Moving to Ambrook from QuickBooks (QBO) or another accounting software? You can bring over the structural pieces of your books via spreadsheet import. This article walks through what you can import and how to do it.
What you can import from QuickBooks
Chart of Accounts — your existing income and expense accounts and balance sheet accounts
Contacts — vendors and customers, sync directly from a connected QBO Online account or via CSV
Items — your product or service catalog
Bills and invoices — bills and invoices via CSV
Balance sheet accounts — your asset, liability, and equity accounts
Chart of Accounts
At Ambrook, we break the chart of accounts into two parts:
Categories — income and expense categories, plus the tags used with them (Enterprises, Funding, and Contacts).
Balance sheet accounts — assets, liabilities, and equity.
You can import either or both into Ambrook. That said, most customers take the move to Ambrook as an opportunity to redo their Chart of Accounts from scratch using our setup guide in Settings → Categories. Ambrook's smart tags (Enterprises, Locations, Projects) often replace the workarounds you built in QBO. It's worth a fresh look before deciding to import.
If you're happy with the way you have things set up in QBO, here's how to bring it over:
Importing Categories
Download your Chart of Accounts from Quickbooks
Isolate the income and expense accounts from your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts export
In Ambrook, go to Settings → Categories → Click Import
Download the Categories Excel Template
Put the spreadsheet into Ambrook's template format — see the Spreadsheet reformatting tips below
Back in Settings → Categories → Import, click Upload Categories Excel and select your file
Importing Balance Sheet Accounts
Download your Chart of Accounts from Quickbooks
Isolate the balance sheet accounts from your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts export
In Ambrook, go to Accounts
Click the dropdown arrow next to + New Account, then click Import Spreadsheet
Download Accounts Excel Template
Put the spreadsheet into Ambrook's template format — see the Spreadsheet reformatting tips below
Back on the Accounts page, click the dropdown next to + New Account again and click Upload Accounts Excel
Note: For each balance sheet account, set the starting balance and starting date to the date you're beginning your books in Ambrook and the balance as of that date.
How to import contacts from QuickBooks
If you're coming from QuickBooks Online, you can sync your contacts directly.
Go to Settings → Contacts
Click the dropdown arrow by +New Contact
Click Import from Quickbooks to sync your contacts from Quickbooks directly
If you're coming from QuickBooks Desktop, import your contacts via spreadsheet:
Navigate to Settings → Contacts.
Click the dropdown arrow next to + New Contact, then click Import XLSX spreadsheet
Download the Contacts Excel Template
Reformat your QuickBooks contacts export to match Ambrook's template — see the Spreadsheet reformatting tips below
Back in Settings → Contacts, click the dropdown next to + New Contact again and click Upload Contacts Excel
How to import Items
Download your Products & Services from QuickBooks
Navigate to Settings → Items and click Import
Download the Contacts Excel Template
Reformat your spreadsheet to match Ambrook's template — see the Spreadsheet reformatting tips below
Back in Settings → Items → Import, click Upload Items Excel and select your file
How to import Bills & Invoices
You can bring bills and invoices over three ways: bulk PDF upload, spreadsheet import, or — for bills only — email forwarding. If you're bringing over a lot of invoices, we recommend bulk uploading the downloaded PDFs from QuickBooks. Ambrook will extract the line items automatically.
Bulk uploading PDFs on web
This will extract the details and line items from the bill automatically.
Download your bills or invoices from QBO as PDFs
Navigate to Bills or Invoices
Click the dropdown arrow next to + New Bill or + New Invoice, then click Scan Files
Select all of the PDFs and click Open
On mobile, you can do the same by taking a picture of the bill in the Ambrook mobile app. Your bills and invoices may take a few minutes to appear if you're uploading many at once.
Note: If you have multiple pages of a bill, they need to be combined into one document to be read as one bill -- otherwise, you'll get a separate bill for each separate photo. You can use third party tools to merge pictures into one PDF, such as https://www.ilovepdf.com/jpg_to_pdf.
Import spreadsheet
Download your bills or invoices from QBO as a spreadsheet
Navigate to Bills or Invoices
Click the dropdown arrow next to + New Bill or + New Invoice, then download the Bills/Invoices CSV template
Reformat your spreadsheet to match Ambrook's template — see the Spreadsheet reformatting tips below
Back on Bills or Invoices, click the dropdown next to + New Bill or + New Invoice again and click Upload Bills/Invoices CSV
Email forwarding (for bills)
Navigate to Bills
Click the dropdown arrow next to + New Bill, then click Forward Bills
Click the pencil icon to edit your bill forwarding address
Click the clipboard icon to copy the address
From your email, forward bills to that address
Spreadsheet Reformatting Tips
AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can quickly reformat your QuickBooks exports to match Ambrook's templates. Upload both spreadsheets and try a prompt like the one below.
I'm attaching two spreadsheets:
Source file (
[filename]) — contains the data I want to reformatTemplate file (
[filename]) — shows the structure/format I want the output to match
Please reformat the data from the source file into the template's structure. Specifically use the template's column headers, sheet names, and overall layout. Map each source column to the appropriate template column (tell me your mapping before you start so I can correct anything). Keep any headers, capitalization, and styling from the template intact.
FAQ
Q: Can I import historical transactions that were tagged in Quickbooks?
A: You can import transaction data from a CSV, but bringing over tagged transaction history from QuickBooks can be hairy. If you're using Ambrook to redo your categories, treat the move as a fresh start instead of importing prior transaction history!
Q: Can I import my previous reports?
A: Ambrook builds your reports from the transactions in your account, so importing a historical P&L or transaction history isn't supported in the product today. We recommend downloading a balance sheet and P&L statement from QuickBooks for each year and keeping those for your records.
Tip: If you're looking for an Ambrook account manager to assist with your data migration and ongoing support, our Full Service offering might be a good fit for you. Reach out to us at support@ambrook.com if you'd like to be setup on a free consultation call with our team.
If you have additional questions, send us a message in the support chat in Settings → Support or email support@ambrook.com!