wehuberconsultingllc.com » QuickBooks

Using VBA to create import files for QuickBooks

Bill — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:22:36 +0000

A couple of years ago I created some spreadsheets to help me migrate data into QuickBooks. I set up a worksheet that followed the IIF format and then saved it as a tab delimited file. The biggest problem was that one row of data required three rows in the IIF format. If you try and use copy and paste method to adding new rows, this can become quite a pain. The addressing is all screwed up. I figured out how to do it with some Excel functions(e.g. rows and offset) but the final result was still troublesome.

I finally bit the bullet and decided to use VBA to dynamically create a new worksheet in IIF format. I select the rows I am interested in and then I let the macro iterate through the selection creating IIF transactions in the worksheet. After I did a lot of searching for VBA examples I had a macro that worked remarkably well. It is a very simple program but it took me a while to find the right commands. Although the macro was a success, I still had problems with the IIF invoice transaction was not doing what I expected it to do when QuickBooks imported it. It was “in” but I had to fix a lot of transactions. This was hardly the time saver I hoped for.

My next step in the evolutionary process was to switch from IIF to an AutoIT script. I chose to modify the VBA macro to write out the data as an AutoIT array. This allowed me to use an include statement in my main AutoIT script to include the file containing the AutoIT code for the array. Since I run the script interactively, this was an easy way to get the data into the program. The good news is that after fine tuning the script I was able to achieve a pretty high success rate with the invoices. Part of the problem was with the data but a more challenging problem was the timing issues. Interactive scripting is still closer to an art form than a science. The script is not perfect but it is an improvement. Another advantage of using AutoIT is that I was able to further extend the scripting process to let it partially fill out the QuickBooks Receive Payments screen. The script would wait for me to manually match invoices before continuing. QuickBooks does not have an IIF transaction for receive payments.Since this traditionally is a manual process in QuickBooks, this is a big time saver.

Today I wrote another macro using my previous work on the macros as my example. Within a fairly short period of time I was able to create a new VBA macro to write out a worksheet of bills in the IIF format. I could of chosen to write an AutoIT script but I remembering having good success with importing IIF bills. Once again this will save me a lot of manual data entry and will undoubtedly make the bills more accurate since it is important that the memo fields get filled out with the proper billing information.

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Aaron Stebner’s WebLog : Automated cleanup tool to remove the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5

Bill — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:30:03 +0000

A big thank you goes out Aaron for his automated cleanup tool to remove the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. Yesterday I found myself in “No Man’s Land”. My PC was trying to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1(KB110806). It did not work and complained about not finding 2.0a. The .NET Framework 2.0 that worked the day before was now toast. Live Writer and QuickBooks 2008 no longer worked since they depend on .NET. I get a little antsy when I have to resort to my backup plan to run payroll. Uninstalling .NET via the control panel did not work. It could not find the source!? Running the dotnet.exe I originally used to install .NET Framework 2.0 did not work either. So I ran Aaron’s tool to uninstall .NET Framework 2.0. After I rebooted I let Microsoft Update install a new version of .NET Framework 2.0. Live Writer and QuickBooks 2008 are working again! Yea, Aaron!

For those who are still trying to figure out what I am talking about Aaron describes his tool as:

This tool automates the manual cleanup steps for the .NET Framework 2.0 that I posted a while ago. These steps have helped solve most of the known .NET Framework 2.0 beta uninstall issues that I know of. In addition, the tool can be useful to return your system to a known (relatively clean) state in case you run into any .NET Framework 2.0 installation failures so that you can try to install again.

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Importing invoices into QuickBooks using AutoIt Script

Bill — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:52:52 +0000

For several years I have successfully used the QuickBooks IIF format to import bills, checks, and employee hours. I have been less successful with invoices and I was unable to import payments. Several times I considered writing a C# or VB program to import the data but I backed off because it looked like it would take too much time. I looked at AutoIt but felt it would have a steep learning curve, too. Yesterday I decided to give AutoIt a try and after a couple of hours I was able import both invoices and payments.

Since I am the treasurer for a Habitat for Humanity affiliate I have a strong need to make sure our mortgage tracking system is kept in sync with QuickBooks accounts. I use an Excel spreadsheet to reconcile mortgage payments we record in the specialized system with the actual bank deposits. This is where I find the errors since we use one person to record the payments and another person to record the deposits. For each mortgage payment I must allocate it to principal, escrow, and late fee. If everything works fine, then both systems have the correct values for each individual home owner’s mortgage and escrow accounts. I set up an invoice for the principal owed when the home owner closes on the house. Every month I enter invoices for the escrow and late fees due. Habitat does not charge interest. On an average month I need to enter 30 to 40 invoices and 30 to 40 payments. As you can see, I have a vested interest in seeing that this project be quick and accurate.

The present script is a work in progress. I feed the data into the script via a VBA macro I created in my spreadsheet. The macro writes out the payment values as AutoIt code onto a new worksheet. Then I paste this code into my AutoIt script, save the script, and run it. Crude but effective. The code for the invoice screen was pretty straightforward and I am letting it run automatically. The code for the payment requires human interaction since I must allocate the payment to the different invoices. It pre-fills the payment screen and then asks me to allocate the payment and save the payment before proceeding. I click on a popup to process the next payment.

Before next month I will have the macro writing out the code to a text file that I can “include” in the script and include a little bit more error checking.

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Problems importing IIF transactions into QB2004

Bill — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:53:06 +0000

A while back I wrote a post called, “Update to Excel Macro to import IIF transactions“. In it I talked about a macro I was working on to import IIF transactions into QuickBooks. I had intended to share the macro once I got finished testing it. Well, I have finished testing it. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the macro works as intended. The bad news is that although the transactions will import into QuickBooks, QB2004 does something funny with the transactions and I have not figured why. As an example if I import a late fee invoice, the late fee does not show up on the income statement even though I can see and edit the invoice. If I delete the line on the invoice and re-enter the line, the income will appear on the income statement. Obviously this is not the answer I was looking for.

Since then I have downloaded the SDK and am looking at modifying one of their sample programs to be a import program. With my workload this problem has not been high on my priority list. For whatever its worth, here is the macro as a text file.

Create IIF Rows from selection

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Free Download of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007

Bill — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:06:39 +0000

Microsoft Introduces New Accounting Software and Services for Small and Home-Based Businesses

Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Microsoft® Office Accounting Express 2007, financial management software designed for early startups and home-based businesses that currently use pen and calculator or spreadsheets to run their operations. Office Accounting Express 2007 consists of desktop software available as a free download and seven integrated online services.

Read the full PressPass Announcement
Get the Free download of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007
From this same page you can also see: Product Overview, Product Demo, FAQs, and more
Read the Q&A: Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 and Office Accounting Professional 2007 Build ‘Onramp’ to Internet Economy for Small Businesses
View the Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 and Professional 2007 Fact Sheet

Thank you and have a wonderful day,

Eric Ligman

Microsoft Senior Manager

Small Business Community Engagement

This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights

Link to Free Download of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007

I downloaded this program and installed it on my Vista RC1 virtual machine. RC1 is my beta box. This program is a QuickBooks alternative so I should check it out. The installation program complained and said I needed to install SQL 20005 SP2 to avoid problems. They talk about SP2 but it is not available. Tomorrow I will import a simple QuickBooks company file and see what gets screwed up. Imports are typically pretty ugly. I thought I saw someplace a better time billing feature using the Outlook calendar.

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Getting QuickBooks to run as non admin on a stand alone workstation setup

Bill — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:33:21 +0000

With a shout out to Mike in the blog comments… he said “I was troubleshooting an installation of QB07 on a 2003 Terminal Server. I had all the security modifications that I have used for the previous versions and it still wouldn’t work. What I discovered is that normal users don’t have but need rights to: Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Common Files\Intuit\QuickBooks\qbregistration.dat I added rights to that file and the program ran properly. Bad news about having to be logged in at the server for the Database Manager. When I called support before installing on our server they never mentioned that to me. I was initially happy they had come up with a solution that didn’t require running full QuickBooks on my server. For the 2006 version I had installed QB running the Database piece on a different computer with a drive mapped to the server and it work fine for us. I may have to uninstall the 07 version and try that trick again.”

I originally could not get QuickBooks 2007 to run without admin rights on a stand alone machine… one I gave “Users” Full control to Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Common Files\Intuit\QuickBooks\qbregistration.dat just like Mike said… it worked like a champ.

The official way to do it from the Intuit folks is to flip it so that the QB runs as a “service”

http://www.threatcode.com/quickbooks_2007.htm

Look at the screen shots here and do that extra step of changing the permissions of the “dat” file.

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Link to Getting Quickbooks to run as non admin on a stand alone workstation setup

–> I blogged this to keep track of the best way to install QB07 and run it as a normal user until Intuit updates their documentation.

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Mozilla – Home of the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client

Bill — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 13:44:30 +0000

Mozilla – Home of the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client

The number one reason for me to update to version 2 of Firefox is spell check. This should improve my blog writing throughout the internet. It will probably be some time for me before I update IE6 to IE7. I am still using QuickBooks 2004 in several places and it requests that for a continued happy experience with QuickBooks I should not upgrade to IE7 until I upgrade to QuickBooks 2007.

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Update to Excel Macro to import IIF transactions

Bill — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:45:10 +0000

A while back I wrote a new macro to import IIF transactions, New Excel Macro to import IIF transactions. Last week I put it to the test and found several bugs. All of the bugs were minor but annoying. They created a lot more work for me but I am hopeful the next time I test this macro, it will save me time. Most of my bugs were spelling issues. I used different spellings on one customer and I forgot to include the group item. Naturally the spellings are very important if you want the invoices to end up with the right customer and account. The sneakiest bug was the one I got when I started a row with TRN rather than TRNS. QuickBooks complained about an out of place SPL row rather than pointing out my transaction should have started with TRNS rather than TRN.

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New Excel Macro to import IIF transactions

Bill — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:25:30 +0000

I got an email recently from someone who was trying to import QuickBooks IIF transactions. Although I could not help this person with the problem, I did get motivated to write an Excel macro to import IIF transactions. One of the more tedious tasks I do as Treasurer for our Habitat affiliate is inputting payment data for our home owners. Each payment is split into three parts, principal, escrow, and late fee. The actual breakout of the payment is determined by our mortgage committee when they enter the data into their mortgage tracking program. This is important financial data so I keep track of the data in QuickBooks, too. Every month I use a spreadsheet to reconcile the deposit journal with the payments recorded into the mortgage system to make sure we do not miss anything. Then I get to the tedious part. I have to enter the payment data for each homeowner into QuickBooks before I can calculate how much to transfer into the escrow checking account. The good news is that we “only” have 37 home owners. The bad news is that I have to make two or more transactions per homeowner payment. This is the most time consuming portion of my Treasurer’s tasks.

My partial solution to this problem is to create about half of the transactions, escrow and late fees, directly from the spreadsheet. In my case I enter QuickBooks invoices for every escrow and late fee payment. The problem is that the escrow and late fees payments change every month. Another problem is that you need to create three rows in an IIF for every payment. In the spreadsheet I use to reconcile the deposits, I use one row per payment. So here is how I solved the problem.

I select the rows I want to generate invoices for and then run an Excel macro that creates a new worksheet in the IIF format with the data from the payments. Then I save the new worksheet as a Tab delimited file with an iif extension and import it into QuickBooks. The logic is pretty simple.

You create a new Export worksheet. You delete the old Export worksheet if it exists.
For every row in the selection you check to see if was part of a deposit. My worksheet has all of the home owners listed. If a home owner does not make their monthly payment, this cell is empty. If a home owner makes more than one payment in a month I will have two or more rows for them.
If it was part of a deposit and the escrow portion is greater than zero, you make an escrow invoice.
If it was part of a deposit and the late payment is greater than zero, you make an late fee invoice.

So there it is. Since I track escrow liabilities by home owner, each home owner has their own QuickBooks “Item” that points to their escrow account. I used the “vlookup” command to fill out the invoice with the correct QuickBooks “Item” for each home owner.

The other half of the transactions is the data entered on the Customer Payment screen. Although there is an IIF transaction for customer payment it does not help me. The Bill Payment transaction is not helpful, too. It would be nice to automate this but I will settle for my small improvement in the process.

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Excel Tip: Converting CSV files into IIF files

Bill — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:54:23 +0000

The problem with importing data into QuickBooks is their funky multi-line IIF file format. For each transaction(e.g. invoice) in the single row CSV format you need to create three or more rows in IIF format. For me I import the CSV file into one worksheet and create a separate worksheet I call IIF for the IIF transactions. You could code up each cell in the Export individually but I like the cut and paste method for speed and to cut down on errors. They key bit of information for me was learning about the ROW and OFFSET functions in Excel. As an example I have used the following calculation on my IIF worksheet to copy the contents from a CSV row.

OFFSET('February 2006'!$C$2,((ROW()-1)/3)-1,0)

Using C2 as my starting point in the CSV worksheet(i.e. February 2006) and three rows for each IIF transaction in IIF worksheet, I can copy and paste the three rows that make up the IIF transaction to create more IIF transactions in the IIF worksheet. In this example the next IIF transaction will point to C3 in the CSV worksheet without manually editing.

The final trick is save the Excel file once in Excel format and then save the IIF worksheet in “Text (Tab delimited)” format with a file name like, export.iif. When you go into QuickBooks you will now be able to see file in the Import menu. If you have set up your IIF worksheet with the correct values for the Account, Item, etc. you should be able to import the IIF transactions easily and accurately into the correct places.

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