Switch from QuickBooks or Xero

Righto starts fresh on a date that you choose, usually the first day of a month or of your financial year. It brings over your chart of accounts, your customers and vendors, your balances on that date, and the invoices and bills that are still open. It does not bring over the full transaction history. Keep your old reports as records.

Files to export from the old system

All dates and balances are as of the day before your Righto start date.

• QuickBooks Online: the Account List, the Trial Balance (set its report basis to Accrual in QuickBooks, so that it includes your open invoices and bills), the A/R Aging Detail (or Open Invoices), the A/P Aging Detail (or Unpaid Bills), and the Customer and Vendor Contact Lists. Export each as CSV or Excel (.xlsx). The .zip from Settings, Export data has the trial balance and contacts but not the Account List or open items, so export those too.
• QuickBooks Desktop: File, Utilities, Export, Lists to IIF Files (accounts, customers, vendors), plus the Trial Balance, Open Invoices, and Unpaid Bills Detail reports as CSV or Excel.
• Xero: the chart of accounts and contacts (CSV), the Trial Balance with year-to-date columns (Excel), and the invoices and bills from the Awaiting Payment tabs (CSV).

Righto cannot read PDF reports or old .xls files. Export them again as .xlsx or CSV.

Steps

1. Make a new business. In How are you starting?, choose Import from QuickBooks or Xero. Righto does not apply a template, so the chart comes from your old books. Righto then opens Switch to Righto.
2. Old system. Choose QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, or Xero.
3. Start date. Type the start date. Righto shows the date that your reports must be as of: the day before.
4. Files. Choose Add files… and select all the exported files in one choice. There is no limit on the number of files. Righto shows the progress, for example “Adding 14 of 40 files”, and says what each file is.
5. Plan. Read the accounts and their new numbers, the opening balances, the contacts, and the open invoices and bills. Fix each blocking issue on the same screen. For example, choose the type of an account that Righto does not recognize, choose how the dates in your files are written, change the start date, or add a missing file. Righto reads the plan again after each change.
6. Confirm. When the plan is ready, choose Import into Righto. This cannot be undone. Righto saves the whole plan in one step. If something is wrong after that, make a new business and start again.
7. Compare. Righto shows its Trial Balance on the start date. Compare it with the trial balance from your old system. Righto reports on the cash basis, so the open invoices and bills show in Opening Balance Equity, not in accounts receivable and accounts payable. All the other balances must agree.

Then choose Import bank statements and import your bank and card statements from the start date. Do not import older statements, because those balances are already in the opening.

If you change your mind on the first step, choose Use bank statements instead to set up the books from your statements.

An agent can do this migration for you. See Run your books from Claude Code or Codex.