Question

Importing tax/financial data from Quickbooks into TurboTax Business

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 19, 2023
14 replies
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Each year, our firm uses TurboTax Business to complete and file our company's taxes. And each year, we are able to import all our company's financial data from Quickbooks into TurboTax Business, instead of having to manually enter it all.

Up until this year, TurboTax prompts us to select the Quickbooks file we wish to import.

This year, that option is not available in TurboTax Business.

Instead, the two options that TurboTax Business offers are:

"Yes. Let's import from Quickbooks to save time." and

"No thanks. I'll enter my Quickbooks info manually."

You would think that the option, "Yes. Let's import from Quickbooks to save time" would be the option to select.

However, when we select that option, and then click "Continue", we get the following screen:

"Quickbooks Desktop Not Installed.", with the comments, "No Quickbooks Desktop files has been found" and "Continue Without Importing". See the attached screenshot.

Rest assured that Quickbooks Desktop is very much installed.

As noted above, in past years, we have been able to search for the Quickbooks file we wish to import.

This year, that is not possible. TurboTax Business does not provide the opportunity to search for and select the Quickbooks file we wish to import.

I contacted TurboTax customer support, explained the above, and was told that it was a Quickbooks issue, and that I had to contact Quickbooks customer support.

Of course when I contacted Quickbooks customer support, I was told it was a TurboTax issue and that I had to contact TurboTax customer support.

Interestingly, when I told the TurboTax people that this was the first year we could not search for and select the Quickbooks file we wish to import, they seemed unfazed by it all, and said that they couldn't help us.

So I am reaching out to the community in the hope that someone can help us find a way to search for and select the Quickbooks file we wish to import into TurboTax Business.

QuickBooks Desktop

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R

racso

I am having the same problem , this should no be like this . I think the answer is simple Intuit wants you to upgrade to newest version of quickbooks , they sell you turbotax but if you want to import any file you need to buy expensive quickbooks

on my end I am returning turbotax and go with an other tax software

W

windowViper

I just have to report what proved to be an easy solution, not easy enough to persuade anyone from firing Intuit going forward (unless hey ACTUALLY fix the problem), but enough to get through the current tax season. I took the following steps:

1. Backup up my QB2020 data file. (Probably unnecessary, according to subsequent experience).

2. Install QB Enterprise trial edition. This is done by downloading and executing a file named QuickBooksEnterprise24Trial.exe. I was not required to enter any identifying information. A promotional video tried to entertain me but did not delay me. Mute it if it annoys you.

3. Reboot as instructed. I tried skipping that step, but TTB23 failed to import without rebooting first, so don't even try that (although it did no harm other than wasting my time).

4. Do not start QB (not Enterprise, not QB2020). Do start TTB23. That will cause you to open your data file in QB2020. Now the TTB23 import procedure works as it should with no tears.

5. You may well be home free now, but I continued as follows out of an abundance of caution and mistrust of Intuit. Uninstall QB Enterprise. Windows churned for a couple of minutes in the process of doing that.

6. Open QB2020. Restore my QB2020 data file, just in case that temporary QB Enterprise presence corrupted it somehow. But probably unnecessary. All appears to be well.

7. Open TTB23. All appears to be well after proceeding with the imported data.

8. Reboot (probably unnecessary).

I just have to report what proved to be an easy solution, not easy enough to persuade anyone not to fire Intuit going forward (unless they ACTUALLY and quickly fix the problem), but enough to get through the current tax season. I took the following steps (Windows 10):

1. Backup up my QB2020 data file. (Probably unnecessary, according to subsequent experience.)

2. Install QB Enterprise trial edition. This is done by downloading and executing a file named QuickBooksEnterprise24Trial.exe. I was not required to enter any identifying information. A promotional video tried to entertain me but did not delay me. Mute it if it annoys you.

3. Reboot as instructed. I tried skipping that step, but TTB23 failed to import without rebooting first, so don't even try that (although it did no harm other than wasting my time).

4. Do not start QB (not Enterprise, not QB2020). Do start TTB23. Try again to import the AB data into TTB23. That will cause you to open your data file in QB2020, and it’s OK to do that now. The TTB23 import procedure now works as it should with no tears.

5. You may well be home free now, but I continued as follows out of an abundance of caution and mistrust of Intuit. Uninstall QB Enterprise. Windows churned for a couple of minutes in the process of doing that.

6. Open QB2020. Restore my QB2020 data file, just in case that temporary QB Enterprise presence corrupted it somehow. But probably unnecessary. All appears to be well.

7. Open TTB23. All appears to be well after proceeding with the imported data.

8. Reboot (probably unnecessary).

S

sankar10

Excellent suggestion. It worked for me and I was able to import the data. What a round-about way. You are brilliant to suggest this. Thanks for taking the time to help.

J

jw4mitchell

I found the answer to this, at least for myself, and it is actually very simple. Intuit no longer supports import of data from "expired" QB Desktop versions (mine was 2020) into Turbotax Desktop, although the Support pages would seem to indicate this is a permissible operation. Also, TT technical support is totally unaware that this has happened, and so provides numerous links to irrelevant information related to TT online.

I understand this decision from a technical and business point of view, but lost a lot of time because it was not documented, or even shared with the TurboTax support team. Seems siloing between TT and QBO has not improved one bit since I left the company 5 years ago.

As some posters indicate, you need to download QB desktop 2024, either as evaluation or subscribe to it. Warning here though: QB desktop is being sunset as of July, so if you are successful using evaluation version this year, you don't have any clear path for next year.

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/email/final-desktop-plus-sale/?cid=ipd_stopsell

So I paid out the $650 annual subscription, more than triple my previous annual cost of ownership for QB (I'd buy once every three years, and I thought this was a really good deal, especially considering the cost of QB online). That will at least get me QB->TT connection for the next three years until QB 2024 desktop finally goes out of support. It's expensive considering I really only use it to assign expenses to tax lines, and I have to justify not switching to Excel spreadsheets and just doing it manually.

As far as where this leaves the QB Online community, I don't know. I tried out QBO, figured after five years away they must have fixed the major issues. I was slack-jawed to find out there is no mechanism for assigning tax-lines to expenses in QBO at all, nor any direct integration with TTax Desktop. Really? So got that refunded.

This is hard to understand. Maybe the community of people who use TT AND QB is relatively small, compared to the QB community who use tax preparers, and expendable.

I see Excel spreadsheets in my future. Then clay tablets.

D

DRH204Author

You noted there is no mechanisam for assigning tax lines to expenses in QBO. So how does the importing to TT work with QBO? How does QBO know how to treat/classify various expense categories?

On a different note, I spoke with a QB rep, and was informed that if our company wishes to continue to invoice clients by project (and not just by the client overall) and if we as a firm want to continue to track various client projects, we'll need to subscribe to the Plus version, which is almost $1,100 per year. Really????

Does anyone know:

- a less costly corporate accounting software option (ideally a "pay once" option, and not an annual fee), and

- a less costly corporate accounting sottware option that integrates with TurboTax or other business tax software?

S

shmince

My grandmother had a Filco refrigerator in her basement that she purchased in 1946. When she passed away in 2017 that refrigerator was still operating. Since 1946, innovations have improved energy efficiency, refrigerator capacity, and numerous other features we enjoy, but those innovations have all come at the cost of product quality. That old fridge continued to keep frozen food frozen, and cold foods cold for over 71 years. We sold it. I expect that it is still operating today.

I suspect that, these days, companies fear their product living too long a lifespan. Compare Coca Cola to Filco. Coke makes a product that you can buy today, and then buy again tomorrow, the next day, and so on. Filco made a product that you only had to buy once a century or so. At some point, people figured out the double bonus effect of making lower quality products. First, they get the benefit of lower upfront costs per unit, since the lower quality product is made from cheaper parts. And second, the lower quality parts act as timebombs, shortening the product lifespan, and increasing the frequency of which consumers will have to return to the market for an "updated" product.

QuickBooks doesn't have to worry so much about the quality aspect; the products they sold us function the way we wanted them to. I mean, who among us here REALLY NEEDS a different, updated accounting software product to meet our needs? I would argue, very few, if any of us. Our desktop software does everything we need it to do. And, because of the nature of business administration, our accounting needs aren’t going to change anytime soon. So, This software, in and of itself, could serve us for the next twenty years, or for the foreseeable future, without needing much in the way of updates. That means there is no intrinsic timebomb in the quality of the product. Instead, Intuit believes it necessary to IMPOSE an ARTIFICIAL TIMEBOMB in the product in order to stimulate a continual flow of repeat purchasers. They’ve experimented with the customer base, trying to find that sweet spot where the customers would bear the cost of the upgrade without rebelling against the company. Three years seemed to work for a while. Then, they saw Microsoft taking its Office products and switching them over to a Software As Service (SAS) subscription based model, pumping money in on a regular basis rather than every so many years. Honestly, I was fine with Microsoft Word 2007 (because it was the first to save files in .pdf format). Adobe jumped on board. SAS became all the rage. Now, Intuit says, “We want some of that.”

Meanwhile, Intuit’s customer base already has QuickBooks products that serve the customer’s needs. We don’t need anything more, we don’t need anything new. We don’t need upgrades, bells, whistles, or BS. When a new version of TurboTax comes out, we just need it to have the capacity to do what it’s been doing for the past several years. Why not just continue to support the QuickBooks you already sold me, and I, as a loyal customer, will continue to purchase your updated TurboTax? I can understand TurboTax needing to be new each year. That makes sense. The federal government changes the tax laws every year, so the tax software must change. No problem here. You can have my money on that every year happily and without complaint. But my accounting software doesn’t need anywhere near that kind of attention.

Intuit is turning QuickBooks into a hamster wheel, and turning its customers into hamsters. That’s not a healthy relationship. They still have the opportunity to do better. Will they take that opportunity, or will they run the company on hamster power?

D

Daveb4

20 Year customer of QuickBooks accountant premier and TurboTax business. On computer both desktop versions.

YES every year before in turbo tax it allowed us to pick the file.

You need to fix this TURBOTAX.

500. In software useless for multiple company files.

Not a quick books problem it turbo issue.

I have done many things to fix.

Need the question browes select file.

March 15th deadline for my type of business's

I expect a update that includes my button in turbo.

Thank you.

D

Daveb4

I did complete my taxes for 2 companies. And 3 owners.

I was able to import all companies.

But you need to download

Https://quickbooks.intuit.com/desktop/enterprise/contact/trial-download

Install the program after answering the questions.

Reboot

Open the program Enterprise , do not open your file close the program. Reboot

Open turbotax choose file import

From accounting software or quickbooks.

And it will find your files.

When they call to sell you enterprise tell them no thanks.

Started at 6 am finished 6 filings by 6pm.

That gets us by this year.

Not sure about next year

R

ReymondO

Good day, @Daveb4.

Thanks for joining the thread. For me to help you with your concern and provide the appropriate solution, can you tell us more about the issue you're encountering?

Any additional info would be much appreciated. Just add them to the thread so I can help you out. Have a good one.

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