Import products and services

If you have a lot of products and services to add to QuickBooks, you can save time by importing them from an Excel or CSV file.

If you use foreign currencies, make sure multicurrency is enabled before you import. How?

To import your products and services:

  1. Click the Gear icon > Import Data.
  2. Click Products and Services.
  3. We recommend you click Download a sample file and use the sample file as a template. Just copy info from your original list into the appropriate columns in the sample file.

    4. If you're using Categories, it's easy to organize your products and services into new and existing categories as you import them. In your Excel or CSV file, just edit your product and service names to include categories like this: Category A:Category B:Item name. For example, to import the item Loud Hawaiian shirt under the top-level category Clothing and the sub-category Shirts, change the product name to look like this: Clothing:Shirts:Loud Hawaiian shirt.

  4. When your file is ready, click Browse.
  5. Locate your file and select it. Click Open.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Map your fields to QuickBooks fields. We made initial matches for you, but you can change them by choosing different fields from the drop-down lists. If you don't want to import data for a particular QuickBooks field, just choose No Match.
  8. When you're satisfied with the mappings, click Next.
  9. Review the data that QuickBooks uploaded and make any changes you want directly in each field. If data appears in red, it has an error that you need to correct.

    10. You can use the Sell, Buy, and Track checkboxes to control whether data in those groups are imported. For example, if your file includes purchase data, you'll see the Buy checkbox selected by default.

    Ordinarily, importing only adds products and services to your list. If you want to replace existing products and services with the ones you're importing, select the Overwrite all values... checkbox.

    Did you know you can use the overwrite option to update info like sales price and purchase cost for multiple items at once? Just edit your Excel or CSV file with the new values and select the Overwrite all values... checkbox. We recommend that you use this technique only to update fields such as Sales Price/Rate, Purchase Cost, and Sales Description.

  10. Click Import.

See also

How data import works

Which products and services fields are imported?