Can You Import Sales Orders and Invoices Into QuickBooks Desktop?

The short answer

Intuit's import articles give no built-in route for anything else, including sales orders. For specialized imports, Intuit points to apps on the Intuit Marketplace. It doesn't offer technical support for creating or importing IIF files.

What IIF files can import

IIF (Intuit Interchange Format) files are tab-separated text files. These are the transactions Intuit says you can import with them:

• Sales and receivables: invoices, estimates, credit memos, cash sales, payments from customers, and cash and credit card refunds to customers.
• Purchases and payables: purchase orders, vendor bills, vendor bill refunds, checks and credit card transactions.
• Banking and general: deposits, transfers between accounts, account beginning balances and general journal entries.

Sales orders aren't on the list, and Intuit's sample IIF files don't include one either. IIF also imports lists, such as customers, vendors, items, the chart of accounts and price levels. You can export lists to IIF, but not transactions.

Intuit's import overview says Excel and CSV files can carry lists and transactions. Its Excel import steps cover only lists: customers, vendors, items and the chart of accounts. For transactions from a spreadsheet, the documented route is Batch Enter Transactions, in Enterprise and Accountant.

Before you start

• Back up your company file. Intuit says you can't undo an import.
• Sign in as the admin.
• If your IIF file came from a third-party app, that app's support team is the one to ask. Intuit doesn't offer technical support for IIF files.
• Intuit suggests typing the data in unless you have a large amount, because building IIF files by hand is technical.

Step 1: Get Intuit's IIF import kit and sample files

1. 1Download the IIF Import Kit from Intuit's IIF overview article. It has an import manual, header help and example files.
2. 2Download the sample files that match your sales tax setting: iif1.zip if sales tax is on, iif2.zip if it's off.
3. 3Open the invoice sample in a spreadsheet program that handles tab-delimited files, and use it as your template.
4. 4Create every account your file uses in QuickBooks first. Intuit warns that an account it doesn't find is created as a new bank account.

Step 2: Import the IIF file

1. 1Back up your company file.
2. 2Sign in as the admin. Intuit's steps switch to single-user mode first, though the improved import tool in QuickBooks 2019 and later also works in multi-user mode.
3. 3Go to File > Utilities > Import > IIF Files, then select Import IIF.
4. 4Choose the file and select OK.
5. 5Check how many lists and transactions came in, then select Done.

If some records fail, QuickBooks 2019 and later creates a new IIF file of the failed records with the errors marked. Select Review now, search the file for ERROR, fix and save it, then import it again. Intuit advises against the Import it for me. I'll fix it later option, because it skips the data review.

Step 3 (Enterprise and Accountant): Paste invoices with Batch Enter Transactions

1. 1Back up your company file.
2. 2Go to Accountant > Batch Enter Transactions.
3. 3Set Transaction Type to Invoices and choose the Accounts Receivable account.
4. 4In your spreadsheet, put the columns in the same order as the Batch Enter Transactions window.
5. 5Copy the rows, then right-click the first date field in QuickBooks and select Paste.
6. 6Anything in red isn't in your company file yet. Select it and use Quick Add or Set Up.
7. 7To add more lines to an invoice, highlight it, select Split and enter each line.
8. 8Select Save Transactions, then Yes.

Batch Enter Transactions also takes checks, deposits, credit card charges and credits, credit memos, bills and bill credits. Sales orders aren't among them. If multicurrency is on, Intuit says you can't batch enter invoices; see how to set up multicurrency.

Step 4: Link payments to the imported invoices

IIF imports don't link transactions. If you import invoices and the payments for them, link each payment to its invoice in the Receive Payments window. See how to receive payments and apply them to invoices.

Limits to know before you build a file

• IIF import does only limited error checking. A badly formatted file can import wrong data with no error, so check the results.
• Excel drops leading zeros in IIF files unless you format the column as Custom.
• You can't import IIF files between country versions, such as from the US version to the Canadian one.
• Price levels set up per item can't be imported or exported with IIF.
• Excel and CSV Advanced Import can't bring in subtotal, payment or sales tax items. IIF can.
• Lists have a maximum number of entries, so very large list imports can hit Intuit's limits.

For list imports, see how to import items from Excel and how to import and export the chart of accounts.

Where QuickBooks Desktop leaves the work to you

• None of Intuit's built-in imports covers sales orders, so someone enters each one.
• Someone has to build each IIF file or spreadsheet in Intuit's exact format and check what came in.
• Imported invoices aren't linked to their payments, so someone links them in Receive Payments.
• Customer orders arrive as emails and PDFs, not IIF files, so someone still turns them into a file or types them in.

How Logistify helps

Logistify doesn't import files or use IIF. The Sales Order Service enters customer orders that arrive by email, PDF, WhatsApp, SMS, voicemail or paper into QuickBooks Desktop as sales orders. A person reviews the exceptions. Your team then invoices from the sales order as usual.

For a side-by-side look, we compare QuickBooks Desktop import tools with AI order entry. For customer purchase orders that arrive as PDFs, see how to enter PDF purchase orders without retyping.