QuickBooks holds three lists Studio wants: your customers, your vendors, and your invoices. Export them as three separate files and import them in that order.
1. Customers, Which Become Clients
- Go to Sales → Customers (Desktop: Customers → Customer Center).
- Use the export icon above the list and choose Export to Excel.
- Import it into Studio as Clients. See Importing Clients.
If you are a nonprofit using QuickBooks for donations rather than an agency invoicing customers, your customers are usually donors. Import them as Donors instead, and bring the deposits in as Giving.
2. Vendors
- Go to Expenses → Vendors (Desktop: Vendors → Vendor Center).
- Export to Excel.
- Import as Vendors. The Tax ID column carries over, which is the one you will want in January.
3. Invoices
- Go to Reports and run Invoice List, or for line-level detail, Transaction List by Customer with the Product/Service and Amount columns switched on.
- Set the date range to cover everything you want to keep, not just this year.
- Export to Excel and import as Invoices.
Studio's invoices import expects one row per line item, with the invoice number repeated across the rows that belong together. That is exactly what a transaction detail report gives you, which is why it is the better report to pull.
You Can Upload the Excel File Directly
No need to convert anything. Studio reads .xlsx and the older .xls that QuickBooks Desktop still produces, and turns it into a CSV on the way in.
What QuickBooks Does to Its Own Files, and What Studio Does About It
QuickBooks reports are built to be printed, not parsed. Every one of these is a real thing its exports do, and Studio handles all of them without you editing the file:
- Letterhead above the header row. Company name, report title and date range occupy the first few rows. Studio finds the real header row underneath.
- A signed footer. A timestamp line at the bottom. It is skipped rather than imported as a customer called “Monday, Aug 11, 2026 04:12 PM GMT-5”.
- Phone numbers with their label inside the cell, like
Mobile:(806) 555-0132. The number is pulled out and formatted; a cell that turns out to hold an email address rather than a number is not turned into a phone number. - States spelled out. “Texas” becomes TX.
- A whole distribution list in one email cell. Studio works out which address belongs to the named contact, treats
info@and other role addresses as the company's rather than a colleague's, and does not simply take the first one. - The customer's own name repeated in the contact column when no contact is set. That is an echo, not a contact, so it is dropped instead of creating a person named after the business.
- Placeholder customers such as a row named “.”. Skipped and reported.
The One Thing Worth Checking By Hand
A QuickBooks customer list contains a row for every payer you ever categorised a deposit against, which is not the same as a list of clients. Expect names like “IRS”, “Venmo” and your own name in there.
Studio holds any row that arrives without a name or without an email on the Needs Info page rather than putting it in your client list, so these do not quietly become customers. Work through that page after the import: complete the real ones, delete the rest, and press Keep as-is on any genuine client you have no email for. That choice is remembered, so re-importing the file will not ask again.
What Does Not Come Across
- Your chart of accounts, journal entries and reconciliations. Studio is not an accounting ledger and does not try to be one.
- Attachments on invoices.
- Recurring invoice templates. Set those up in Studio once the clients exist.