Export Invoices to QuickBooks Desktop (IIF)

DocuClipper can export your extracted invoices and receipts as a QuickBooks Desktop IIF file. Each invoice is created as a vendor bill in QuickBooks, with line-item categories mapped to the matching expense accounts in your chart of accounts.

For an overview of the use case (and a higher-level walkthrough), see Convert PDF invoices to QuickBooks Desktop.

Prerequisites

• A QuickBooks Desktop company file (Pro, Premier, Enterprise, or Mac).
• At least one invoice or receipt processed in a DocuClipper project.
• The vendor and expense account names you want to use already exist in your QuickBooks chart of accounts (see "Categories must match QuickBooks" below).

Downloading the IIF file

1. Open the project containing your processed invoices.
2. Click Download / Export above the invoice table.
3. In the Output Format dropdown, choose QuickBooks Desktop IIF.
4. Click Download IIF. A .iif file is saved to your computer.

Importing into QuickBooks Desktop

1. In QuickBooks Desktop, go to File → Utilities → Import → IIF Files.
2. Select the .iif file you just downloaded.
3. QuickBooks shows a confirmation when the import finishes. Any errors are written to a log file in the same folder as your company file.
4. Open Vendors → Vendor Center to verify the new bills appear under the right vendor.

Categories must match QuickBooks

The IIF format requires every account name in the file to match an existing account in your QuickBooks chart of accounts, exactly, character for character. If a category in DocuClipper does not match an account in QuickBooks, the import will either skip that line or create a new account with that name.

To avoid this:

• Before exporting, edit each invoice's Category column so it matches the QuickBooks expense account you want to use.
• Or use DocuClipper's Vendor CSV import to bulk-create a category group whose category names already match your chart of accounts. See Save your categorization as a rule for next time.

If a line item has no category, DocuClipper assigns it to Uncategorized Expenses, which QuickBooks creates automatically on first import.

How DocuClipper maps fields

Each invoice becomes one vendor bill (TRNSTYPE=BILL). The mapping is:

• Vendor → bill payee. Comes from the invoice's vendor field (edited values take precedence over automated values).
• Bill date → invoice date.
• Bill number → invoice number.
• AP account → posted to the invoice's Account field if set, otherwise to Accounts Payable.
• Line items → one expense split per line, posted to the line's category and labeled with the line's item description.
• Amounts → use each line's Price. The bill total is the sum of line amounts. If line items are missing, the full invoice total is posted to a single Uncategorized Expenses split.

Limitations

• Sales tax is included in the bill total but is not split into a separate tax line.
• Customer-facing sales invoices are not supported by this export. Use Excel (CSV) or the QuickBooks Online export for accounts-receivable workflows.
• IIF is a one-way import. Edits made in QuickBooks after import do not flow back to DocuClipper.

Troubleshooting

Some bills are missing after import. Open the IIF import log file (in the same folder as your company file). It lists rejected rows along with the reason, usually a missing or mismatched account name.

A new account showed up in my chart of accounts. That category did not match an existing QuickBooks account. Either rename the auto-created account to match, or edit the category in DocuClipper to match an existing account before re-exporting.

The vendor name has weird characters. IIF treats tab and newline characters as field separators. DocuClipper strips those out automatically, but other special characters (commas, ampersands) are preserved as-is.