How to switch from QuickBooks to FolioMate

QuickBooks is built for accountants managing many entities. If you're a freelancer or a small studio, you're usually paying for depth you never touch - and fighting an interface designed for someone else's job. This guide walks through moving to FolioMate without losing your history.

Before you start: what actually needs to move

You don't need to migrate everything. In practice there are only four things that matter:

• Your client list (names, emails, addresses)
• Open (unpaid) invoices - anything you're still owed
• This year's income and expense history, for tax time
• Your branding: logo, payment details, invoice wording

Paid, closed invoices from prior years generally don't need to move. Export them to PDF/CSV once and archive them. Your accountant needs the records, not the software.

Step 1 - Export from QuickBooks

1. Reports → Customer Contact List → Export to CSV. That's your client list.
2. Reports → Open Invoices → Export to CSV. That's what you're still owed.
3. Reports → Profit and Loss (set the date range to this fiscal year) → Export.
4. Reports → Transaction List by Date → Export, if you want a full ledger backup.

Keep those CSVs. Even after you switch, they're your safety net and your accountant's source of truth for the period before the move.

Step 2 - Set up FolioMate (about 5 minutes)

1. Add your business name, email and logo in Settings - these auto-fill every document you create.
2. Add your payment rails in Settings → Payments (Stripe, PayPal, Wise, or plain bank details). Your clients pay you directly; FolioMate never touches the money.
3. Set your default currency and payment terms so every new invoice inherits them.

Step 3 - Re-create only the open invoices

Don't bulk-import history you'll never look at. Take your Open Invoices export and re-create just those in FolioMate - usually a handful. Describe each in a sentence and it drafts itself:

Invoice Meridian Co. for 12 hours of UI design at $150/hr, due in 14 days

Set the issue date to match the original so your aging report stays accurate. Now your receivables are live in FolioMate and you can start chasing them automatically.

Step 4 - Pick your cut-over date

Choose a clean date - the start of a month or quarter. Before that date, your books live in the QuickBooks export. After it, everything happens in FolioMate. Tell your accountant the date. That single decision prevents almost every migration headache.

What you gain, what you give up

Be honest with yourself about the bottom two rows. If you run payroll or need full bank-feed reconciliation, keep QuickBooks - it's the right tool for that. If you invoice clients and want to get paid faster with far less admin, FolioMate replaces it comfortably.

Step 5 - Tell your accountant

Turn on Accountant mode in FolioMate. It exposes the statements they'll ask for: Profit & Loss (cash or accrual), Balance Sheet, A/R Aging, Sales by Customer, Sales Tax Liability, a full transaction register, and a 1099/contractor summary - all exportable to CSV and printable to PDF. Send them the QuickBooks export for the earlier period and the FolioMate reports for everything after your cut-over date.

A realistic timeline

Exports take 15 minutes. Setup takes 5. Re-creating open invoices takes about a minute each. Most people finish a switch in under an hour, on a quiet afternoon, at the start of a month.