CSV File to QuickBooks Online Migration

The client is a U.S.-based golf brand with a long-standing history, founded in 1987. Over the years, they’ve built a loyal customer base and expanded their operations nationwide. In 2006, they took their first step into eCommerce by launching a website to keep up with growing demand.

As the business scaled, managing accounting through spreadsheets and manual tools became increasingly time-consuming and error-prone. They needed a modern solution with better data organization and automation, which led them to QuickBooks Online.

Due to the size and sensitivity of their data, they opted to prepare CSV files for migration instead of granting third-party access. This approach allowed them to stay in control, review everything beforehand, and reduce security risks.

After evaluating their options, they chose LitExtension for our proven expertise in large-scale files migration service. This made us a perfect fit for their CSV-based approach and security preferences.

The client had these key requirements for their data migration project:

• Migrating all essential data, including customers, orders, and products, from the handled CSV files to QuickBooks Online.
• Setting up the store with one location and using USD as the only currency.
• Importing full transaction history for a specific year, and a summary-level transaction data for 3 years prior.
• Ensuring accurate mapping for the chart of accounts (COA), customers, vendors, and related financial accounts.

During the migration, some transactions were tied to account types that required a valid customer name. However, the CSV files used a placeholder, “Default Customer (POS 1)”, instead of referencing real customer records. QuickBooks flagged these entries as invalid, preventing them from importing properly.

Since QuickBooks requires unique vendor names, importing these duplicates without cleanup would have led to fragmented records. This makes reconciliation harder and potentially resulting in mismatched balances or compliance issues.

To address the transaction import errors caused by invalid Name values, we created a set of virtual customer accounts to replace the placeholder entries. This allowed QuickBooks to properly link each transaction to a valid customer reference, preserving the accuracy of sales reports and customer histories.

For vendor duplication and inconsistencies, we standardized all vendor names and created virtual vendor records where data was incomplete. This prevented fragmented records in QuickBooks and ensured that bills and purchase orders remained correctly linked to the appropriate vendors.

Given the complexity and risk of duplication, we conducted a highly detailed demo migration before the full transfer. This allowed us to review every mapped field, validate formatting, and confirm how each record type would behave in the QuickBooks environment.

After the demo was approved, we carried out the full migration and followed it with several rounds of testing to ensure that all data was imported accurately and without duplication.