QuickBooks: How to Import DC Accounting Files to QuickBooks

Follow these steps to import your Customer Invoices or Purchase Orders to Suppliers to QuickBooks:

1. After you've exported and saved your files from DistributorCentral, open QuickBooks (for Windows)
   
   
2. With QuickBooks open, click File in the top left corner
   
   
3. Select Utilities in the File menu
   
   
   
4. In the Utilities fly out menu, click Import
   
   
5. In the Import menu, click IIF Files...
   
   
6. You may see a dialog box pop up alerting you that QuickBooks needs to close all windows before importing IIF files, if so, click OK
   
   
   
7. Next, click Import IFF in the Import IIF file dialog box
   
   
8. In your computer files, find the DC IIF file that you had previously exported
   
   
9. Click Open
   
   
10. The file will begin importing
    
    
    
11. Once the file is imported, you will see a File imported dialog box with a summary of successes and fails
    
    
    
    • Transactions are the number of orders imported from the file uploaded
    • Check for anything that may have failed 
    • FAILED indicates and error with the import. (For example: an account doesn't exist or a field is too long)
      
      
12. Click Done to close the File imported dialog box
    
    

QuickBooks Troubleshooting

I received an error message stating “ The Tax field cannot be left blank, even for non-taxable customers and sales which have no taxable items, so non-taxable sales will be correct for this district” and I don't know how to fix it.

This is happening because you have "Sales Tax" turned on in your Company Preferences (under EDIT > PREFERENCES > SALES TAX > COMPANY PREFERENCES). What most people don't realize is that this is just a user friendly feature that quickbooks provides to make charging tax easy for those who are not accountants, and it can be turned off. Let us explain. 

When it is turned on, and you look at an invoice or a sales order with tax, you will notice that the tax amount is simply credited to your "Sales Tax Payable" account (you may have named this something else -- but either way it is all going into one liability account).Therefore, its a line item on the invoice that tracks your taxes into a liability account. Easy enough. 

Now, when you turn it off, instead of having that convenient little option at the bottom of the invoice or sales order, all you need to do is add it as a line item when creating the invoice -- no different than how you add other line items to the order. You will notice, that your sales tax item is right there in the drop down menu. And, if each item is set to be "taxable" (in the column on the far right), it will still conveniently calculate the tax automatically for you. This still puts the funds in the exact same tax liability account as the previous method. If you test it out, you will confirm this. 

Therefore, you can now turn the Sales Tax option OFF in the Company Preferences (as described above), and you will no longer see errors on your imports.