QuickBooks - Up & Down - Versions & Product Levels








Hi, I’m Jayne Miller, the QuickBooks Gal. Welcome to another in our series of “Quicklets” –informational podcasts about QuickBooks, Peachtree, Microsoft Office Accounting and related bookkeeping topics. Don't forget that you can listen to our archived podcasts at blog.quickbooksgal.com.

I recently received an email from one of our listeners, Debbie in the Virgin Islands. Debbie asked if she can "upgrade" her QuickBooks data from Enterprise Solutions version 5.0 to QuickBooks Pro 2007. Additionally, she would like to move from PC to Mac.

Well, the answer is No, and Yes.

In QuickBooks, as with many other accounting software programs, you can move up from a lower version to a higher version, whether the "up" is version or product level. Versions are generally noted by the Year or release version, ie: QuickBooks 2005, or Internet Explorer 7.

Product Levels generally offer the distinction in the name and refer to performance capablilty. For instance, QuickBooks offers 4 levels of product: Simple Start (the most basic level), QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. Peachtree offers Peachtree Accounting, Peachtree Complete Accounting and Peachtree Quantum. Microsoft also has varying levels of product that address the end user's needs.

With this said, the simple answer to Debbie's question is no. She is using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions v5. She could easily upgrade to Enterprise Solutions v 7, but that would require her to purchase the more expensive, more robust program.

One more thing to keep in mind is that QB Mac is not as robust a program as QB Pro and certainly not comparable to Enterprise Solutions. Generally speaking, QB for Mac is about 2 versions behind the same QB for Pro year's equivalent.

The second part of her questions is "could I then go to QuickBooks for Mac?" The answer again is no if she elects to convert her Enterprise Solutions Data to Mac.

However there is good news. If upgrading is not the goal here and Debbie is willing to maintain data history in the old Enterprise Solutions program, then it is very simple to purchase QuickBooks for Mac and create a new company.



Here's what I would do:

In QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions
  1. Print a Trial Balance from Reports>Accountants & Taxes and select proper date range
  2. Export any lists that you would like to import to the new product ( save to desktop; don't try to export all lists at once, suggest about 5 at a time; then I copy them to a flash drive when I'm ready to export them to the Mac or the new QBPro software.
    1. Chart of Accounts
    2. Vendors
    3. Customers
    4. Items
    5. Payroll lists
    6. Other Names
    7. Etc
  3. Print a detailed list of open invoices (customers)
  4. Print a detailed list of open bills (vendors)
  5. Print a detailed list of memorized transactions
  6. Print a Detailed Payroll Report for the current payroll year
  7. Print Employee Data (names, addresses, soc sec #, withholding info, etc)
  8. Print a Profit & Loss Standard for the final accounting period
  9. Print a Balance Sheet for the final accounting period
  10. Print any other reports that you may need in order to verify that you have imported all the lists you need and entered the necessary beginning balances. Keep in mind that you will have to enter all open customer and vendor documents manually in order to have proper aging & detail.
In QuickBooks Pro (Mac or PC)
  1. Create the new company
  2. Be sure that you tell it that you don't want a chart of accounts - this way you won't get error messages that refer to duplicate names when importing lists.
  3. Import the lists you exported from the prior program...again I suggest that you import one file at at time so you don't overload the process.
  4. Verify that lists came over the way they should have
  5. This is the time to do a little housekeeping. All list unnecessary list items can be deleted now because they are empty. If you have old items or names (customer, vendor, other, payroll) that you would like to delete, this is the time.
  6. If you have payroll, you may need to contact Intuit payroll to be sure that your payroll subscription carries across to the new file; then you will need to verify that all employees' profiles are correct. This is where I have the most concern and where I am relentless about verifying transferred data.


  7. If you do this during a payroll year, you will have to enter employee year-to-date information.
  8. Enter the beginning balances as a journal entry. Keep in mind that Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable should not be included in this entry because you will enter the individual open invoices & bills next. With that in mind, do not enter A/R or A/P figures as those accounts. Enter their amounts to Opening Balance Equity. When you enter the invoices and bills as instructed next, this will offset the entry.
  9. Enter Customer open invoices by creating invoices with the same numbers and original dates as from your prior version. You must create a new item called Beg Balances and use this as the item in your invoices in order to affect Opening Balance Equity rather than income.
  10. Make sure the new item "points" to Opening Balance Equity when you set it up. I set it up as a two-sided item so that when I enter bills, I will use the same item. The Expense account and the Income account should be Opening Balance Equity.
  11. Enter individual bills & credits as you did the customer invoices.
Once this is completed, print the corresponding reports from the new file and compare them to your old reports. If your reports agree, you can go forward in the new file. You will have to refer to the old Enterprise Solutions file for history. And, of course, if you have converted to the Mac you will have to keep that old PC around. If you don't intend to do this, I suggest that you print as many reports as you think you may want to refer to in the future, keep a good backup and perhaps send vital, often visited reports to Excel so you can have the data on your Mac for easy access.

I know I haven't covered everything, but I think this is a good guideline. If you have more questions about sharing QuickBooks data between Mac and PC, check out one of my recent podcasts on this topic at blog.quickbooksgal.com.

That's it for today's edition. Thanks again to our listeners for such great questions. If you've got a question or want me to do a podcast about a QuickBooks issue, drop me a line at jayne@quickbooksgal.com.

Are you backing up your data?




Jayne Miller is the owner of Custom Business Solutions, a consulting firm in Reno-Tahoe, Nevada that specializes in providing bookkeeping and software support.

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