Do I Need a QuickBooks Conversion Service for FreshBooks?
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For most businesses leaving FreshBooks, no. A paid conversion service earns its fee on complicated files: several entities, years of inventory, payroll history, or a file that has to stand up to an audit line by line. A single entity service business is none of those. You export the FreshBooks reports, convert the transaction rows to a .qbo file, import the lists through QuickBooks' own screens, and you are done in an afternoon.
Where the calculation flips is when you need detailed invoices, bills and manual journals reproduced inside QuickBooks rather than just the cash movement. That is real work, and it is what you are buying. This page lays out what each route costs, what it actually delivers, and the list of things no service brings across no matter what you pay.
Last updated August 2026.
| Route | Typical cost | What you get | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convert the exports yourself | Free to try, then $49 per month or $24 per month billed yearly | Cash movement in through Bank Feeds as .qbo; clients, vendors, chart of accounts and items in through QuickBooks Import Data | Single entity service businesses, the common FreshBooks profile |
| Paid conversion service | Numerawise Solutions publishes from $500 for a small single entity file and names FreshBooks specifically. Dancing Numbers and MMC Convert quote on request and publish no figures | Detailed invoices and credit notes, bills, manual journals, aged receivables and payables, opening balances, custom account mapping | Files with inventory, payroll history, several entities, or audit exposure |
| Mid-market conversion | Numerawise publishes $2,000 to $5,000 for files with inventory or payroll history, and $5,000 to $15,000 for multi entity or NetSuite and Sage Intacct work | Full detail plus project management | Businesses well past what FreshBooks holds |
| Accountant rebuilds from balances | Their hourly rate | A clean QuickBooks file opened with trial balance figures, no transaction detail before the cutover | Anyone happy to leave history in FreshBooks as an archive |
How much does a QuickBooks conversion service cost?
Most publish nothing and quote per file. Of the providers working this route, Numerawise Solutions is the one that puts numbers on the page: from $500 for a small single entity file, naming FreshBooks among them, then $2,000 to $5,000 where inventory or payroll history is involved. Dancing Numbers and MMC Convert both run on a free quote instead. Expect scope, not size, to drive the price.
What does a QuickBooks conversion service actually do?
It reproduces your ledger rather than your bank activity. MMC Convert lists chart of accounts with custom mapping, customer and supplier details, opening account balances, aged receivables and payables, bank transactions including invoice and bill payments, detailed invoices and credit notes, detailed bills and bill credits, and all manual journals. Dancing Numbers runs a five step process: discovery call, extraction, cleanup and validation, field mapping with client review, then a controlled import.
What does a conversion service not bring across?
More than most buyers expect, and it is worth reading before you pay. MMC Convert publishes its exclusion list for the FreshBooks route, and it is long. The items below do not transfer regardless of price, so if one of them is the reason you were considering a paid conversion, the service will not solve it.
- Budgets
- Inventory tracking
- Classes, jobs and departments
- Purchase orders and sales estimates
- Fixed assets
- Expense claims
- Memorized transactions
- Payment terms and invoice templates
- Custom VAT rates
- Time sheets
- Repeating invoices dated after the convert-to date
- Deleted and voided transactions
- Attachments and unreconciled entries
When should I just convert the CSV myself?
When your FreshBooks file is one entity, no inventory, and the thing you actually need in QuickBooks is the money in and money out. That covers most FreshBooks users, because FreshBooks is invoicing-first software and the people on it are usually service businesses. Export the Expense Report and the Payments Collected report, run each through a FreshBooks to QuickBooks converter, and import the .qbo files through Bank Feeds.
Can I migrate FreshBooks to QuickBooks without losing transaction history?
Yes, if you convert to .qbo rather than uploading raw CSV. The 1,000 transaction and 350 KB caps that limit a QuickBooks Online CSV upload are why people assume older history has to be abandoned. A converted .qbo file is not bound by the row cap, so you can bring several years across in sequence, oldest first, one account at a time.
How long does a FreshBooks to QuickBooks migration take?
Doing it yourself, an afternoon for a typical file: an hour to export and tidy, an hour to build the chart of accounts and bank rules in QuickBooks, then the conversions and imports. A paid conversion runs on the provider's schedule and starts with a discovery call, so plan in days rather than hours. Neither MMC Convert nor Dancing Numbers publishes a turnaround time.
What can go wrong if I do it myself?
Four things, and all four are avoidable. Importing transactions before the chart of accounts exists, which dumps everything into Uncategorized. Double counting revenue by bringing in invoices alongside the deposits that already paid them. Loading a credit card export into a bank account, where the sign convention is reversed so every purchase reads as money in. And overlapping the cutover, so the last week of FreshBooks and the first week of QuickBooks hold the same rows twice.
Will a self-managed import create duplicates in QuickBooks?
Not from re-running the same .qbo file. Every transaction in an OFX or .qbo file carries a FITID that is unique within the account, and QuickBooks skips any FITID it has seen before. Worth knowing: it remembers those IDs even after you delete the transaction, so re-importing to restore a deleted row does not work. Raw CSV rows carry no identifier, which is exactly why the conversion step matters.
Does my accountant need to be involved?
For the cutover figures, yes. Whoever files your return should sign off on the opening balances and the cutover date, because that is where a migration either ties out or quietly does not. The mechanical part, exporting and converting, does not need them. Many accountants would rather you hand them a QuickBooks file that already reconciles than pay a conversion house to produce one.
How do I check the migration worked?
Run three comparisons against the cutover date. The QuickBooks bank balance against the real bank statement. A closed month's profit and loss in QuickBooks against the same month in FreshBooks. And total migrated expenses against your FreshBooks Expense Report. If revenue reads high, you almost certainly imported invoices and their deposits. Getting each account to tie out is ordinary account reconciliation work, just done once at the boundary between two systems.
So do I need a conversion service or not?
Ask one question: do you need detailed invoices, bills and journals inside QuickBooks, or do you need the cash movement and clean opening balances? If it is the second, convert the exports yourself and keep the $500. If it is the first, and especially if inventory or payroll history is in play, pay someone. Just read the exclusion list above first, because the expensive route still leaves plenty behind.
Is there an official FreshBooks to QuickBooks migration tool?
No. Intuit publishes no first party migration tool for FreshBooks, and there is no two way connector that keeps a FreshBooks account and a QuickBooks company file in step. Every route on this page, paid or self managed, ends up going through FreshBooks CSV exports. That is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon hunting for a button that does not exist.
Which FreshBooks plan do I need to export everything?
Plus or higher. FreshBooks states that accounting reports like the General Ledger are only available on Plus, Premium and Select plans, so a Lite subscriber has no ledger to export and no trial balance to hand anyone. If you are on Lite and considering a paid conversion, the provider will be working from your Expense Report and Payments Collected too, which changes what you are paying for.
What should I hand a conversion service if I hire one?
Have it ready before the discovery call and the quote gets cheaper. Your cutover date. A General Ledger export covering the period you want reproduced. Chart of accounts, clients and vendors as CSV. Bank and credit card statements for every account so opening balances can be proved. A note of which invoices are still open. And a decision on whether paid invoices need to appear in QuickBooks at all, because that single answer moves the price more than anything else on the list.
Ready to move: the FreshBooks to QuickBooks converter handles the export side, and Wave to QuickBooks covers the same route from Wave. For the QuickBooks end, see CSV to QuickBooks Online, the QuickBooks CSV import limit and the QuickBooks CSV import template.