How to Export Journal Entries from QuickBooks

Journal entries in QuickBooks are records of financial transactions flowing in and out of your business. They provide a timely narrative of your business’s financial standing and help make plans for possible business scaling, expansion, new hires, etc.

You may have different reasons for exporting journal entry data from QuickBooks. One of them is to track money that you put in or take out of your business, or flows between your different accounts. Another reason is to use this data for reporting or analytical purposes, like building a custom dashboard or blending data with information from other sources. Ultimately, you might just want to share this data with multiple users or stakeholders.

In this article, we will demonstrate all the ways of exporting journal entries from QuickBooks, including the one allowing you to automate this process on a schedule. 

How to export journal entries from QuickBooks Online 

There are two native ways to export journal entries from QuickBooks Online. The first is with the help of the Gear icon, and the other is from the Reports page. Both options enable you to export data into Excel, while from the Reports page, you can also export data to PDF.

If you want to repeat this process regularly, on the desired schedule, we suggest you consider automated methods that do not require any coding. Read more about this in the section, How to export entries from QuickBooks to Excel on a scheduled basis. Now, let’s check out what the manual export of journal entries looks like.

Export journal entries from the Gear icon in QuickBooks 

If you export journal entries from the Gear icon, you’ll be able to export information like Date, Transaction Type, Name, Memo/Description, Account, Debit, and Credit.

Once you log in to your QuickBooks Online:

• Click on the Gear icon in the top right corner
• Then, click on Export data under the TOOLS option.

QuickBooks will then open up a child window calling you to toggle four different buttons depending on the type of Report you wish to export. Make sure you turn on Journal and switch off all other buttons.

Also, click on the Lists option to remove items you don’t want to export.

Here is what the exported data looks in Excel:

Export journal entries from the Reports page in QuickBooks

Through the Reports page, you can export journal entries to Excel or PDF and set more bespoke criteria for your data exports.

• Go to Business overview and then select Reports.
• Then search for the Journal Report as depicted below.

Click the Customize button on the right-hand side and select the criteria for your export. Then hit Run Report.

Alternatively, you can select the dates for a particular period you want to export for journal entries on the Journal Report page. In addition, you can edit the journal entries before you export them.

Select the Export icon next to the Print icon, then choose Export to Excel or Export to PDF.

Here is what the exported data looks in Excel:

How to export entries from QuickBooks to Excel on a scheduled basis

The native options to export journal entries from QuickBooks Online are pretty good but are manual. All this can consume much of your time if you need to export data very frequently. It is time to let third-party tools handle the repetitive work for you.

In this section, we’ll demonstrate how you could use Coupler.io to run a QuickBooks export to Excel. 

Coupler.io is a data automation and analytics platform that provides an ETL tool to schedule data exports from multiple sources. You can have the exported data refreshed on a very tight schedule, like every 15 minutes, without any involvement from your side. You will need to set up the integration only once, and then, QuickBooks data will be loaded in Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or Google BigQuery, at the desired frequency. This way, you can automate reporting or analytics without any coding.

Here are the steps to export journal entries from QuickBooks automatically:

• Sign up with Coupler.io and click on Add new importer.
• Select QuickBooks as your source app and Microsoft Excel as your destination app.

Coupler.io also provides QuickBooks Reports as a source app. This option is good for exporting QuickBooks reports such as Balance Flow, Cash Flow, Vendor Balance, or Transaction List. However, they won’t be helpful for exporting journal entries.

• Proceed to the setup of the chosen applications.
• Connect to your QuickBooks account.
• From the data entity list, select JournalEntry.

Proceed to the configuration of the destination app. We’re running the QuickBooks export to Excel in this example. At the same time, you can connect QuickBooks to BigQuery or Google Sheets. 

• Connect your Microsoft account. Then, you will need to select an existing workbook and a sheet to load journal entries from QuickBooks. If necessary, you can create a new sheet by typing in a new name. The importer also provides an optional feature that lets you specify the column where the imported data will be added to the destination sheet. This facilitates the operation of any formulas you might have created on a selected range of cells.

To automate data export, toggle the Automatic data refresh button and schedule the day, time, and timezone. Then click on Save and run.

Here is what the exported journal entries from QuickBooks will look like in Excel:

Benefits of automated export of journal entries from QuickBooks

The manual way of transferring journal entries from QuickBooks to Excel works best for a one-time export, for example, if you need to move the data in another app. Besides, QuickBooks only supports two formats for export – Excel and PDF. This limits your options since you may need to use other destinations for your data. 

The automated exporting option, especially the one provided by Coupler.io, allows you to schedule the export of data at a custom schedule, such as every day or every hour. For more frequent data refresh, QuickBooks integration supports 30- or 15-minute frequencies. This lets you eliminate manual routine, which is not only time-consuming but also inefficient from the general workflow optimization. 

The ETL tool helps you save valuable time, eliminating the need to repeat tedious, recurring tasks. Furthermore, it improves the quality of your exported data, enabling you to share the most updated spreadsheet with your team anytime.

Export journal entries from QuickBooks Desktop

QuickBooks Desktop allows you to analyze journal entries in Excel. You can save reports as Excel workbooks or CSV spreadsheets.

Here is how to easily export journal entries from QuickBooks Desktop:

• Head to the Reports menu, and then choose the Accountant & Taxes option
• Hit the Journal option

• Sort the journal entries by the Dates drop-down menu
• Click on the Excel drop-down

• Choose the Create new worksheet. Alternatively, you can update an existing worksheet, or create a comma separated values file

• Hit the Export button

Here is what the exported journal entries from QuickBooks Desktop will look like in Excel:

Export journal entries from QuickBooks – Recap

If you don’t keep an eye on your journal entries, you might deem that your business possesses more or less debt or be more or less profitable than it actually is. As a result, this could make you make decisions based on false information, leading to negative implications.

Journal entries offer an accurate record of all your financial transactions. But going through every transaction daily can be a hassle. With modern tools like Coupler.io, exporting journal entries frequently can be automatically executed, minimizing the potential for error.