One of the more common questions in the QuickBooks community is how to make the transition from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online. While QuickBooks for Mac is undoubtedly a beautiful program, the upside of having your information stored on a cloud and the ability to use third-party apps from Intuit App Center is just too irresistible for some users.

Moving from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online does require the use of a PC for a crucial part of the step. So if you do not have access to a Windows computer or cannot run Parallels, BootCamp or another service that allows you to run Windows inside Mac, you might be out of luck.

The following blog post will detail how to transfer your company file from QuickBooks for Mac to QuickBooks Online.

Convert your QuickBooks for Mac file
Because QuickBooks Online only accepts company files from QuickBooks for Windows, we’ll have to first convert our QuickBooks for Mac into a QuickBooks for Windows file.

To do so, you must first prepare the company file for conversion. Because the move from QuickBooks for Mac isn’t a perfect process, we must fix all the known bugs ourselves so we don’t run into any trouble.

• Locate the company file in your file system and copy it to the desktop. You can find where your company file by opening up QuickBooks and choosing Help->Product information.
• Copy the company file to your desktop
• Remove all special characters from the name of the company file — special characters are the bane of every developer’s existence and generally causes errors, so we’ll have to eliminate all symbols like !@#$%^&*
• Open up the copied company file in QuickBooks and delete all memorized (i.e. recurring) transactions and reports. To do so, select Lists->Memorized Transactions and select Edit->Delete Memorized Transaction to delete each one of your memorized transactions. To delete your memorized reports, select Reports->Reports Center. You should see your memorized reports so you can highlight and select the red X.
• Resort your lists
• After you’ve deleted all memorized transactions & reports and resorted your lists, you’ll have to rebuild the company file.
• The last “bug” we’ll have to fix is are transactions that have memos longer than 50 characters.  To do so, you’ll have to run a report that enables you to locate these transactions and modify them.
• Choose Reports->Custom Reports->Transaction Detail
• Under Date, make sure to choose All and under Columns, make sure Memo has a checkmark next to it, then click OK.
• Expand the memo column and edit any memos that have more than 50 characters (including spaces) by double clicking on the memo.
• If you’ve edited any Memos, then you must rebuild your company file again.
• Now we’ll get to the meat and potatoes: actually converting the company file to a Windows format. Go to File->Back Up to QuickBooks for Windows
• Choose a name and location for the file and click Save. Simple. No sweat.

The next steps are done from a Windows machine. You’ll have to upload the Windows file from a Windows machine to QuickBooks Online.

• Move the file from your Mac machine to your Windows machine and save it
• Open up Internet Explorer and navigate to QuickBooks Online and login
• Choose Company->Import QuickBooks Desktop Data
• Choose Other versions of QuickBooks for Windows
• Follow the wizard to download ActiveX, browse your file system for the company file, and you’re all set!

If you’re reubilding your company file, you may come across the instruction to resort lists in QuickBooks for Mac. Resorting lists in QuickBooks may not seem like something that is necessary as you might not notice any difference in the order of your list items. But resorting lists isn’t for you, it’s for QuickBooks. Resorting is often used to fix any damage to your lists that could hurt the process of Rebuilding your company file.

If you’re given instructions to Resort Lists, there are three lists to be concerned with: Master Name list, Chart of Accounts, and Items and Classes list.

To Resort Master Name List:

1. Go to the Banking->Write Check
2. Click in the Payee field and select Command (Apple Key) + L. That will bring up your Master Name list.
3. Make sure All Names is selected at the bottom
4. Go to Edit->Resort List and click OK.

To Resort Chart of Accounts, Items & Classes Lists:

1. Go to Lists->Chart of Accounts
2. Make sure All Accounts or Include Inactive is selected at the bottom
3. Go to Edit->Resort List and click OK.
4. Repeat steps 1-3, only for Items & Classes.

Once you’ve resorted your lists, you’re ready to rebuild your data!

Expense reporting is a task that no small business owner wants to spend time on. We know you’d rather be out winning new clients, finishing up your new product release, or brushing up your marketing materials for your next big pitch. Anything but spending time on expense reporting.

We hear you, and although our top priority is to help your expense reporting process be so easy that it barely takes any time at all, a second priority is to help you delegate better so that even the small amount of effort can be handed off to your second-in-command or your team of most trusted employees.

Expense Reporting with a Hierarchy

One of the best steps you can take as your organization grows, is to delegate the expense reporting approval authority to the managers that you hire along the way. Let them handle the process of approving expenses — after all, they are more likely to know the nature of the expense that an employee submits, because they are probably closer to knowing what that employee was working on when the expense was incurred.

To get this process started, go to the Employees tab and look for employees that show up as reporting directly to you. When you find an employee that shows up as reporting directly to you, even though you’d really rather their reports go to some intermediate manager, click on the gears icon next to the employee:

Expense Reporting Hierarchy Change: Step 1

Then, look for the “Reports To” section, and click on the paper-and-pencil icon to change the expense reporting approval chain:

Expense Reporting Hierarchy Change: Step 2

Next, choose their “New Manager” from the list:

Expense Reporting Hierarchy Change: Step 3

Finally, just confirm that the “New Manager” has a team size that has grown by 1:

Expense Reporting Hierarchy Change: Step 4

Now that you’ve moved that employee under a manager, the manager will take primary responsibility for approving the employee’s expenses. Sure, you might set an approval limit so that the manager can only approve expenses up to a certain dollar amount ($500? $1000?), but whatever approval limit you choose, you’ll know that you are saving time by having the smaller expenses approved before they get to you.

As your team gets even bigger, you might end up with a multi-tier expense reporting hierarchy, and that’s fine too — with ProOnGo you can add as many layers of management as you need.

Over the years we’ve helped thousands of people get expense information into (and occasionally out of) QuickBooks — we specialize in mileage, time, and receipts.

When folks come to us for expense reporting help, it’s often after having tried to develop an expense reporting process on their own, intuitively. Unfortunately, sometimes accounting isn’t intuitive — and over the years we’ve noticed several common expense reporting mistakes when we talk with our clients about their “old process” before using ProOnGo.

Most small business owners are understandably rushed on a day-to-day basis and learning the intricacies of filing expenses in QuickBooks can easily fall off the "to do" list. So here’s the abbreviated version of mistakes to watch out for:

We hope this list of 7 common mistakes has been helpful. Want to get started using ProOnGo Expense, so that we can help you get QuickBooks expense reporting set up the right way from the get-go? Start here by creating a no obligation trial account, we’ll help you get mileage, time, and receipts tracked “just right”.

…any questions?

Over the past two years, since we’ve been integrating company Excel Expense Reports into our expense tracking app, we started noticing a pattern in the types of formats we saw. These patterns have really helped us hone our development to adapting new spreadsheets and integrating them into ProOnGo Expense. They also made us realize that it was possible to create a wizard where end-users can upload their template and  and that’s why we came up with the Custom Expense Report Wizard — where users can upload their Excel expense report format  and, after choosing what fields should be filled in, have their spreadsheet integrated into ProOnGo within minutes.

However, before you use our wizard, we should mention the main format types we support. Below, I’m going to show you the three most common types of expense reports we receive. If your Excel Expense Report format isn’t anything like what you see below, then it’s time to get a new report format!

Excel Expense Report Format #1

The identifying characteristic of this spreadsheet is that all of the labels reside in a single row at the top of the spreadsheet. In our experience, this is the most common Excel report format. It easily allows for additional rows and isn’t restricted by a date range.

Excel Expense Report Format #2

This report is characterized by the limited date range in the first column and the expense report categories listed in the top row. This spreadsheet is generally designed for weekly reports, so if you’d like to include expenses for more than just one week at a time, I suggest you use Excel Expense Report Format #1.

Excel Expense Report Format #3

The last type of report is extremely similar to Excel Expense Report Format #2, only the dates reside at the top of the spreadsheet, and the expense categories use the first column. Again, if you’re looking to fit more than 7 days worth of expense information, then Excel Expense Report Format #1 is the spreadsheet for you.

In our Custom Expense Report Wizard, we’ll ask you to choose between these three spreadsheets, and some minor variations on them (like using MM/DD/YYYY format instead of using the day of the week). Once you select your report format, it’s only a couple clicks from being able to export your expenses to your own Excel Expense Report template! [Update 11/10/2012: We now support sending your expense reports to Google Drive, too. So you can keep a tidy backup of all of the reports you run from ProOnGo.]

Of course, if you have any questions, you’re more than welcome to shoot an email to support@proongo.com and we’ll integrate the spreadsheet for you.

Expense-tracking falls into the type of problem; you didn’t realize it was a problem until it became a problem. So, if you’re like most tech-savvy business owners, you’ll hit Google.com in your browser and look for some small business expense software. Unfortuantely – there isn’t a whole lot out there. Most expense solutions like Oracle and Concur are tailored to large corporations and can become too expensive and bulky for small businesses to run efficiently. Here’s why ProOnGo is the ideal small business expense software for your company:

• Flexible and Mobile – No matter what device you have near you, be it your laptop, desktop, mobile phone or tablet, you’re able to record your expenses, Approve/Deny your employees expenses, create expense reports and sync with your accounting system. You can download ProOnGo for BlackBerry, Android, iPhone and iPad.
• Receipt Images – Receipts fade and IRS has no sympathy for you. With ProOnGo, you can create digital copies of your receipts by taking pictures of them and using the ProOnGo Receipt Reader to automatically extract the merchant, date and total amount from your expenses.
• Timesheets – If you employe contractors or your employees are constantly working on jobs for other clients, it’s important that they have an easy way to record their hours. ProOnGo has a really easy interface for recording your Timesheets and syncing them with QuickBooks.
• QuickBooks Integration – ProOnGo features the best-in-class QuickBooks integration. You can label your expenses with the Category, Customer:Job, Payment Method, Items, Classes and choose whether or not the expense is billable, then sync your expenses to QuickBooks as a Write Check, Vendor Bill or update the credit card register.
• The Best Prices - Most small business expense software is going to charge you an arm and a leg. ProOnGo offers a free 30 day trial and has prices as low as $2.90/user/month.
• We’ve Got Your Back - We’ve had horrible experiences with other services’ customer service. That’s why we make sure you’re going to speak with a real-live human whenever you have a question.

If you’ve updated to the latest version of our Android application, 3.0.103, you have witnessed the new face lift for our expense editor! We made some big changes to our Mileage, Time, Income and Regular expense editors to catch up with our iPhone UI. 2012 will certainly be the year of the Face Lift for ProOnGo. We’ve got some exciting changes that are slated to go live within the next month.

Download the new update and tell us what you think: Support@ProOnGo.com

Hello everyone!

Since our expense solution for QuickBooks has gained popularity, we’ve been receiving a lot of requests to support Classes. We just went live with our Class support for both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks for Windows.

Just login to the ProOnGo Web Portal with your Intuit ID and we’ll automatically download your Classes as a new metric to label your expenses with. If you have any questions or any other requests so we can properly track your QuickBooks expenses, send an email to QBINFO@ProOnGo.com. Thanks!

We just launched a new video on our YouTube channel, Youtube.com/ProOnGoLLC, that demonstrates the device sync feature in ProOnGo, as well as shows a manager approving employee expenses from their iPad. Check out the video and make sure to browse to our YouTube channel to see more demo videos.

If you’ve been a ProOnGo Expense user for a while now, you might have noticed the last time you went to launch the ProOnGo Expense app, that we’ve made a change to our launch icon! Congratulations! You have sight!

If you’ve been a long-time user, you might have noticed that we’ve been putting in some effort at making our user experience a little more clean and graphically pleasing. This new icon change continues this new campaign, so we hope you like it.

If you have any questions/comments/feedback, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email: Support@ProOnGo.com