Xero to QuickBooks Conversion Cost: Free vs Paid Routes

Short answer: Intuit pays for the first two fiscal years of a Xero to QuickBooks Online conversion through Dataswitcher, its supported partner. Everything past that has a price. Additional years carry a per fiscal year fee that Dataswitcher quotes inside the conversion wizard rather than publishing, company information and classes and locations cost extra, and the free route only runs into a QuickBooks Online company that is still completely empty. Independent conversion firms start around $500 for a small single entity file.

The honest way to budget this is to price each route against what it actually covers, then work out which parts of your file fall outside the funded window. Most Xero migrations end up split across two routes rather than one, and the split is usually cheaper than forcing everything through a single vendor.

Last updated August 2026.

What each Xero to QuickBooks conversion route costs

How much does it cost to migrate from Xero to QuickBooks?

For a single entity with clean books and two years of history going into a brand new QuickBooks Online company, the answer is zero. That is the case Intuit designed the funded transfer around, and if you fit it there is no reason to pay anyone. The cost appears the moment you fall outside any one of those conditions, and most established businesses fall outside at least one.

A realistic mid range budget looks like this. If you need four years rather than two, you are paying Dataswitcher an unpublished per year fee twice over, or converting the two older years yourself from CSV exports for the price of a month or two of converter access. If your QuickBooks file is already in use, the funded route is off the table entirely and you are choosing between a managed conversion from around $500 and doing it from files. If you are moving to QuickBooks Desktop, Dataswitcher does not serve that destination at any price.

Is the Xero to QuickBooks migration really free?

It is genuinely free within its scope, and the scope is narrower than the marketing suggests. Intuit covers the last two fiscal years for Xero, Sage 50, Acomba and QuickBooks Desktop. That funding is real and worth taking. What it does not cover is older history, company information, classes and locations, or any migration into a QuickBooks company that already contains data.

The empty file requirement is the one that catches people, because the natural way to evaluate accounting software is to sign up and use it for a few weeks. Intuit's own guidance says you can only migrate into an empty QuickBooks Online account and suggests deleting your data to take advantage of the free conversion. If you have already issued invoices from the new file, deleting is not a real option, and the free route quietly disappears.

What is not included in the free Xero conversion?

Intuit publishes the exclusion list and it is worth reading before you budget. Dataswitcher does not convert budgets, memorized transactions, invoice and other templates, sales orders, payroll records, projects, attachments, or non posting entries such as estimates. None of those are priced add ons. They simply do not move, at any price, through that route.

Two of them carry a real cost even though no vendor invoices you for them. Attachments are the first: receipts and signed documents attached to Xero transactions stay in Xero, and an audit does not care that you changed software. Budgets are the second, because rebuilding a departmental budget in a new chart of accounts is a day of somebody's time that never appears in a migration quote.

What hidden costs should I budget for?

Three, and together they usually exceed the conversion fee itself. The first is subscription overlap. You should keep Xero running until you have reconciled at least one full period in QuickBooks and filed whatever return covers the migration date, which in practice means paying for both systems for one to three months.

The second is the QuickBooks Online edition your Xero file forces you into. Intuit publishes the thresholds and they are easy to cross without noticing: more than 250 accounts in your chart of accounts requires Advanced, classes require Plus or Advanced, more than 40 classes requires Advanced, and inventory requires Plus or Advanced. Xero encourages a detailed chart of accounts, so a file that has been running six years can land you on a more expensive tier than you planned for, permanently.

The third is multi currency restatement. Dataswitcher converts Xero in home currency and the foreign exchange gain or loss does not come across. If you invoice in more than one currency, somebody has to restate that position with a manual journal entry and reconcile it, and that is professional time rather than software cost.

Is a paid conversion service worth it?

It is when the file is complex enough that a failed migration would cost more than the fee. Numerawise publishes from $500 for a small single entity file and $2,000 to $5,000 for mid market files carrying inventory or payroll history, quotes a fixed price inside 24 hours, and includes a walk through call, a written reconciliation report and 30 days of post conversion support. That reconciliation report is the part worth paying for, because it is the document that proves the new file ties to the old one.

Dancing Numbers and MMC Convert both sell Xero conversions and publish no pricing, so evaluating them means requesting quotes and comparing scope rather than price lists. When you are collecting quotes, ask each vendor the same three questions: how many years are included, whether the target file has to be empty, and what happens to foreign currency. The answers vary more than the prices do.

How do I move the years the free transfer will not cover?

Export each older year from Xero as a CSV report and convert it to a .qbo file. QuickBooks accepts .qbo files through Bank Feeds regardless of transaction age, so nothing works against you except file size. QuickBooks Online caps uploads at 1,000 transactions and 350 KB, and that size cap applies to .qbo files as well as CSV, so split by calendar quarter rather than by year.

The reason to convert to .qbo rather than upload the CSV directly is duplicate protection. Every transaction in a .qbo file carries a FITID, a unique identifier QuickBooks records and then skips on any later import, and it remembers those identifiers even after you delete the transaction. A CSV has no transaction identifier at all, so importing the same CSV twice posts everything twice. On a migration where you will almost certainly re run at least one batch, that is the difference between a fixable mistake and a cleanup project. The Xero to QuickBooks migration guide covers the export and conversion steps in full.

Does the cost change if I am moving to QuickBooks Desktop?

Yes, because the funded route does not exist there. Dataswitcher converts into QuickBooks Online only, so a Xero to Desktop move is file based from the start. That also means the CSV route is not optional: QuickBooks Desktop cannot import a bank CSV in any version or edition, and its Import Excel and CSV Toolkit handles only customers, vendors, items and the chart of accounts.

Budget a Desktop migration as lists plus transactions. The lists go in through the toolkit at no cost. The transactions have to arrive as .qbo files through Web Connect, or as IIF, and IIF posts directly to the ledger with no review queue and no undo. Converting to .qbo puts everything into the Bank Feeds review screen first, which on a migration is worth the small monthly cost by itself.

How should I present the migration budget internally?

Split the number into funded, priced and unpriced rather than presenting one figure. Funded is the two years Intuit pays for. Priced is what you can quote today: a managed conversion from around $500, or converter access at $49 a month. Unpriced is the honest unknown: Dataswitcher's per year fee, the subscription overlap, and the professional hours for reconciliation and any currency restatement.

Approvers accept an unpriced line far more easily than a single number that turns out to be wrong later, and showing the routing decision behind each line is usually what gets the sign off. If you are turning the comparison into something for a partner meeting, the same three way split works as a single slide, and turning your working notes and exported reports into that deck without rebuilding it by hand saves an afternoon. Keep the reconciliation report from whichever route you choose attached to it, because that is the evidence the migration actually worked.

The practical answer

Take Intuit's funded two years if your QuickBooks file is empty and you are going to QuickBooks Online. There is no reason to pay for what Intuit will cover. Then price the tail separately: convert the older years from CSV exports yourself, and budget the subscription overlap and the edition upgrade honestly, because those are the costs that actually decide whether the project comes in on budget.

If your file is already in use, or you are heading to Desktop, or you need more than a couple of extra years, the file based route stops being the fallback and becomes the main path. Upload a Xero CSV export to the Xero to QuickBooks converter to see what comes back before you commit to any vendor. For firms running several client conversions, the CSV to QBO workflow for accountants covers doing this at volume, and the Sage Intacct migration cost breakdown shows what the same job looks like when Intuit funds none of it.