Planned Support
- Chart of accounts extraction
- Transaction, customer, and vendor records
- Financial report data
- Export to CSV, Excel, JSON, and SQL
QuickBooks is accounting and small business management software with a proprietary encrypted database format.
Planned Support
- QuickBooks versions 6.x through 2015
- Chart of accounts extraction
- Transaction data recovery
- Customer/vendor records
- Financial report data
What You Get Out
Once the parser ships, DataMeans will convert your data into multiple modern formats:
| Output | Description |
|---|---|
csv/{TableName}.csv | One CSV file per table with all row data |
xlsx/{TableName}.xlsx | Excel workbook per table (omitted for tables over 1,048,575 rows, 16,384 columns or 8,000,000 cells - see note below) |
xls/{TableName}.xls | Legacy Excel format per table (omitted for tables over 65,535 rows, 256 columns or 150,000 cells - see note below) |
json/{TableName}.json | JSON array of records per table |
json/{TableName}.jsonl | Newline-delimited JSON (streaming-friendly) |
postgres.sql | PostgreSQL CREATE TABLE + INSERT statements |
mysql.sql | The same schema and rows, in MySQL dialect |
sqlite.sql | The same schema and rows, in SQLite dialect |
ansi.sql | The same schema and rows, in portable ANSI SQL |
sqlserver.sql | The same schema and rows, in SQL Server (T-SQL) dialect |
report.json | Structured conversion report |
report.md | Human-readable conversion summary |
File Requirements
.qbwQuickBooks company file
Current Status
Parser development is in the planning phase. The encrypted format and restricted documentation create significant development challenges.
Alternative Approach
Consider using QuickBooks' built-in export features:
- File > Utilities > Export > Lists to IIF Files
- Reports > Export to Excel
These built-in exports can provide data in formats that DataMeans can process immediately.
Technical Notes
QuickBooks uses a proprietary single-file format with encryption as a standard feature. Data extraction requires understanding version-specific encryption.
Note on the Excel formats. An
.xlsxsheet holds at most 1,048,575 rows of data and 16,384 columns, and a legacy.xlssheet 65,535 rows and 256 columns. Rather than ship a file that looks complete but is silently cut short, DataMeans leaves a table out of any Excel format it does not fit and notes it in the job report. The.xlsxcopy is also left out for tables of more than 8,000,000 cells (1,048,575 rows of 12 columns is 12.6 million), which take too long and too much memory to write, and the.xlscopy for tables of more than 150,000 cells, which the legacy format takes far too long to write. The CSV, JSON and SQL outputs always contain every row.
Overview
Documentation coming soon.
This article will contain vendor-neutral technical documentation about the QuickBooks database format, including:
- History and background
- File format specifications
- Data types and structures
- Version differences
- Technical references
Not available for hosted uploads yet. The parser is in development.
Can I convert QuickBooks databases with DataMeans today?
Not yet. QuickBooks is not available for self-serve upload, and support is still in development. Get in touch and we'll tell you where it stands and help plan the migration.
What will DataMeans convert QuickBooks databases to?
Once QuickBooks is available, exports will match every other system we support: clean CSV, Excel, JSON & SQL, one file per table, with a structured report of exactly what was extracted.
Is my data secure?
Yes. Your files are encrypted in transit and at rest, and they're deleted automatically: within 7 days if you don't go ahead with a conversion, and when your download window ends if you do. We never sell or share your data, and we never use it to train machine-learning models.