Tools
QuickBooks® Desktop migration readiness check
How complex is your QuickBooks Desktop migration?
Ten questions about your file — version, history, accounts, inventory, payroll, sales tax, integrations, entities, and the reports you rely on — scored into a Low, Medium, or High complexity read, with the reason. It is a readiness screen, not a migration quote: a QuickBooks ProAdvisor reviews the actual file before any scope or price. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent.
This is a complexity screen, not a price. Migration cost depends on what is inside the company file, and a ten-question form cannot see the condition of your chart of accounts or whether prior reconciliations were done correctly — so this tool deliberately returns Low, Medium or High complexity and the reason, rather than a figure.
The ten drivers are Desktop version, years of history, bank and card accounts, unreconciled periods, inventory depth, payroll, sales tax, connected apps, number of entities, and reliance on custom reports. Complexity comes from these stacking, not from any one of them. The most common mistake it is designed to catch: converting first and cleaning up afterwards, when cleanup belongs before the migration.
Nothing entered here is transmitted or stored.
Score your file in ten questions.
Pick the option that fits in each row. The reading updates as you go. Your answers are worked out in your browser and are not stored on our side. Our analytics records which questions you answered, the complexity band you reached and a short code of the options you picked, never a typed figure.
Migration complexity
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Waiting for your answers
Answer the questions above to see the complexity read.
This is a readiness screen, not a migration quote. Complexity is not price: two files with identical answers can be a week apart in effort once opened. A QuickBooks ProAdvisor reviews the actual file before any scope or price, and the fixed fee is confirmed in writing within 3 business days of a free discovery call and the file information needed to quote.
How this reading is calculated.
Each answer carries a weight from 0 to 3, and the ten are added into a score from 0 to 24 that maps to one of four bands. The weights are not evenly spread, because the drivers are not equally hard: Advanced Inventory, more than three entities or commingled files, and more than seven years of history each carry the maximum, because each one changes the order of operations rather than just adding hours. A newer Desktop version and a fully reconciled file carry zero.
Complexity comes from stacking. Any single driver on its own is usually manageable. Multi-state payroll and deep inventory and a year of unreconciled history together is a different project, because each one constrains when the others can be done. That is why the bands move on the total rather than on a worst-single-answer rule.
Why there is no price here. The two cost tools on this site publish ranges because bookkeeping and cleanup pricing is driven by things you can count. Migration is not: the cost is driven by the condition of the chart of accounts, whether prior reconciliations were done properly, and what a previous bookkeeper left behind — none of which a form can see. Anyone quoting a migration price before opening the file is guessing, and we would rather say that than publish a number we would have to walk back.
The one thing worth acting on regardless of your reading: cleanup belongs before the migration, not after. Converting a file with unreconciled periods carries the problems across and makes them harder to trace, because you then cannot tell whether an error came from the original file or from the conversion. See balances wrong after conversion for what that looks like when it has already happened.
Where to go next.
QuickBooks migration
How a Desktop-to-Online migration is actually run — the Migration Integrity Protocol, and what breaks when it is skipped.
Read moreQuickBooks Desktop
The dated support-end table, what stops working on each date, and whether staying on Desktop is still the right call.
Read moreBalances wrong after conversion
If a migration already happened and the numbers do not tie out, start here.
Read moreFree file review
A ProAdvisor opens the actual file and tells you what it will really take. This is the step this screen cannot do.
Read moreEmbed this tool.
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Questions about the readiness check.
How accurate is this readiness check?
How do I find my QuickBooks Desktop version?
Should I clean up before migrating or after?
Does a high complexity result mean I should not migrate?
What happens after this screen?
Is my information stored?
From screen to scope
Find out what your file will actually take.
What happens after you call.
1. We talk for up to 30 minutes. You tell us where the books stand; we ask the questions that decide the scope. No charge.
2. We look at the file if we need to. You add us as an accountant user in your own QuickBooks file, and you can remove us at any time. If the file cannot be priced without working inside it, we say so and propose the paid diagnostic, whose fee is credited in full against the cleanup.
3. You get a fixed fee in writing. What we will fix, what you will receive and one fixed fee. Nothing starts until you accept it.
We reply within one business day. Written fixed-fee scope within 3 business days of your call. No hourly billing.