I finally got around to working on importing transactions into QuickBooks. It was actually easier than I expected.
- I imported an IIF example into a new Excel 2003 spreadsheet as a template.
- I exported the chart of accounts, customers, and vendors lists from QuickBooks.
- I imported the lists into the new spreadsheet as separate worksheets.
- I imported the downloaded data into a new worksheet.
- Using the IIF example as the template I linked the cells in the template back to the downloaded data and created data validation lists for account and vendor cells using the lists that I had imported.
- I cleaned up the account and vendor cells and then saved as a text(tab-delimited) file.
- I then went into QuickBooks and imported the file.
An alternative to this is to use a spreadsheet add-in from Big Red Consulting. I looked at their products and tried one out. Their products have a slicker interface and several of their products are specifically tailored to certain tasks(e.g. ebay into QuickBooks). I encountered a little funkiness with the add-in I tried out and that got me to wondering how hard could this be. Ultimately I decided to code my own because I was curious if this was as easy as I thought it should be. Since I was working on this for a non-profit I volunteer with, I opted for intellectual pursuit solution and was pleasantly surprised with this simplistic solution. It is not as slick as Big Red but I know what everything is doing and it works.