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Rodney H
Employee
August 27, 2026
Question

Export / Import data issue since Inventory page updated

  • August 27, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 8 views

Before the Inventory page was updated, I would export a listing of inventory and it would give me the following headings in a spreadsheet

Product/Service Name
Sales Description
SKU
Type
Sales Price / Rate
Tax on Sales
Price/Rate
Includes Tax
Income Account
Purchase Description
Purchase Cost
Tax on Purchases
Purchase Cost Includes Tax
Expense Account    Quantity On Hand
Reorder Point
Inventory Asset Account
Quantity as-of Date

It would export it as (Catagory:Product Name) under Product/Service Name

I could easily modify multiple products at once, use excel formulas to extract new Purchase Cost Pricing / Calculate Sales price and import data back in using the gear icon and easily update 1000+ items easily.

Now when I export is gives the following

Product/Service Name
Quantity on hand
Item type
Category
SKU
Purchase cost includes tax
Sales price includes tax
Price
Cost
Income Account
Expense Account
Inventory asset account
Sales Description
Purchase Description
Reorder Point
Preferred Supplier

When I modify this spread sheet format and go to import

- It does not find the Category and imports to uncategorized
- it does not find the Tax on Sales
- It does not find the Income Account
- It doe snot find the expense account
- It does not find the inventory asset acct

Please advise

1 reply

aks101
Employee
September 4, 2026

Hi Rodney,

You’re running into a schema mismatch caused by the recent UI update. While Intuit modernized the export columns, the backend import tool (Gear > Import Data > Products and Services) still expects the legacy header structure and syntax:

  1. Category Mapping: In the legacy import template, QBO parses categories using the colon hierarchy directly in the item name column (Category:Product Name). The standalone Category column in the new export is ignored by the bulk import engine, which defaults them to Uncategorized.

  2. Account & Tax Header Renaming: The import mapper is missing your Income, Expense, Asset, and Tax fields because the new export renamed several headers (e.g., Price instead of Sales Price / Rate, and dropping explicit tax rate labels).

Workaround to fix your bulk update:

  • Option 1 (Column Remapping): If you still have an old exported CSV from before the update, copy its header row and paste it over Row 1 of your newly exported sheet. In your Product/Service Name column, use an Excel formula to concatenate the category:

    =Category_Cell & ":" & Product_Cell

    Then delete the standalone Category column before importing.

  • Option 2 (Manual Field Mapping Screen): When uploading your new CSV, do not click through the second step too quickly. On the Map Data screen, manually map each unlinked field: point QBO's legacy prompts (Income Account, Expense Account, Inventory Asset Account) to your new file's matching column names. Also, ensure the account names in the sheet match your Chart of Accounts exactly (case-sensitive and including sub-account colons if applicable) so QBO can link them.

If you handle bulk 1,000+ SKU updates frequently and need a quick Python script or Excel macro to automatically transform the new export layout back into the exact legacy import schema in seconds, let me know—happy to share one.

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