Converting Customers from QuickBooks

QuickBooks allows you one billing address and one shipping address per customer. These are converted to the Sage 50 format. Sage 50 allows you to enter up to 20 shipping addresses per customer.

Sage 50 also allows you to have an unlimited number of contacts per customer. Each contact is associated with an address. Currently, Sage 50 will only convert your primary contact in QuickBooks. This contact will become the Bill-to Contact in Sage 50.

If your customer address fields were not converted properly, see Converting address fields from QuickBooks.

Sage 50 requires each customer to have a default sales account (typically an income account). This account is the category where sales for this customer will be assigned. During the conversion, you are prompted to select a default sales account for all the customers that are to be converted from QuickBooks. Each customer converted from QuickBooks is assigned the same sales account default.

After the conversion, you can change the sales account for each customer if you like. You can also change the sales account in invoicing or receipts, if necessary.

QuickBooks allows you to set up a list of terms. When setting up customers, you can select any one of the terms from the list. Sage 50 sets up a single set of "standard terms" in Customer Defaults. Then, when setting up a customer, you choose whether or not the customer uses standard terms. All QuickBooks customers are converted as using non-standard terms, with each set of unique terms based on the terms listed in QuickBooks.

If a customer record in QuickBooks does not have terms set up, the terms will be converted as Due in __ number of days, and the days will be set to 0.

Sage 50 will convert the first five customizable fields you have in QuickBooks that pertain to customers. However, field labels will not be converted, and the customizable fields will be inactive after conversion. How do I activate the customizable fields and create field labels?

In Sage 50 sales taxes are set up as sales tax IDs. Each sales tax ID is made up of at least one sale tax agency. All tax items in QuickBooks (whether exempt or not) are converted as tax agencies. For the purposes of the conversion, all non-exempt tax items are also converted as sales tax IDs. All tax groups in QuickBooks are converted as sales tax IDs in Sage 50. These can contain one or more sales tax agencies (QuickBooks tax items).

Each customer is assigned a default sales tax ID. Sage 50 will select the sales tax ID that matches the tax item listed in the QuickBooks customer record.

For more information on sales taxes, see Sales taxes in Sage 50 and Converting sales taxes from QuickBooks.

In QuickBooks, jobs are a subset of the customer list. In Sage 50 Accounting, jobs are maintained as a separate list. For more information on jobs, see Converting jobs from QuickBooks.

If you are converting lists only, Sage 50 converts the open balance (the sum of all outstanding invoices) as the customer's beginning balance. This beginning balance is entered as of the day before the first period you chose to enter data during the conversion process. When you receive a payment from a customer, you can enter it against the beginning balance total.

However, if you convert transactions from QuickBooks to Sage 50, a more involved process is used. Balances will be brought over as of the end of the last fiscal year. Then, after all transactions are converted and posted, an adjusting entry will be made as of the end of the last year to adjust all balances to those in QuickBooks. Current year balances will be based on transactions that were converted and posted.

Open invoices will be assigned an Invoice Number beginning with BegBal. If there are multiple invoices, each one will have a number after it as well.

If a customer record has a job associated with it, then the job's open balance is converted as a separate beginning balance.