QuickBooks Online Invoice Import: The Complete Guide for Bookkeepers

QuickBooks Online and Vendor Bill Import

QuickBooks Online (QBO) handles vendor bills — what QBO calls "bills" rather than "invoices" from a client perspective — through a few different paths. Understanding which method to use, and its limitations, saves hours of troubleshooting.

This guide focuses on importing vendor bills (bills you receive and pay), not customer invoices you send out. The two workflows are different in QBO.

QBO's Vendor Bill Import Options

Option 1: Manual Entry (the default)

The standard path: go to Expenses > Bills > New Bill, fill in vendor, date, due date, account, amount. For low-volume firms this is fine. For anyone processing more than 20–30 bills per month, it becomes a significant time sink.

Option 2: Email Forwarding (QBO's built-in "fetch")

QBO has a feature where you can forward invoices to a dedicated email address and QBO attempts to create a bill draft from the attachment. The accuracy is inconsistent — it works well on simple digital invoices from major vendors, but struggles with scanned PDFs, complex line items, or non-standard layouts.

The extracted drafts still require review and often significant correction. This is QBO's own extraction feature, not a third-party tool.

Option 3: CSV Import

QBO supports bulk import of vendor bills via CSV. This is the most reliable method for high-volume workflows and is what most third-party extraction tools (including SkipEntry) target with their export formats.

Option 4: Third-Party Integrations

Tools that connect to QBO via the QuickBooks API can push bills directly without a CSV intermediary. This is smoother but requires your extraction tool to have a QBO integration and OAuth authorization. Fewer tools support this — most use CSV.

The QBO CSV Import Format

This is where most bookkeepers hit problems. QBO's CSV import is picky about column names, order, and formatting.

Required columns for vendor bills:

Multi-line bills: Each line item gets its own row. Repeat the BillNo, Vendor, BillDate, DueDate on every row — QBO groups rows with the same BillNo and Vendor into one bill.

A minimal working CSV needs at minimum: BillNo, Vendor, BillDate, Account, LineDescription, LineAmount. Everything else is optional depending on your setup.

Common Import Errors (and How to Fix Them)

"Vendor not found"

The vendor name in your CSV doesn't exactly match what's in QBO. This is the most common error.

Fix: Go to Expenses > Vendors, find the correct spelling, and update your CSV. Watch for trailing spaces, punctuation differences ("Acme Corp." vs "Acme Corp"), and abbreviation differences ("Co" vs "Company").

Prevention: Export your QBO vendor list first (Expenses > Vendors > Export to Excel), use it as a lookup table when mapping vendor names from your invoices.

"Account not found"

The expense account name doesn't match your chart of accounts.

Fix: Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts, export the list, and use the exact account names. QBO is case-sensitive here. "Office Supplies" and "office supplies" may not match depending on your QBO version.

"Invalid date format"

QBO requires MM/DD/YYYY. If your CSV has dates in YYYY-MM-DD (ISO format) or DD/MM/YYYY (European format), every row fails.

Fix: In Excel, select the date column, format as MM/DD/YYYY, then export as CSV. In Google Sheets, use =TEXT(A1,"MM/DD/YYYY") to convert.

"Duplicate bill number"

QBO flags this if you try to import a bill with the same BillNo and Vendor combination that already exists in QBO.

Fix: Check if the bill was already entered. If it was entered manually and you're trying to reimport, you need to delete the original first or change the import bill number.

"Currency mismatch"

If you have multi-currency enabled but a bill's currency doesn't match the vendor's home currency in QBO, import fails.

Fix: Either update the vendor's currency setting in QBO or ensure your CSV Currency column matches.

Batch Processing Efficiently

For bookkeepers processing 50+ bills per month, individual imports are still slow. Here's a faster workflow:

1. Batch by period, not by client. Collect all invoices for a client for the full month, process them together rather than as they arrive. This reduces setup/teardown time per client.

2. Standardize vendor names early. Create a master vendor name mapping document: "What the invoice says" versus "What QBO calls them." This lookup table is reusable and gets faster to maintain over time.

3. Validate before importing. Run a quick check on your CSV before uploading: does every row have a vendor, date, and amount? Are dates in MM/DD/YYYY? Any blank account names? Catching these pre-import is faster than diagnosing QBO's error messages post-import.

4. Import in batches of 100–200. QBO's import tool handles large files but gives unhelpful error messages when multiple rows fail. Smaller batches make it easier to isolate problems.

5. Keep a failed-import log. Any rows QBO rejects, note them separately. Common repeat offenders (new vendor, unusual account code) become visible over time.

The Role of AI Extraction in This Workflow

The bottleneck in the import workflow is usually not the QBO upload step — it's getting from "pile of PDFs" to "clean CSV with correct vendor names, dates, and amounts."

AI extraction tools handle the PDF-to-CSV step. A tool like SkipEntry reads each invoice PDF, extracts the vendor name, invoice number, date, line items, and totals, then generates a QBO-formatted CSV directly. You review the extracted data, make corrections, and upload.

The time savings come from eliminating the manual reading-and-typing step. For a 100-invoice batch that would take 4–6 hours manually, AI extraction plus review typically runs 30–60 minutes.

What AI extraction does not solve: vendor name standardization (you still need to map "Acme Corporation" to "Acme Corp" as QBO knows it) and GL account coding (which account to put each expense on is still a judgment call, though some tools let you set default accounts per vendor).

Tips for Specific Scenarios

Multi-currency invoices

If you receive invoices in CAD, GBP, EUR, etc.:

• QBO's multi-currency feature must be enabled (Settings > Currencies)
• Each vendor must have their home currency set correctly in QBO
• Your CSV must include the Currency column with the correct 3-letter currency code
• Exchange rates: QBO uses its own exchange rate on the bill date, or you can override it on the bill after import

Scanned PDF invoices

Scanned invoices (photographed or printed-then-scanned) are harder for any extraction tool. Key considerations:

• Scan quality matters: 300 DPI minimum, straight orientation, decent contrast
• Handwritten invoices are generally not extractable by current AI tools — they require manual entry
• Some AI tools (including SkipEntry) use vision models that handle scanned PDFs significantly better than traditional OCR approaches

Invoices with retainage or holdbacks

Construction and trades invoices sometimes have retainage (a portion held back). QBO does not have a native retainage field. Typical approach: record the full amount as a bill, then create a credit memo or negative line item for the holdback amount. This part is manual regardless of what extraction tool you use.

Credit memos from vendors

Vendor credit memos (refunds, returns, adjustments) use a different QBO form — Vendor Credit, not Bill. Most extraction tools are designed for bills; credit memos may need manual entry or separate handling in your workflow.

Summary

QBO's CSV import is the most reliable high-volume path for vendor bills, but it requires attention to exact vendor names, account names, and date formats. The common errors — vendor not found, bad date format, duplicate bill number — all have straightforward fixes once you know to look for them.

The overall workflow — extract data from PDFs, validate and correct, format as QBO CSV, import — is where AI extraction tools earn their cost. The import itself takes minutes; the extraction and review is where the hours go.

If you're processing 50+ vendor bills per month and doing it manually, it's worth running a trial with an AI extraction tool against your actual invoice pool. Most offer free trials on your own files, which is the only honest way to evaluate whether the accuracy meets your standards. SkipEntry's QuickBooks Online integration generates import-ready CSV files directly, handling the column mapping and date formatting automatically.