Billing state, Billing ZIP, Billing country |
| Product and service list | Product or service, Type, Memo or description, Purchase cost, Sales price, Quantity on hand |
The account list is the one that trips people up. Type and Detail type are two separate columns, not one, and both sit between the account name and the description. Get that order right and the rest follows.
The inventory catch: the import date becomes the start date
QuickBooks Online costs inventory on a first in, first out basis. Import a product with a quantity on hand, and the software writes an inventory transaction dated on the import day. Nothing before that date can be edited or recorded for the item. The quantity arrives as one dated entry, not as a history. Choose the import date with that rule in mind.
Where does the import actually run?
Threads on this topic stall here more often than anywhere else. The export goes fine, and then the upload screen proves hard to find. It lives in the company receiving the data, so we will spell it out. Sign in there as an administrator, open Settings, the gear icon, and choose Import Data.
Then pick the list: customers, vendors, chart of accounts, or products and services. Upload the Excel or CSV file, confirm the column mapping on screen, and bring the rows across. Repeat for each list in turn. The old company is not touched again after this point.
The Ledger plan leaves products behind
The Products and Services page is not available on the Ledger subscription level. That closes the product and service import path completely on that plan. Anyone planning a move that leans on inventory should check the subscription first.
Leave the bank feed to do its job
Manual entry is the wrong tool for bank activity. The accepted answer is blunt on this point. Connect the account, let QuickBooks Online download the transactions, and review the categories it assigns.
The working pattern, in short: administrator rights at both ends, exact columns on export, and an import run from Settings in the new company. Choose the import date with the first in, first out rule in mind.