My 10 Favorite Apps Week 3 – Guru Importer

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It has been a couple of weeks since the last installment of my "Top 10 Favorite Apps" series, so please remember the reviews are in no particular order. They just happen to be the apps my firm loves to work with.

Continuing on my mission to create synergy and utilize time saving technology, Guru Importer is my third favorite app.

While it may be a lesser known app, I consider it vitally important for importing IIF, TXT and CSV files into QuickBooks Online. Among the reasons I like it are the simplicity and speed with which it performs the task.

Some third party developers still only export an IIF file from their software for importing into QuickBooks. While this works fine when using QuickBooks Desktop, QBO does not recognize the IIF file type.

Guru Importer converts the IIF, TXT and CSV files into a readable format by QuickBooks Online.

When it comes to my QBO practice, I've found one of the most common uses of Guru Importer involves the importing of IIF payroll files into QuickBooks Online. A lot of third party payroll processors only provide the IIF files, so we need an importer utility like Guru Importer to get the payroll data into QBO as efficiently as possible.

Getting Started with Guru Importer

Guru Importer is simple to setup, use and very affordable. A basic monthly subscription, which is $9 per month, can handle importing to your QBO synced chart of accounts, vendors, customers, employee names and even classes.

  1. Connect Guru Importer either through the client’s QBO or through the QBOA Apps tab
  2. Guru Importer will sync your chart of accounts, vendors, customers, employees and classes (if applicable)
  3. Once connected Launch the Guru App

Importing IIF, TXT or CSV file into QBO

After launching the Guru Importer app, click “Select file for Importing”

  1. Choose document to import – it's that simple

Viewing your imports:

  1. Select “See all imports”
  2. Each journal entry has a number, visible COA, dollar amounts and names if applicable

Guru Importer ensures imports are balanced journal entries, with valid dates, classes and names. If there is an error, a sync report is created. The report includes what the error is and how to resolve it. Once the error is resolved, the transaction lines with errors can be reprocessed for import.  

In this case, the IIF file is unbalanced since there is only one side to the journal entry. Guru Importer actually saved us from importing junk into our QBO data. That's awesome.

Global Settings Give You Control

Let's say you want to allow for the creation of new names in QuickBooks Online while importing data, or perhaps you want to prevent new names from being created. The choice is yours with Guru Importer. The app's global settings permits you to configure import operations.

In the second illustration, we used Guru Importer for importing data from a hotel software called Rezovations. Because a majority of hotel customers are new customers, we want to allow Guru Importer to create new customer names during import. We can easily configure this option as seen in the illustration below.

In our hotel scenario, with just one sync, checking account balances are correct, lodging tax is recorded and the accounts receivable are always accurate.   

Guru Importer bridges the gap between third party file and QBO by creating a seamless, easy sync of IIF, TXT and CSV files that eliminate hours of data entry.

Guru Importer is a big win for accountants reconciling accounts and paying taxes, as well as end users who are happy with the ability to see their account balances in a timely manner for management decisions.

Just click on this link to learn more about Guru Importer.