QIF Format

Excel to QIF Converter Online — (Free & Instant)

If your spreadsheet has a Category column, it is written into the file. QIF keeps a category against every row — the .qbo and .qfx formats have no field for one at all — so what you already classified travels with the transactions instead of ending up as text in the payee. Put the workbook in exactly as it stands: no Save As, no re-export to CSV, nothing to install. Dates go in whichever order you choose, withdrawals negative and deposits positive, and nothing is invented along the way — a bank export carrying no category column comes out with none.

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Not the file you need?

Exported as CSV?
The plain-text route to a .qif
Statement came as a PDF?
Convert it without a spreadsheet in between
QuickBooks Desktop, not Quicken?
Desktop reads IIF and cannot read QIF
QuickBooks Online?
The same sheet as a .qbo instead

Why Use Our Excel to QIF Converter Tool?

Your categories, not ours

A Category column in the sheet is carried into QIF's L field exactly as you wrote it, colon hierarchies like Auto:Fuel included, and never translated or mapped onto some standard chart of accounts. Nothing is ever guessed from a payee name — a statement full of recognisable shops still comes out uncategorised, because a category you did not choose is worse in your books than no category at all.

The workbook goes in as it is

Nearly every alternative adds a step before the conversion even starts: the free web tools take CSV or TSV only and tell you to re-save the sheet first, and the two that do read a workbook are an Excel add-in and a Windows program that needs Excel installed to open it. Here the .xls or .xlsx is read directly, in a browser tab, on whatever machine you happen to be at — no Save As, no add-in, no install permissions required.

The balance stays the statement's

A QIF has no field for a balance, so an opening figure written into one arrives as an ordinary deposit and quietly inflates the register it lands in. Only the rows that are transactions are written here, which is why the amounts in the file add up to exactly what the sheet moved.

How to convert Excel to QIF in three steps

1

Bring the sheet as it stands

Whatever your bank sent, or the tracker you keep yourself — the newer .xlsx and the older .xls open the same way, so converting xlsx to QIF and xls to QIF are one job here. Nothing needs re-saving as CSV first, the step most converters open with, and a Category column is found wherever it sits rather than having to be moved or renamed.

2

Upload the spreadsheet

Drop the file onto the area above, or click to browse. The sheet holding the transactions is located rather than assumed, so a cover tab or a heading block above the table needs no tidying.

3

Answer two questions, take the file

A sheet records neither the kind of account it came from nor the order its dates were meant to read in, and a QIF needs both. Set them and the Excel to QIF conversion is done.

Where a spreadsheet and Quicken stop agreeing

Quicken will not open a spreadsheet

Quicken's import dialog offers QIF, QFX and OFX and nothing else, so a workbook holding every figure you need is a file it declines to look at. There is no add-in, no hidden menu and no Excel template that changes this on the transaction side. To convert Excel to Quicken at all is therefore to convert Excel to QIF file format first — and QIF is the one of those three you can produce without your bank's involvement, since the other two are files a bank issues.

Which Quicken you run decides whether QIF works

Quicken's own help contradicts itself here, which is why so many people believe QIF is dead. One page still says imports are limited to asset, liability and cash accounts; the page that exists to answer that exact question says you can now import any account type using QIF. The second is the current one. What genuinely restricts you is the edition and the platform: Starter and Essentials have never imported QIF, versions from 2005 to 2017 need Deluxe or above, and 2018 onwards has no restriction at all.

On a Mac, QIF only opens a new file

Quicken for Mac from 2015 onwards reads a QIF when you are creating a brand-new Quicken file and at no other time — there is no way to import one into an account you already keep. Quicken for Mac 2007 handled it fine, which is why the advice you find is often years out of date. If you are on a current Mac version and adding to an existing account, a QFX or OFX is the file you actually want.

The same file imported twice will double

A QFX gives every transaction an identifier so Quicken can recognise one it has already seen. QIF has no such field, so nothing in the file tells the importer that a row is a repeat and everything in it is added again. Convert whole periods that do not overlap, or clear the duplicates afterwards with Quicken's own Find and Replace tool.

Who turns a workbook into QIF

Spreadsheets with a category

Anyone who has been tracking spending in a sheet has already done the classifying, usually in a column called Category. That column reaches Quicken as a real category here rather than being flattened into the description or dropped on the way.

GnuCash, MYOB and Moneydance

QIF is read far beyond Quicken, and MYOB AccountRight is the clearest case — it takes OFX and QIF but refuses CSV, PDF and Excel outright, so a workbook has no other way in.

When a QFX gets rejected

A .qfx carries a bank identifier Quicken verifies against its own list, and a file naming an institution it does not recognise is turned away. A QIF declares no institution, so there is nothing for the import to reject.

Sheets kept in one currency

QIF has no concept of currency — GnuCash documents this plainly and asks for one currency per file. A single-currency tracker is exactly the shape the format expects, which is why no currency question appears here.

Credit card trackers

A QIF opens with a line declaring what kind of account follows, and Quicken files the whole import on the strength of it. Card rows landing under a Bank header sit in the wrong register with their signs inverted, so Excel to QIF asks which it is before writing that line.

Anyone outside the US

A QIF fixes no date order, leaving each copy of Quicken to read one by its own regional setting — the reason a UK, Irish or Australian import so often lands a month of rows on the wrong days. The order is yours to set here before the file is written.

Frequently Asked Questions — Excel to QIF Converter

QHow do I convert an Excel file to QIF?

Upload the workbook above, choose whether it is a bank or card account and which date format the file should use, then download the .qif. That is the whole of it — there is no column mapping form to fill in, because the layout is worked out from the sheet itself. However you came to it — convert Excel to QIF file, convert xls to QIF, convert xlsx to QIF, export Excel to QIF — it is this one upload, and it is the same Excel to QIF online whether you are on Windows, macOS or Linux.

QDoes it keep my Category column?

Yes, and it is the main reason to choose QIF over a .qbo or .qfx. QIF carries a category against every transaction in a field called L, and the other formats have no equivalent at all, so a category is simply lost when you convert to them. Whatever is in your Category column is written through exactly as you typed it, including hierarchies like Auto:Fuel or Food:Groceries, which Quicken and GnuCash both read as parent and child.

QMy categories did not appear in Quicken. Why?

Worth separating the two halves. The category is written into the file — you can open the .qif in any text editor and see it on a line beginning with L, next to the payee and amount. What happens next belongs to Quicken, and it varies: normally a category name it does not already hold prompts you to add it, but some Subscription releases have been reported ignoring categories on QIF import altogether while still taking the amount, payee and memo. If yours does that, creating the category names in Quicken first and re-importing is the fix people report working. GnuCash handles it more predictably — its QIF importer walks you through matching every category before it commits anything.

QWill it guess categories for me?

No, deliberately. If your sheet has no category column, the file comes out with no categories on it, even though the payees would often make the guess obvious. A category you did not choose looks in your books exactly like a decision you made, and finding those later is far more work than categorising from scratch. Quicken and GnuCash both assign categories in bulk from the payee name after import, and their rules keep working on everything you import afterwards.

QShould I use QIF or QFX for Quicken?

On Quicken for Windows, either works — QIF imports into any account type on 2018 and later, and from the Deluxe edition upward on 2005 to 2017. Choose QIF when you want your categories to survive, or when a QFX has been refused over the institution it names. Choose QFX when you want Quicken to spot duplicate transactions for you. On Quicken for Mac the choice is made for you: current versions only read a QIF while creating a new file, so QFX or OFX is the one to use.

QI am on Quicken for Mac. What should I do?

Use a QFX or an OFX instead. Quicken for Mac 2015 and later will read a QIF only at the moment you create a new Quicken file, never into an existing account, so converting to QIF will not get this month's statement into the register you already keep. Save the sheet as CSV and use the CSV to QFX converter, which produces the file Mac versions do accept.

QWhich software reads QIF files?

Quicken for Windows, GnuCash, MYOB AccountRight, Moneydance, Money Manager Ex, HomeBank, Banktivity and Microsoft Money, among others. MYOB is worth calling out because it accepts OFX and QIF but not CSV, PDF or Excel, so for MYOB users a QIF is not a preference but the only route in. That breadth is QIF's real advantage — it long predates the formats that replaced it and almost everything still reads it.

QDoes it handle split transactions?

No, and there is nothing to split. QIF can express a split with S records, but a bank or card row carries one amount and no breakdown of it, so every row converts to a single entry. If you need one payment apportioned across several categories, make the split inside Quicken after importing — that is where the information to split it actually exists.

QWhat is the best Excel to QIF converter?

Frequency decides it. Big Red Consulting's is the best known and it is an Excel add-in — $69 outright or $59 annually, covering investment registers too, but tied to Excel for Windows with no Mac build at any price. ProperSoft's ProperConvert and MoneyThumb's CSV2QIF are paid desktop programs occupying similar ground, and both map a Category column the way this does — though CSV2QIF asks you to save the sheet out as CSV before it will look at it. ImportQIF is the one genuinely free desktop option, open source and well regarded, but it is compiled for Windows only and needs Excel itself installed to open a workbook. Converting weekly, a paid tool repays its licence quickly. For the occasional statement, a free Excel to QIF converter online finishes the job before an installer would have downloaded.

QIs there an Excel to QIF converter free download?

Plenty, and the word download is the part to notice. Nearly all of them arrive as Windows executables or as add-ins that write themselves into your copy of Excel, which excludes Macs entirely and excludes any machine where installing software is not yours to decide. Converting Excel to QIF in a browser answers both at once: nothing installs, nothing expires, and no account stands between you and the file. That is what it means to convert Excel to QIF free rather than free-to-try. It is also the answer if you have been hunting for a way to do it inside Excel itself, whether on 365 or an older release — there is no built-in export to QIF in any version, which is precisely the gap the paid add-ins were written to fill.

QMy dates came in the wrong way round. What happened?

The file is fine; the two machines disagree. Because a QIF states no date order, Quicken applies whatever the computer opening it is set to, so a month-first file read by a day-first install turns the third of April into the fourth of March. Run the Excel to QIF conversion again with the opposite order selected and import once more. The related trap, where 2017 arrives as 1917, cannot occur here: years are always written in full rather than as two digits.

QWhy is there no currency setting?

Because QIF has no currency field to put one in. The format predates the question and stores plain signed numbers, which is why GnuCash's own manual asks you to import one currency per file. Amounts are written exactly as the sheet stated them and your software treats them as its own currency, so a workbook mixing currencies should be split before converting rather than after.

QMy Category column is not the first column. Does that matter?

No. Columns are found by what they contain rather than by position or by header name, so a category can sit anywhere in the sheet and be called Category, Type, Class or Head. What it must be is a column of its own — a category typed into the middle of a description is part of that description as far as any converter is concerned, and it will arrive in the payee rather than the category field.

QDoes my spreadsheet leave my computer?

No. Reading the workbook and writing the .qif both happen inside the browser, so at no point does either file cross the network. One thing does leave: the bare rows, sent so the layout can be worked out and the category column recognised, held only as long as that takes and kept afterwards by nobody.

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Turn the sheet into something Quicken will open

A spreadsheet is the one file almost everybody has and the one file Quicken declines to open. Convert Excel to QIF online above, then reach for File → File Import → QIF File and choose the register it should land in. Free, nothing to install, and however many rows the sheet runs to.