Need to import your credit card transactions from your bank? Having trouble getting it to work? Looks like your bank didn’t pay Intuit’s extortion fee. (Actually, you didn’t pay — most banks charge you for this header in their QBO export on Intuit’s behalf.)
As it happens, however, your OFX file is very nearly exactly the same as the vaunted QBO file you desperately desire, with one small difference. The information in four different fields indicate to Intuit your bank didn’t pay its bill, so no love for you. Specifically:
ORG (Bank name)
FID (Some ID internal to Intuit)
INTU.BID (Same as FIDNot anymore.)
BANKID (Bank Routing Number)(Probably the above field now.)
While that post was made in 2002, it’s still true today. I verified it with a QBO download from a bank that did pay its Intuit extortion fee. What’s all this mean for you?
If you can get your hands on a QBO file — any QBO file will do just fine — you can change your QFX file into a QBO file and import it into QuickBooks, verified working as of 2009 Pro. Simply find the values above in WordPad in any QBO file and replace them in your QFX file accordingly. Then, rename the file extension to be QBO. Last, import into QuickBooks Pro via Banking -> Online Banking -> Import Web Connect File.
In any event, don’t pay for one of those crap software programs that converts your QIF or OFX into a IIF file. What a futher scam that is! (Especially since both OFX and IFF are published formats, the former an open standard and the latter fully documented by Intuit. You can write your own damn converter easily enough.)
An example from the first portion of an OFX file is below to better illustrate the fields:
<OFX>
<SIGNONMSGSRSV1>
<SONRS>
<STATUS>
<CODE>0
<SEVERITY>INFO
</STATUS>
<DTSERVER>20090618000000[-5:EST]
<LANGUAGE>ENG
<FI>
<ORG>ABC BANK
<FID>12345
</FI>
<INTU.BID>1234
</SONRS>
45 Comments
This works… thanks for the help
The pleasure continues to be all mine!
Re:Importing QFX / OFX into QuickBooks as QBO
Jason, would you please provide a more detailed instruction for the posting above.
I consider myself computer savvy, but I’m not a programmer. I played around with your process, but couldn’t get it to work.
I got the qbo file to trigger QuickBooks’ importing dialogue box, but then it would not recognize the file. It would just open up a previous bank’s downloads.
I’m determined not to spend money on expensive apps. I’d appreciate your help.
I do not have a qbo file so I can see what fields to change please give me detailed instruction on what to change in the ofx file please…
I too have tried, and can’t seem to get it to work.
Anyone that has got it work, any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.
I almost got it working, however I got a QOB from another institution.
I was trying to get credit card statements from one institution as opposed from bank accounts from my other institution.
When I import it, it tries to import it to an account it doesn’t recognize.
Any ideas?
Thanks is advance.
HUH? what do you actually change in wordpad from the original file? what are you supposed to change it to? please detail?
Brilliant! Thank you!
I was very confused by your post, but I finally seemed to figure it out.
For those who are confused, this is what you do:
1. You HAVE to get an actual QBO from another bank. I have multiple checking accounts, so this was easy.
2. Open the QBO and find the , , values. Example: bank 123456 123456
3. Open the QFX file, find the same values from above and replace them with the other banks values.
6. Save as .QBO
7. In quickbooks File > Import > Web Connect. Select the account you want to import to.
Basically, Quickbooks looks for those values to see if the bank “supports” Quickbooks. You’re tricking Quickbooks into thinking that your bank supports the software. The files are exactly the same except for those values.
Hope the moderator can delete my previous messages.
Left the ‘II’ symbol (indicate tab?) after the tag data text in the QIF file, and the conversion from QIF to QBO worked fine just changing the , , and data.
Thanks again to Jason !
Did you find the solution? I changed all the OFX to QBO (right or wrong?) and it get the import window to open (also removed banking info). But when I click the box for “import now” nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?
I tried to follow the solution, but couldn’t find the FID portion in the file.
I just changed the .qfx extension to .qbo and it got imported into Intuit without a problem.
All transactions are there and it even imported the bank name…
Dunno what changed, but as of right now you just need to change the extension!
Just change the (i.e. Intuit Bank ID) to one supported by Intuit… *cough* 2430 *cough* and save the file as .qbo as previously mentioned.
I got it to import through web connect, but there are no NAME values with the import. It just says withdraw or purchase.
Kevin, THANK YOU..I was having issues and had followed all examples without any joy. However using your trick of replacing the “cough” data on the qfx or ofx file and then changing the extension to qbo and IT WORKED. Imported without too much of a hitch just had to choose and existing bank account. As it stated I was importing from “cough” account (which of course I wasn’t) and the file imported into the correct account with all data present.
or *ahem* *ahem* you can always go *cough* *cough* here http://ofxblog.wordpress.com/
THANK YOU FOR THE HELP. I CHANGED TWO FIELDS IN THE QFX FILE and RENAMED TO QBO and it works!
Also, b/c Intuit is such, I’m glad I didn’t pay for my version of QB
Jason you are a rockstar. Thank you so much!!!
Simply brilliant. Was trying to figure out how to convert from QIF to IIF, but it proved to be a painful adventure. Then I found this website and with Kevin’s *cough* suggestion *cough* I was able to import with no problem.
I changed the Intuit Bank ID per Kevin’s instructions and then changed the file extension to .qbo. That worked. Yay! That is sweet!
Alas, this does not seem to work for QuickBooks 2010. I shouldn’t have upgraded.
This approach works for Mac QuickBooks 2011 users too!
As simply as I can state it:
* Edit your .qfx file (Or malfunctioning .qfo file)
* Change to a known-good four digit code. (One is given in the postings above.)
* Save the file, changing .qfx to .qbo in the file name
* Import using web connect.
I salute the power of people who share! I salute the power of XML and other data standards!
To the moderator my second bullet was mangled by the posting script, which hacked out the XML reference.
It should read:
*Change INTU.BID to a known-good four-digit code. (One is given in the postings above.)
Thanks for the edit.
CLD
So, it took me awhile to get this to work, but I finally got it to go through without an error message. Now the new problem, is that it only shows the current balance! I am trying to get the detailed account info for tax year 2010, which is what the file I downloaded from the bank is supposed to be. Why can’t I see any of the account details in Quickbooks now? Thank you :)
thanks, that totally worked for downloading from Bank of America to Quickbooks for Mac 2010!!! you rock.
Thank you soooooo much! Worked like a charm!
I am trying to download an investment account .qfx file into QB using this technique, but I get a very non-descriptive error message that says data not imported. File imported into Quicken fine. The only thing I changed in the file was making INTU.BID to a good **cough** four digit number using TextPad and saved as .qbo. Any ideas?
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG - It wooooooooorked!!!! I have been looking for a way to do this for over a year!! THANK YOOOOOOU!!! I am using Quickbooks 2010 for Mac and followed CLD’s 2 posts from 4/23/11 and used the awesome 4 digit code mentioned in one of the above “cough posts”. I just let out an immense sigh of relief.
I would also like to add that I am using Bank of America and and it imported all of my own descriptions for each transaction. (i.e. when you go in and edit details of a BofA transaction and add notes so that you can remember what it was).
This made my year I will tell you that!
Thanks for the info, I did as suggested and have successfully changed a QFX file into a QBO file and imported into Quickbooks for Mac.
HOWEVER - once I import the transactions and look at them in the Downloaded Transactions window I only see the NAME(Payee) info for each transaction and not the MEMO info as well. The result is that I cannot see what most of the transactions are. For example I see DEBIT PURCHASE in the NAME(Payee) field and can’t see STARBUCKS in the MEMO field. All of this information is viewable when I open the file in TextEdit but is not showing up in Quickbooks.
Help!
Brilliant! I have QB Pro 2011. I have a business acct and a personal account at the same bank. The bank only downloads in qbo format for the business account. But I was able to take the data from a text version of my business qbo file and make the changes in the qif file. Note that because my computer doesn’t recognize qif files, I had to change the extension to qbo BEFORE opening it with Word Pad to make the edits. It worked and everything imported into web connect/online banking.
I have QB 2008 Pro. In May 2011, Intuit stopped supporting this version of QB for online banking. I’ve tried editing the OFX files and replaced FID and INTU.BID with 2430 and renamed file extension to .qbo. Does not work. Just get a WebConnect Branding error “QuickBooks is unable to verify the Financial Institution information for this download. Please try again later.” this is for American Express Credit Card transaction data. Any other suggestions?
Fantastic, these suggestions worked perfectly for me, I was able to download a Wescom CU quicken file and import into QB 2009 using these suggestions and codes. Thanks for saving me several days of pounding in the raw data, much less the “annual subscription” fee of the converter program sold by Intuit associates. I agree, what a scam!
Bank2QBO at http://www.bank2qbo.com does the transformation for you. You may also exclude specific transactions and print them.
Holy shit. $49.95? I’d suggest people just open up the text file once a month and save the $49.95. But that’s just me.
Sick!! Worked like a champ!!
by me it worked too with wells fargo bank by just changing the file extension.
in my next chance i’ll try with my HSBC account.
but i understand too how to manipulate quick books so they think that it’s being imported from a different bank and you could actually apply it to which ever account you wish….
Jason, can you back up the directions just a tiny bit? I need to be able to apply your genius to a Mac and I don’t understand how to open up the QIF file so that I can see the Intuit bank id in order to change it. I am a small time bookkeeper that can’t afford the Intuit marketing strategies (very fed up) Thanks for any help.
Friggin amazing. Worked like a charm!!! thanks everyone!
We could even hack the by goggling for various banks BID. I just found the code for Bank of America. Why not invest little more time, to make this task little better.
Jason?! Are you there?
This worked for me before (back in August) but now I have forgotten the first step and cannot find the answer in any of these comments…
Can someone please remind me how to get the illustrated fields in order to edit them? I am using a MAC and managed to figure it out using this blog back in August. But now I cant remember how to open the QIF file in order to change the BIN field. When I open “using” TextEdit, it just displays the transactions in a disorganized fashion… Tried dropping in Terminal as well and I just can’t remember how to get to the first step..
Well, you need to download the transaction file with either the OFX or QFX extension, first. The QIF file is for Quicken, not QuickBooks.
Thanks for your quick reply, Jason. I do have both available (OFX and QFX) but when I cannot remember how to open them so that the text is editable..
This is so frustrating because I totally was able to do this on 08/03/11 and it really made my life easier. I no now am trying to catch up on all of 2010 and if I can figure out how to do this again it will save me days! Thank you in advance for your help. –Sharina
OK - I totally re-figured it out as you said (by using a QXF file to start and opening in TextEdit).
I could have sown I was able to convert QIF’s to QBO’s the same way… ?
Do you know if that can be done?
Thanks in advance and happy new year!
There’s no relationship between a QIF and a OFX. However, you should be able to simply import the QIF file directly without any need to mess with anything. The OFX contains additional data which makes it preferable though.