Moving Desktop to Online - Latest Updates [08.19.25]

Thinking about switching from QuickBooks Desktop to Online? This webinar covers the latest updates and guides you through a the migration process. From prepping your files to choosing the right method, Dan and Matt share actionable tips to ensure a smooth transition for business owners and accountants alike.

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Dan DeLong and Matthew Fulton who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Watch the video replay and other resources for this episode at: https://www.qbpowerhour.com/08-19-25-moving-quickbooks-desktop-to-online-latest-updates

Earn CPE through Earmark: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

00:00 Introduction and Housekeeping
01:19 Earning Continuing Professional Education Credit
02:25 Welcome to QB Power Hour
02:42 Latest Updates on QuickBooks Desktop to Online Migration
03:20 Meet the Hosts
05:12 Overview of QB Power Hour
06:01 Intuit News and Desktop Conversion
07:26 Polling Question: Desktop Migration Experience
10:49 New Options for Desktop Migration
21:37 Migration Checklist and Status
25:01 Live Migration Walkthrough
30:30 Converting Inventory Items to Non-Inventory Parts
31:37 Best Practices for QuickBooks Online Migration
34:08 Understanding Intuit's Multi-Factor Authentication
44:07 Payroll Migration Process Explained
53:16 Handling Attachments During Migration
59:59 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Topics

Transcript

Dan DeLong: 0:23

welcome to another QB Power Hour. We're gonna be talking about moving QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, the latest updates. So we're not we've done lots of best practices and things like that in the past, and we'll share those resources as we go through as we go through our time today. But what we want to focus on today is. The latest changes since the last time that we've talked about the desktop migration. And so there's some pretty cool things that that Intuit has been working on especially if it's dealing with payroll and attachments. We'll talk a little bit about that. So again my name is Dan DeLong, owner at Danwidth and School of Bookkeeping, worked at Intuit doing all these things with desktop migration when the call, when you would call in and it didn't work, right?'cause that never happens. The co-hosting today, also at over at Workshop Wednesdays at School of Bookkeeping and the feature Deep Dive host over at the unofficial QuickBooks Accountant Podcast. And I'm almost in, almost done with tech editing. The next session of QBO for Dummies, which is. Really interesting this time of year because with the new user interface, they are the au I don't I, don't I don't envy the author trying to write a book about QuickBooks online in the midst of a ui change. But the, not me Matthew, unfortunately, again, is not joining us today, but Phil in sliding in is Sharrin Fuller. So Sharrin for those that don't know who you are, give a little give a little.

Sharrin Fuller: 2:13

I, ate Matt disappoint everybody. I feel like people jump on this thing to see when Matt's gonna be back and they see my face. They're like twice. Sharrin Fuller accounting firm owner times three, almost a former accounting firm, owner times three. Super excited for that. Now just working on helping accountants and accounting firms really grow their business and work. On it, not in it. And just jumping in where, wherever I can here. And also, we come from a QuickBooks only firm. It's all I've known, all I've grown to love. And with love, there is hate, but you can't have hate without love. So here I am.

Dan DeLong: 2:54

Here we are. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the QB Power Hour if you're just joining us for the first time. It's every other Tuesday at noon Eastern. And now that I'm driving around the country, I don't know what time I'm in. But we do have CPE credit available through earmark there's the QR code for that, and there's link in the in the slides there to be able to access our channel. All of our prior ones are available there. As of today, except today's. And then of course, if you need to, you can go to qb power hour.com/resources for PDFs of the prior slides, past recordings as well as the podcast audio as well. All right, so today we're gonna talk a little bit the Intuit News. We're, we've been incorporating some of the latest, and I don't wanna say greatest, but the news that Intuit has, done since the last time, and we wanna talk about it. Maybe there was a Facebook post about it or something like that. And we want to, just calibrate, that's the word I was looking for about about that topic. But really our topics the meat and potatoes of what we're gonna be talking about today is the desktop conversion. Some new options more data. They're allowing for more data. We'll talk about that. There are some checklists inside of QuickBooks Desktop, and one of those unraveled the payroll I issue that we're gonna be talking about later on. The ability now to do accounting only migrations when you already have a payroll subscription. And then attachments, which was always a, I don't know, it was just a sad conversation when somebody said, Hey, do you do attachments? Move? And then the short answer was, no, they didn't, but now they do. Which which is cool. And then we'll give you some resources at the end there. So let's start with our first polling question. Do you help? Where'd it go? It just, I have five monitors. Yeah. Check one and see where they went. Do you help clients with desktop migration? Now, Sharrin, since you were QBO or QB only as, as far as your firms, did you do that as part of your scope of work? Oh, yeah.

Sharrin Fuller: 5:35

We haven't done one for a hot minute, I can tell you that. I think the last time we did a mar migration was like 20, or Jesus, was it in the, I was gonna say 2020 something, but it had to have been in the teens. 1918 haven't done one since then. There were workarounds to get it to work. Properly. So I would love, I'm really excited to see what people have to say about it now.

Dan DeLong: 6:02

Yeah. Probably back then you, we typically back in the day.

Sharrin Fuller: 6:06

Thanks Dan. Thanks. Yeah.

Dan DeLong: 6:08

Back in the last decade when you just needed to do these things, you probably had some of the conversations of we're gonna have to. Purge off some of your detailed data or, yeah. Maybe we're just gonna start over. When we Yeah. When we, come over to QBO, because you end up having this conversation of this isn't gonna come over properly. Or we, you, you've been using desktop too long And, those types of things. So now some of those conversations have shifted as far as what you're able to do and the big Yeah. But when you have a lot of these conversations is like when you're using desktop payroll and moving over to QuickBooks on online typically that conversation was we're gonna have to set up payroll again. Because it just doesn't migrate over very well.

Sharrin Fuller: 7:09

Yep.

Dan DeLong: 7:10

But I don't wanna spoil it, but I am I did a migration just a couple weeks ago. They their retail establishments, so high turnover, right? So they had lots of employees in, their QuickBooks Desktop, 431 employees active not all active, but historically, and all of them came over to QuickBooks online, and the direct deposit was set up, and it was the, their paid, their pay types was set up. It was the clouds parted for me because it was just one of those things where you're just like, oh my goodness, I'm not dreaded. I'm not looking forward to setting up 431 employees, even if it's not all the active employees. So let's go ahead. Where's my cursor? Get up. Find it. All right. So yeah, it looks like this Zoom decide to pop up differently. Yeah, we go. So about the need to be, feel more comfortable. Okay. So looks like that's our, main answer of that. And then a lot of people do it all the time. So let's go ahead and kick us in here. So the new options with desktop migration, more data, right? So originally the a lot of times when you look at, what's, able to move over the key number, the key data specific aspect I can't think of the word right, is targets, right? And of course, that always begs the question what the heck is a target? But basically it's a link in a transaction to something else in. In your QuickBooks data file and you have an invoice, it's got a customer on it, it's got items on it, and multiple line items, and those are pointing to accounts. All of those things go into the target calculation. So it's not just the size of your file, it's the size of the transactions that are in the file. And a as of July, it was 1.5 million and, or I'm sorry, in February I noticed it was upgraded to 1.5 million. And then the last couple times that I've done a conversion, it's now 2 million on the Intuit article. So it really does allow for a lot of data to to be moved over. I was just talking with with somebody, considering they have 2.3 million, but they've been using QuickBooks Desktop since 2000. So almost 20 years of data, right? So that is not bio like a brick.

Sharrin Fuller: 10:09

Yeah.

Dan DeLong: 10:11

It's a very large,

Sharrin Fuller: 10:12

throw it at someone and hurt'em.

Dan DeLong: 10:16

So the double side of that coin the other side of that coin is yeah. Just because it's eligible to come over doesn't mean it was used properly. And sometimes that, that data is then going to be the creative ways that people use QuickBooks, especially in QuickBooks desktop, because you can do a lot of things that you maybe know, not aren't supposed to. But those things are gonna bubble up to the surface. Take that with a grain of salt. Just because it's eligible to come over doesn't mean it should come over because it may cause more problems when it actually does come over. Now inside of QuickBooks desktop, there's now some checklists. And that checklist actually triggered this whole being able to migrate payroll properly. So it was actually a key thing that we're gonna, we're gonna unpack a little bit here. And inside of the QuickBooks desktop right now, you have a, migration status, right? In desktop. So you'll be able to see before it was just like you said it, and then once it said, yeah, we got it, and and then you waited.

Sharrin Fuller: 11:36

Yeah.

Dan DeLong: 11:36

And you had no idea the expectation of how long that was gonna take. You just waited for an email and hope that email shows up, or just sit there and knock on the door of, QuickBooks online, waiting to be led in. And then you do have the option now for accounting only. If you have QuickBooks Online payroll subscription you, in, in the past you, you couldn't bring that accounting data into QuickBooks Online payroll. Because when there was payroll already established it just stopped the, the, conversion from actually taking place. So then you had this situation where you had a QuickBooks Online subscription and a QuickBooks Online payroll subscription, and they never talked. They talked to each other Yeah, that with an export, but they weren't completely integrated. And another thing you have there is lists only. You have some options when the file is too big and you want to take that line in the sand approach, you can choose lists and balances. But now you can also choose lists only and choose some of those lists. So right there from within the, the desktop migration. Now I've just been rambling on there. Sharing. Are you just do you have something to add to that or? I do. It's uhhuh

Sharrin Fuller: 13:05

It's all been no, this is great. I'm thinking about this and I'm really just thinking back like how I'm reading some of the questions I'm thinking about, like what a. When you got a large file, you had to archive things out, things like that. And all of a sudden they're like, Hey we're letting you guys do all this great. And I think'cause everybody keeps saying, oh, I'll never get off of desktop, and I see things like this. And I'm like, I don't think they're going to give you a choice. This just tells me they're trying to make it so easy and accommodating. Like they just said, if have quick QuickBooks do it for you, they wouldn't even touch it back in the day because they made more money on their desktop. Anyhow, it's just interesting to me. But definitely something that's needed if you're, if they're really trying to migrate their longtime enterpriser users off it's a good thing at least if they're the desktop, people are gonna have their hands tied behind their back. At least they have options. And they're not gonna be in a struggle bus. That's my opinion.

Dan DeLong: 14:01

And then it all comes down to how that data actually does make the journey. And QuickBooks has a really robust article. The challenge is if you hand that to a customer they may not understand. The full effect of what it is. And so I've decided to take that article and create a resource on school bookkeeping here. I just wanna open that up here. There it is. Okay. If I scroll down here, where did it go? It's supposed to be right here. Why is it not?

Sharrin Fuller: 14:40

Because you're in preview mode, Dan. That's why.

Dan DeLong: 14:43

It's not supposed to come on. Where are you? There it is. It just needed. There

Sharrin Fuller: 14:47

we go.

Dan DeLong: 14:50

It does need to speak. Go up to space in the back. So I created a little spreadsheet in here and you're able to, assuming that you can click on this. There we go. You can sort for sort, I'm sorry, filter the spreadsheet for specific workflows. Let's just click out on this here on now. There we go. So an example so we have, does it exist in QuickBooks Desktop? Does it exist in QuickBooks Online? And then Dan's Pro tips here what's different about the QuickBooks online versus desktop? And more importantly, does it convert? So just kinda looking at the chart of accounts. Yes, of course. It's you have chart of accounts in both QuickBooks Online has an additional account type called detail type which, doesn't exist in QuickBooks desktop. So if you're importing right from Excel, then that's a consideration, right? So you don't have that consideration when it's QuickBooks desktop doing it. And then of course here, the QuickBooks will move, doesn't convert. Your QuickBooks online will move the accounts and assign them the detail types. You can change this later if you like bank account numbers and notes do not convert, right? So it's just one of those things to give you an idea of and, then set your expectations as to what's actually gonna happen during the conversion. Go down here to multiple shipping. This is really cool.

Sharrin Fuller: 16:30

Is this online? This is online for anybody, right? See, this is totally free. This is a look at this Cool little, this is, I'm gonna bookmark this.

Dan DeLong: 16:39

Yeah. And then multiple shipping addresses, right? Yes, in QuickBooks Desktop you can have up to 10,000 multiple shipping addresses. I'm not sure if that's across all of your customers or for each customer, but either way, that's a lot of multiple shipping addresses. Yeah, enterprise gives you a hundred thousand and in QuickBooks online, womp, right? No, not support it. So that becomes a challenge, right? So then this is now a conversation starter with between you and your client. Do I have multiple shipping addresses? Yeah, the feature with Bill to, or Bill with Parent exists and you have the, same hierarchy. But typically what you're gonna need to do is come up with a game plan of how if multiple shipping addresses per customer is a thing, right? So we're gonna need to make a game plan about that. And then what happens when it actually converts? It only converts one shipping address and not perfectly right? So it comes through as a one line item or one, one item or one field instead of splitting it out address line one, two, city, state, zip. So you're probably gonna need to go through and modify some of those shipping addresses too.

Sharrin Fuller: 18:04

I have thoughts on that real quick. Can I say, ask something? So what would you, I know what I would suggest, but if your clients came to you and said, how would you do, what would you tell them how to solve for that situation?

Dan DeLong: 18:17

I, it really just begs more questions like what you could do. Yeah. In with projects and sub customers. So that's probably how I would if they wanna stay within QuickBooks

Sharrin Fuller: 18:32

online

Dan DeLong: 18:33

Is setting up projects or, jobs in that hierarchy because then you'll have the bill with parent option. So Yeah. Which is what

Sharrin Fuller: 18:41

matters and where you can run the report. Yeah. And I was thinking I would just set up probably a different sub customer for each shipping location if I had to track it that way.'cause then I'm rolling it up. I don't know, I was trying to solve for something that we probably aren't looking to solve for right now, but

Dan DeLong: 18:58

Someone

Sharrin Fuller: 18:58

wants to know.

Dan DeLong: 18:59

That's probably what I would recommend is if they wanna stay within the QuickBooks ecosystem and not look into some other application that might be able to support the multiple shipping addresses per person. So you have access to that. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the checklist and the status. This is contextual based on the file, right? So here in the screenshot it's got one of nine and when I go through a little walkthrough here, it'll say zero of, I'm sorry, zero of nine. So there's nine things for me to look at based off of the current file that I'm in. And in the sample company, there's only six. So it, is contextual in that checklist based off of features and functions that you have evaluated. And then you're gonna have or, activated, I should say and you're gonna see the estimated time. When I did one this morning it gave me 20 minutes and estimated time of 20 minutes, and it was actually correct, and it will give you a status at the end, right? So say, oh, we couldn't do it, or your QuickBooks online has a new home, right? So you'll be able to see that all within desktop. And at the point of where it's what I call baking, right? You combine the ingredients into, the bowl, put the put the cake in the oven, and it's baking where it's processing the the imported file. At that point you, can leave QuickBooks Desktop if you want. You don't have to keep it open, but if you do, just keep it open there, you can see the status as it's going through and then afterwards, right? So there's, some post-conversion best practices that we we've talked about here in the past. Doing this as the accountant user, you actually get a better import summary report.

Sharrin Fuller: 20:57

That comes

Dan DeLong: 20:58

rather than the migration hub report that you can download or anybody can download as soon as you go and log into QuickBooks. But if you do this as an accountant user you get a better import summary to give you an understanding as to why things happened the way they happened. And then there is a to-do list checklist that Intuit made available, but I don't know, I can't find it anymore. So I just stole it and saved it for the internet.

Sharrin Fuller: 21:31

There you go.

Dan DeLong: 21:33

But if you wanna get that checklist, it's really, it's actually pretty cool because it has like free. Pre pre-work like to go through some of these things that we were seeing on the conversion checklist on the, spreadsheet. But you can assign who's going to do that and things. So that built in, it has dropdowns and whatnot. And on the other, on some of the other tabs that are in there, it gives you you, you can specify like who's gonna do what, right? And over here on the right this little check boxes gives you an understanding of what level of subscription that they would need based off of functions and features that they would workflows that they would need to have. So make sure you put'em in the right, right version to begin with. Typically, I recommend start with advanced'cause you typically get the best. Feature set. And then you also get a discount that first year. And then at the end of that promo you can decide, okay, I'm not using all of these features. I can downgrade at that point. All right, so let's walk through migration here. Here we go. We already had that.

Sharrin Fuller: 22:50

You put some work into this, didn't you?

Dan DeLong: 22:52

I know. All right, so I'm gonna share over here and my, okay. I'll just do the entire screen. Hopefully I don't go into a vortex. All right. And I've got a whole bunch of Zoom stuff in the way. All right. So here is just a sample company, right? And and I know some of you're saying, Hey, you can't migrate a sample company. Yes, as long as you can remove the sample company flag. When I was there. This was a fireable offense telling people about this, but Hector Garcia's got a video about it. If they they want to take out a Hector and myself, they can.

Sharrin Fuller: 23:40

There you go. All right. Come at me, bro. Just kidding. Don't. Yeah, please don't into it. Please don't.

Dan DeLong: 23:46

All right. So if you go to help and about, you bring up the, help and about screen, and then you press control ALT DB or d debug and then go back to the help menu. You have this little extra tell tech support option, which gives you a lot of cool things that you can do in the desktop file that you can't normally do. But one of them is toggle the Sample Company Flag. So if you're in the sample company and you want to turn it into a real company, you can do that. Or if you're in a real company and you just want to turn it into a sample company, you can do that too. But that's a, that's an option in there. All right. So to to get to the point of migrating this is enterprise. So you don't have the the company drop from the company menu. You don't have this option that says export to QuickBooks Online. So in enterprise you have to bring up the product information window, and then once you're in there, you hold the control and t say BQ, and then click okay. Okay. And there it comes and hope that this screen comes up. All right. And then once you're in there, just. This is what I was talking about, this checklist, right? You can click on the checklist and it will open up this checklist eventually and give you some ideas of things that you should probably do before migrating, right? Like double check your list of active customers, right? So you wanna make sure that the customers who are inactive should be inactive. And one of the big things about that is you don't wanna have an inactive customer with a balance or an inactive inventory item that has a quantity on hand. Because when it tries to re inactivate them, there will be a problem. So that's just one of the things that you want to comb through prior to doing to doing the conversion. And then anything else in here you just wanna take a look at? Now I have to close outta this and start all over.'cause that checklist thing, which is usually what you would be doing, is actually, yeah. Oh I, should check this. So I should not convert my, data just yet, but we're gonna throw caution into the wind and just go right for it and get the zoom stuff out of the way. And we're gonna get started. Now, I recommend doing setting it up inside of your QuickBooks Online accountant first, so that you already have the subscription in place. You're already listed as the accountant user and then you can of course transfer your, stuff over to your clients, right? So here's the option. When you the first option that you're given is, do I want to bring over all my company data or do I want to bring over lists and balances? And then when I choose. Bring over list and balances, then I have all lists and balances, and you have a little help bubble there of what will actually come over or if I just only want to choose lists, and then I have a dropdown of which list that I wanna choose, right? So these are the choices of the options of say you don't wanna bring over the items because they did make such a mess of their inventory and you wanna start over, or something along those lines. So those are the options there. I'm gonna choose all data and then this whole question about inventory tracking. Do I wanna track inventory? If yes, then I gotta choose A-F-I-F-O date because QuickBooks Online uses fi first in, first out Cal cost calculation, QuickBooks desktop uses weighted average. Or if you're using advanced inventory, it does use FIFO. But keeping in mind all about. You that's a whole nother topic about the inventory considerations of, moving things over. Or you could choose don't move over inventory. And what that does is it actually turns every single inventory item during the conversion into non-inventory parts. The financial impact of all of that actually is is handled based on historical transactions. But every inventory part becomes a non-inventory part. And then you can go through and clean up the items, turn on the, inventory for those items if you wanted to, or just start fresh if you want, but you gotta have the item in your item list or your products and service list in order for the historical, impact of those transactions to make the journey.

Sharrin Fuller: 28:56

And part of me would wanna transfer it over and just journal it out. I don't know that I would trust the process enough. I'd feel I'd rather transfer it, look at my balance sheet or my inventory on my desktop, confirm it went over correctly, and then go in and make one huge journal entry, readjusting and removing my inventory. That's just me. I just, that scares me.

Dan DeLong: 29:18

Yeah.

Sharrin Fuller: 29:18

Doesn't migration's scary?

Dan DeLong: 29:21

And that's part of the best practices here is that doing this as a, in a trial version of QuickBooks Online before doing it for a live subscription it always will give you a good guidance as to what we're in for, right? So there's only so much that you can do with QuickBooks combing through the data and the settings. To really see what is it gonna actually do today? So I tend to do it in a trial. You get the import summary that's gonna give you some guidance as to what you may want to take care of. And I did this prior to the session today and I got the import summary, and of course it didn't match. This is a good example of doing that. So at this point, you're gonna choose a date and what date you actually choose. There is a good question. But that's a conversation, right? And then what's gonna happen is gonna, assuming you're signed in, which I was, and I am, I think it does have Zoom window, is it is, it's giving me a, conniption there. Lemme start this over here. All these things are in the way of this one screen. All right. All right. Then you, it's gonna ask you to sign in if you're not already signed in. And then once you sign in, then it's gonna give you a list of companies that you might wanna bring these that are available to, to bring them into. I'm like, actually not gonna sign in at this point because everybody knows how to sign in. But it'll bring a list of companies and if there's already payroll in there, it will say, you can bring over accounting accounting only. And then at that point you start walking through, it just starts the process of, uploading and gives you, that, gives you that status. Lemme go ahead and stop sharing here and we'll restart sharing over here. And there we are. Okay. So far, so good. All right, so that's the process of, migrating with the new options that are, available. While that's processing we want to talk a little bit about the Intuit news. We've talked a lot, a little bit in the past about the login issues, the vulnerability of accountants and bookkeepers and ProAdvisors of potentially having their email login, intuit login compromise. So on the tails of that a lot of people have gone in and noticed, hey, there wasn't a code that was sent. And so they go in and they check a setting inside of their Intuit account, and lo and behold, they see that two step verification is turned off. And of course under that, it, under that circumstance, that will be concerning, right? Like that, that normal process of not getting your code and then going in and seeing that there's a setting that would send that code turned off. Is concerning, right? Like the logical concern, right? So I spoke to the folks over at Intuit and just wanted to make sure that people are aware there is a difference between multi-factor authentication and the two-step verification process or the two step verification setting inside of your account. So it's the same but it's different, right? So the same, that multifactor authentication and two step verification results in the same thing, you get a six digit code which will verify. Your, identity when you get, when you try to log in, but they're different in that multifactor authentication or MFA is mandatory. You cannot opt out of MFA. But this will occur when a new login is detected. So if I were to sign into QuickBooks Desktop for the first time, it's gonna ask me to verify my myself when I go and sign in, if I hypothetically move from Cold Water Michigan to outside of Chicago and sign in sign into QuickBooks, that is a new login, even though it may have happened on the same day, but because I'm now physically in a different location that is a new login to, to to Intuit, so that is gonna send me a code. Two step is actually an optional thing. It's an extra layer of security that you are opting into your login, and by default, they're turned off. So don't be surprised when you go and check your login and see that two step is turned off. Yeah. Now, if you turned it on and you know that you opted in and it's turned off, that's a different story. And that's, I think where the, line that we're, drawing here is that if you didn't, if you turned on two-step verification and it's now turned off, then that's a reason to question like what happened. But by, and by and large, if I go in and look at most of my accounts, I don't have two step verification turned off.

Sharrin Fuller: 35:18

You

Dan DeLong: 35:18

don't, I don't have the option for turn. I don't have it turned on. I rely actually on the pass keys. Which is a third. Oh, the keys. Got you. Which is the third option.

Sharrin Fuller: 35:33

I am a VPN user.'cause I've watched too much Edward Snowden, and so I I have to do it every single time, so I didn't realize that it wasn't just a thing. I know this has been a, in your group and a lot, this has been a huge controversy lately, so I feel like they solved for a problem. We weren't asking, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I don't know. It's a step in the right direction.

Dan DeLong: 35:58

So they created a nice a nice article talks about the difference between the MFA and the two step verification, as well as talking about some of the passkey options as well. And we've got some resources there about what passkey are with. But by the way, with passkey, you don't have to. Use the code, right? So that, I mean that both of these processes are removed out of the issue. Be when, you use a pass key. I just get really confused about passkey when I log in.

Sharrin Fuller: 36:34

You prefer it more than I'm, actually talking about murf here in the q and a'cause he likes using the q and a instead of the chat, but Murph's old. It's okay. I prefer the two fa because I wanna know if I have a pass key, they can't get in. I like knowing that when I get to go and log in, it's set you a code and if I'm just sitting there on my couch watching tv, I'm like, who is trying to get in my account? And then I go in and I, freak out. But I have a couple things I use a passkey for. Like Google. Does it work the same?

Dan DeLong: 37:05

Yeah, it's you can use biometrics, right? So I have a, yeah. Fingerprint

Sharrin Fuller: 37:11

option watch. I watch too many movies, too many to cruise movies. I don't like it.

Dan DeLong: 37:18

And it, it seems like a really smooth process. And we talked about this a little bit on the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast with Alicia. And we brought in Jamie, her husband, who is a Mac guy, and he talked a lot about what past he's actually do and and what they actually solve for. And one of the things that they solve for is trying to remember what your damn password is. Yeah. Because that's typically what happens when. You want. Logins are the bane of our existence these days and trying to remember strong. And which hold on.

Sharrin Fuller: 38:01

Let's take one step back here. You say, remember you're not using something like one pass. I couldn't even tell you what my pa Oh my gosh. I'll go to my team. I'm like, why is your password your dog's name delete new password? I can't. No, I have, oh yeah, I watch that. My watch towers almost just a thousand every day.'cause I go crazy. Course. I'm like, we have people's data. Yeah. Everybody out there. Of course I do you see this? If I find out that you're writing down your passwords or you're using your anniversary or something as your password for your clients, I'm coming to your door and we're gonna handle this. That's all right. Go ahead, Dan.

Dan DeLong: 38:35

But yeah, of course if you use a password vault but sometimes those aren't synchronized across various devices and why is it working here? And then I hate it when Google Chrome password. Vault and the password vault you're using Start fighting on the same website and I can't see behind, you know what the popup that came up. It's come on. Which login is it? I don't know, but the pass key is like, Nope. Okay, I'm in. But we got that there. Okay, so next polling question.

Sharrin Fuller: 39:13

Alright. I can't wait to see this one.

Dan DeLong: 39:15

Do you have two step verification? Wait. Okay. Why does it do that? What's it doing? No it, every time that I launch the poll on the monitor above my computer the pole jumps down to the left, to the

Sharrin Fuller: 39:33

mine, goes over here to my, I have three monitors. It's over here in the upper left hand corner and I don't know why. So Dan, I know you're gonna ask me I know this, I know our back and forth thing here now, so I know you're gonna ask me. And I think I made that blatantly clear that I actually just went through, we did an audit with our entire team and the one thing, and what made me do this is seeing all the activity of two FA and the issues that people breaking into QuickBooks. The one thing that I didn't love about Intuit is I have zero control to turn on or off to FA for my team. I can log in and see if they have it on, but I can't force them to do it. So now I have, which I can't stand, I don't like manual. I have this monthly thing where I go in and I make sure that two FA is not shut off for anybody. And if they do, I kick them out and make them get a new password. I'm mean. I don't wanna claim on my insurance of the

Dan DeLong: 40:24

finger from Sharrin. You don't want,

Sharrin Fuller: 40:27

nobody wants this, Dan.

Dan DeLong: 40:32

All right. And I see Jolene in the q and a. So it's is MFA and two-step verification only QBO related or also QBDT. So this is Intuit account related. So anytime that you sign into anything Intuit related that you uses an Intuit account, that is, whether that's gonna be the MFA or two-step verification, right? So this could be TurboTax, this could be. Credit Karma. This could be anything that could be Intuit related. As far as a log,

Sharrin Fuller: 41:08

no, you have T sheets and you should have this on as an accounting firm owner or an accountant at all. If you have any sort of insurance, like this is a huge, thing. And with the hackers nowadays, they're good. You should have some sort of level of protection on absolutely everything beyond MFA in my, actually, in everybody's opinion, this isn't just mine. This is everybody's. Yeah. So go turn'em on right now while you're listening. Alright.

Dan DeLong: 41:33

All right, so let's go ahead and let's, we're close on the ending here, so I just wanna share the results. So hooray. Half of you have it turned on already. Good job. All right. Okay. Now we're gonna talk about migrating best practices with payroll, right? So what happens to payroll during the migration? So the financial impact of payroll is migrated before anything regarding the payroll setup process takes place. So your employee lists are gonna come over your paycheck liability, your paychecks and liability checks. They get turned into regular checks with the accounting impact of that paycheck to be recorded liability adjustments. There is no such thing as a liability adjustment in QuickBooks Online payroll or, QuickBooks online without payroll for that matter. So they get turned into journal entries, right? So the financial impact makes the journey before payroll setup occurs, right then. Then the payroll setup. Process actually starts after the migration. So this is where employee setup occurs, and earnings deductions the direct deposit information. And then with regards to actual payroll data, only the current year is gonna come over and be set up because you do it today, right? We're in August. QuickBooks online payroll is only gonna be concerned about the current year with regards to form filings and tax payments, right? So it doesn't care what happened last year, right? So keep that in mind that if you're gonna run payroll reports, you're not gonna get them out of the, prior years once this, occurs. But you are gonna get year to date payroll payroll amounts so that they're, paycheck pay stub. There we go. So the pay stub is accurate. So you'll see the current pay and the year to date as well as the tax payments because the end of the year you're gonna have the W twos and the year annual form filings that QuickBooks is gonna be able to do. And it needs to know all that information for the first year. What was I gonna, I thought was this link takes me back over here. Okay. Next. Okay oh, there we go. I had another slide. So this was the nugget that I saw in that checklist. So thank you QuickBooks for pointing me in the right direction. So in the checklist there is a, down here, I'll make this a little bigger because I saw okay, Sharrin squinting her eyes. In the checklist, there is this setup admin role, permissions in desktop to migrate payroll, direct deposit to QuickBooks Online. The QuickBooks online admin must have admin role permissions in QuickBooks Desktop. This is not, I'm logging into QuickBooks as the admin, I'm logging into the Intuit account inside of QuickBooks as the primary admin. So this is, gets really confusing when we're talking about admins, account, user so on and so forth, right? And lo and behold I, come on now. So over here, so we, we showed that F two control one screen. You'll see this here in the upper right where it talks about Intuit account information. That is what it's talking about. So whoever's the primary admin in the company needs to be the primary admin who's doing the migration. If you want payroll to make the journey, if payroll's not an issue, this is not this is not an issue, right? So if you're not gonna be, if you're gonna be using rippling or Gusto or a DP or any time outside of payroll service on pay or anything else, this is really not, this is a moot point anyway.'cause the financial impact is gonna make the journey regardless of what you do here, right? So first thing is to update QuickBooks Desktop. Make sure you're on the latest version of, desktop. The Intuit ID for admins need to match, right? So if you're doing this as the accountant, you are an admin by default as the accountant user inside of QuickBooks Online. You don't have to be the primary admin in the QuickBooks Online. So that's fine. But if your login is not the primary admin inside a desktop, then that's going to be a problem when payroll comes to try to migrate, right? So there is a way to reset that, right? If you've brought in the the file local to your machine and you're doing it locally, then you can reset the the Intuit id, which is just temporary for the conversion process. So I've created a little blog about it, right? And we talk a little bit about the desktop or Intuit talks about the desktop versus Intuit logins and how they relate. But down here we've got a little scribe. So I'm just gonna walk through that process here, right? So here's the Intuit account information. If it's empty or if it's not yours, then this process, you want to continue through this, right? So you're gonna close out of that. And then when you go to the help menu, there's a little button here that says, make it bigger. Reset tuit ID settings. You gotta be signed in as the, QuickBooks admin. This is the admin user that you're signing in into. Quick, thanks for bringing out the glasses. You have to be signed in as the admin, right? A-D-M-I-N. When you sign in to into QuickBooks in order to see this option, right? So just click on reset the settings. It's gonna say, Hey, are you sure you gotta type in Yes. In that process. And then it will reset. It'll say Your Intuit ID settings were reset and you've been signed out of your account. Sign in again. So you go back to company my company, and then click on sign in. Should be over here, but I somehow it got cut off on the screech. So over here where it says, manage your account, there's a sign in button or a link right above that. And then you just say, Hey, I'm the admin of this company. And then go through the process of signing in. And then when you go back and check the the F two or the product information window, you should see your login information. And as long as that login is the same login that you're doing the conversion on, you're good, or at least you should be. That's the theory. Like I was saying I've done this a couple times and it works really slick now. It doesn't set it up right away, right? Like after you get that infor that email that says, Hey, you're ready. It still has to go through and set that up for all those employees and, whatnot. But like I was saying, that 431 employees got set up and set up properly. The year to date information came over. It was really just a matter of checking those things as I was going through, rather than running reports, trying to find them in the desktop and make sure that they and entering that information, which is never in the same order. It's maddening. If you've ever tried to set up pay payroll and QuickBooks online after a migration from desktop FICA or social Security or Medicare, they're never in the same order as QuickBooks Online. And then this whole thing of first quarter, year to date, you gotta put in as opposed to first quarter and what's in the current quarter or something like that. So it's it does get a little maddening when you're trying to do that. Huge huge breakthrough, I guess is, and if, you are migrating payroll if you do this process it again, try it out first before before telling your client, yeah, it'll set it up fine. Because I was even doing this and contacting Intuit, and they were like, this ain't gonna work for you. They were giving me the you might as well buckle up and, I was, glad to, to report that they were incorrect. All right, so real quick before we wrap up here, migrating attachments, this this is a little unique situation because attachments in desktop, they are stored in the same location as as the company file, but they are not part of the backup, right? All of those attachments that you have attached to customers or transactions when you have a lot of attachments, that is a concern or a consideration because they they just never came over. And in QuickBooks Desktop, once they're attached, the, they're, the originals aren't needed. Because what QuickBooks does is it copies it into a folder wherever the company file happens to be located, which, if you're in a multi-user environment, that is typically on a server somewhere, right? So that gets a little bit complicated. As we, were talking about this. So in the past, it wasn't possible to migrate with, desktop migrations, you typically needed a third party to move all of them, and the price tag to do all of that was. Really hot. So the caveats here is that the files actually need to be local, right? So this is now a consideration or complication when we're talking about a multi-user environment because the company file location is gonna be the located on a server. So just like desktop desktop migration is gonna have a problem if you migrate from the, from across the server. You want to have those local and you also want to have the attachments local as well. And it has to be done inside the QuickBooks Desktop. You can't use the online web portal to, to migrate your data and attaches, and they have to be less than 30 megabytes. So all of your video files that you've attached to, your to your customers or whatnot, they aren't gonna come over'cause they're probably too big. They may not even be the file site. File type. And that's where a

Sharrin Fuller: 53:20

loom link comes into play.

Dan DeLong: 53:24

Exactly. So these are the supported file types. Oh I'm, glad gif will come over because all of the memes that you've attached to your customers,

Sharrin Fuller: 53:34

the what the fry from Futurama Take My Money. That's the one I use the most, I think.

Dan DeLong: 53:41

There we go. So those are the types of attachments that will go. Now when you, the process is of course, you need to locate that documents folder. I, I put a frequently asked questions Intuit article. It's really robust prior slides so you can access that later. But you wanna go and you wanna find the locations of your documents. Typically you're gonna need to compress it or zip it into one. File and then move it local, wherever your company file is, and then extract it in that same location, wherever that company file happens to be located, and then clean up the links, right? Once you've moved it and you've changed the location, you're gonna wanna make sure that they go through and repair the links, because now the path is totally changed. So you wanna make sure that it's it's attached again. All right, so I did, okay, so here is the import summary, right? That, that came over. It will tell me it tells me here that there were three hundred, seven hundred and thirty nine transactions in the company file and desktop, and there were 713 17 that came over, right? So what you don't get on the regular import summary is this little link here to see the transaction details. Here's my problem, right? So a bunch of build assemblies didn't come over, right? Which is not unexpected because you don't have such a thing as a build assembly. But I might wanna look at these build assemblies that are in there to see if there's something that could be done at that point. And there was also some altered transactions of a inventory adjustment was turned into a journal entry, right? So just because it didn't come over doesn't mean that it didn't have the same financial impact. So you'll also be able to see that with accounts, right? So just because there discrepancy doesn't necessarily mean there's a reason to panic. So purchase orders just isn't even used that's not an account that's used inside of QuickBooks online. So this is a non-issue, right? Vendors there were other type or other names they got turned into into vendors. It's really just all it's saying there. And then it just gives you, an idea of actually what happened. So I did, so this is the this is the company and I just wanted to show in the attachments there is, there are the atta, oh, I wanted to show before I did it, but I'm not gonna do that on the other. I have these in my document center in the, desktop file. And here they are. They, came over. I just put some there were actually three and one was attached to a sales order. Any guesses why it didn't come over? Because sales orders don't exist inside of QuickBooks online. So it did bring over the two and it did attach them. So here on my invoice here is the the attachments are there, so if I go down, enough of you roll down, there's. There's the attachment. So I've got my CSV file that I happen to attach, and there it is, it's already attached and I can look at it. Oops, there. So it's there, right? So that's a huge win for the migration process. Oh, I've been sharing the last, poll question for since I, launched it. But let's close up with was this information useful? Share it any. Final thoughts before we wrap up? I'm

Sharrin Fuller: 57:43

excited for anybody who's doing conversions nowadays.'cause this is not how it was back in the day. It was not at all. But then again, desktop probably didn't have the level that they had. Quick Bot online didn't have the level that they had. So I think it's really cool for anybody that wants to come over. I also love that Intuit is helping them do it. Regardless of what the motives are, the fact that we do less is amazing. And knowing that it's done right. So I, think this is great. It can be a little overwhelming and if you're a solopreneur, this is a lot of time, so I would probably let Intuit handle it, charge for it.'cause you still gotta be the middle man, but it's, this is very informative, especially about the payroll. That's really cool.

Dan DeLong: 58:24

Yeah. I I actually got a a customer or a client who ha is trying to go from enterprise to QuickBooks Online. And their response from Intuit was, it's not gonna work. And because they have 120, they have 120,000 customers. And

Sharrin Fuller: 58:48

Yeah, that's a little's. That's where you just, honestly, you export the list and the data, you archive the file, you have it for reference, and you start a new file at the beginning of the year. I know that's terrible, but sometimes when your file's too heavy, if you're, if you haven't file that heavy, you should be on something super enterprise or like a big one. But I know that's what Intuit's trying to be now.

Dan DeLong: 59:09

Yeah. And they also have negative inventory, so running a condensed Oh things like that is, is a big challenge. So we are where there's will, there's a workaround and we are actually getting to a, breakthrough point with them. Just because it says it's failed, it doesn't mean that it's not an option. Yeah. Yeah. So Sharrin, again, I thank you for filling in for, Matthew today. Yes. And you'll continue to be our snarky. Yay. But I'm also having fun in

Sharrin Fuller: 59:44

the questions, so I hope I'm being at least helpful there.'cause there were 33 of'em. Most of them were Murph, but that's okay. We'll take that. Oh man,

Dan DeLong: 59:52

he's asking what the hell is negative inventory.

Sharrin Fuller: 59:55

I Murf, it's a thing. We've seen it. I also want everybody, I am offering anybody on this call 90 days free to my clone and conquer hub, pop in, get some free stuff, nope, no, no pressure purchase nest. No pressure either.

Dan DeLong: 1:00:14

Exactly.

Sharrin Fuller: 1:00:15

As opposed to, again. So

Dan DeLong: 1:00:17

we appreciate you joining us today and next time we're gonna have a method being joining us wherein when we what I've found is that they have become a great. Bridge when workflows that were critical in QuickBooks Desktop and you need them in, QuickBooks Online. And we're gonna talk about how they can save the day for those desktop migrations that just went awry. So hopefully you join us in a couple weeks when we have that. And until then, have a great great day and we'll see you next time on the QB Power Hour.