QuickBooks export
What this is for
Your accountant needs your numbers in QuickBooks. Most competition
companies do this by exporting a spreadsheet and retyping it, or by handing
over a shoebox. This page does the tedious part: it turns everything on
your books for a stretch of dates into tidy, balanced entries in the shape
QuickBooks knows how to import.
The page puts it plainly: Hand your accountant balanced journal entries
instead of a spreadsheet to retype.
Go to Finance in the left-hand menu, then the QuickBooks tab. If
Finance isn’t in your menu, it’s not in your plan yet — ask us.
Herding Cats does not talk to QuickBooks directly. What you get here is a
file you download and hand to your accountant, who imports it. A direct
connection to QuickBooks — no file in the middle — is in active
development.
How the whole thing works
The idea to hold in your head is small:
You pick a stretch of dates. We hand you a file. Every amount in that
file is marked as sent, so it can never go out twice.
That’s the entire system. The next export automatically picks up where the
last one stopped. You never have to remember what you already gave your
accountant.
At the top of the page you’ll see how much is waiting — something like
142 entries waiting, with the dates they span and the words
not in any export yet. When you’re caught up it reads: Nothing waiting —
everything posted so far has already been exported.
Before your first export: matching names
This step is optional. Skip it and everything still works — the file will
just use Herding Cats’ names for your accounts, and your accountant will
sort them out on their end. But five minutes here saves them an hour.
Click Map QBO names
It’s the outline button at the top of the QuickBooks page. The page it
opens is called QuickBooks mapping, and it says: Make our names
match your QuickBooks chart. Everything here is optional — exports work
either way.Work down the Account names table
Each row shows Our account on the left. In the QBO account box,
type the name your QuickBooks chart actually uses. Add the
Acct # if you use account numbers.Leave a row blank and it exports under the greyed-out name shown in the
box — which already works.Set the Balancing accounts if you want
Every entry has two sides. These are the accounts the other side lands
in. Your accountant can reclassify from there.Set your Brand classes if you run more than one brand
Each brand becomes a QuickBooks Class. Leave blank and it uses the brand
name shown in grey.One thing to check with your accountant: Class tracking has to be turned
on in QuickBooks for this to land.
Rows save themselves as you go — there’s no Save button.
You don’t have to do this all at once. When you run an export, the preview
will point out any accounts that still aren’t matched, tell you how many
entries each one affects, and link you straight here. And it’ll remind you:
You can still export now — the file works either way.
Running an export
Click New export
The New export box opens with last month’s dates already filled in —
which is what an accountant asks for by default.Adjust the From and To dates if you need to
The preview under them refreshes as you type.Read the preview
This is the honest part of the screen. It shows exactly what would go
out: how many entries, how many journal entries they roll up into, and
the dollar total on each side. Below that is a small table — Covers,
Lines, Amount — so nothing in the file is a surprise.Add a Note if it helps
Optional. The example given is sent to Dana on the 5th.Click Finalize & download
The file downloads immediately. Everything in it is now marked as sent.
Two things the preview may tell you instead:
- Nothing new in this range. — everything in those dates already went
out in an earlier export. - Everything in this range cancels itself out — there’s nothing to
send. — the amounts net to zero.
Getting the file again later
Every export you’ve run is listed under Exports you’ve made, with its
Period, when it was Exported and by whom, the number of
Entries, the Total, and a Status.
On any run marked Sent, click Download for the Excel file, or the
small CSV link next to it if your accountant prefers that.
What’s deliberately left out
Two kinds of money never appear in these files, on purpose. The page says
so at the bottom:
- Studio registration payments. That money reaches your bank as a
Stripe payout, and your accountant books it from the payout
reconciliation. Sending it here too would record it twice. - Anything still marked as an estimate. Guesses stay out until they
become real costs.
Voiding an export
Sent a file with the wrong dates? Sent it before you’d finished entering
last month’s bills? Void it.
The row’s status changes from Sent to Voided, and where the
Download button was you’ll now see Entries returned to the queue. Run a
fresh export whenever you’re ready and those amounts will be in it.
If your accountant already imported that file, they need to delete those
entries in QuickBooks themselves. The confirmation box says so: voiding
here only makes the entries exportable again. Voiding and then re-exporting
without telling them means the same amounts get imported twice.
If the preview says the journals don’t balance
You’ll see a red line: These journals don’t balance — please tell us
before importing this. Take it literally — email
MeowCaniHelpYou@tryherdingcats.com before your accountant touches the file.
That message means something is wrong on our side, not yours.