Big Red Consulting Pricing and Reviews: QIF to QBO Converter Costs and a No-Excel Alternative

Yes. Every Big Red Consulting converter is a Microsoft Excel add in, and the QIF to OFX/QFX/QBO Converter lists Excel for Windows 2003 through 2021 and 365 as a requirement. There is no standalone application and no browser version. If you do not already own a Windows Excel license, the real cost of the tool is $79 plus a Microsoft 365 subscription, which changes the math considerably.

No. The products require Excel for Windows, not Excel for Mac, and the installer is a Windows installer. Mac users can run it inside Parallels, VMware Fusion or Boot Camp with a Windows license and Windows Excel, which is a lot of moving parts for one file conversion. This is the single most common reason people go looking for a Big Red Consulting alternative, and it is why our Mac personal finance notes point to a browser tool instead.

Yes for the QIF to OFX/QFX/QBO Converter. Its product page lists QuickBooks Online alongside Quicken Subscription for Windows, US QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2022 to 2024, US QuickBooks Enterprise 22.0 to 24.0, and Canadian Pro and Premier 2022 to 2024. The QBO file it writes goes in through the manual upload in the banking screen, the same route a QIF converted for QuickBooks Online takes.

The IIF tool writes transactions directly into the QuickBooks Desktop register. The OFX/QFX/QBO tool writes a bank download file that lands in the online banking centre, where you match or add each transaction. IIF is faster and blunter. QBO keeps the review step and the reconciliation flags. For a Quicken migration into QuickBooks Desktop, most bookkeepers prefer QBO precisely because of that review step.

Yes, and it needs no registration or payment. Download the add in from any product link and first use starts the trial. The limit is the size of the job, not the clock: the trial will create up to 100 individual transactions per file type. Entering your product key after purchase unlocks the same install to the full version, so there is nothing to reinstall.

Conditionally, within 30 days, and the conditions matter. Their policy grants a refund when the product does not perform as described or when support cannot fix a defect. It explicitly excludes refunds for not meeting the system requirements, for setup errors, for limitations in other programs, and for simply deciding not to use what you bought. That is why they push the free trial so hard: the trial is the return policy.

This is worth saying plainly because several comparison sites describe it as a money back guarantee. It is not one. Run the trial against your real QIF file before you pay, and check the transaction count in your file first, since the 100 transaction trial cap can hide a problem that only shows up on a full year of data.

The row that decides most purchases is the first one. For a single Quicken export that you will never repeat, $79 once beats any monthly plan, and we will not pretend otherwise. The rows that flip the decision the other way are Excel, macOS and batch. A bookkeeper closing eight client files a month is not buying a converter, they are buying a repeatable step in a close, and that step should not depend on one Windows machine with the right Excel build on it.

Buy it if you work on Windows, already have Excel, and want to inspect and edit transactions in a worksheet before they reach QuickBooks. Buy it also if your QuickBooks Desktop copy predates 2022, because their IIF line supports releases back to 2000 that nobody else still targets. And buy it if this is a one time job: $79 with no renewal obligation is hard to argue with.

For a QIF file that needs to become a QBO file, a browser converter is the closest substitute. You upload the QIF, it reads the tags, sets opening and closing balances and the FID, and hands back a QBO that QuickBooks Online or Desktop accepts. Nothing installs, so macOS, Chromebooks and locked down work laptops all work, and the job does not stop when the one licensed PC is in for repair.

The practical differences beyond the platform are volume and format spread. Ours takes up to 20 QIF files in a single pass and also exports to CSV and XLSX, QFX and OFX, which matters when half a client roster is moving to QuickBooks and the other half to a spreadsheet. Big Red Consulting covers OFX, QFX and QBO but not CSV or XLSX from a QIF, and its worksheet editing step is genuinely better than ours when a file needs cleaning rather than converting.

No. The $79 purchase is a license for the build you own, and the $69 annual extension is optional. You would buy the extension when you upgrade QuickBooks and need a newer build, or when you want basic support and product updates for another year. Extensions run one year from your purchase date or your current Good Through date, whichever is later, so buying early does not waste days.

The site runs a Discounts page and sells bundles rather than coupon codes. The Quicken Import Tools bundle at $116 is the clearest saving, packaging the Excel to QIF Converter, the QIF to OFX Converter and the OFX Cleaner at more than 30 percent off buying the three separately. At the practice end, the Accountant Bundle is $409 and the QuickBooks Import Tools Bundle is $419.

Yes, by two routes. The QIF to IIF Converter at $99 writes the transactions straight into the register. The QIF to OFX/QFX/QBO Converter at $79 writes a QBO file that arrives in the online banking centre for matching. Note that QuickBooks Desktop has no native QIF import at all, which is why a converter of some kind is always part of a Quicken to QuickBooks move.

Quicken for Windows exports QIF from File, then Export, then QIF file, one account at a time with a date range. Quicken for Mac has no QIF export, so Mac users either move the file to a Windows copy of Quicken or export CSV and work from there. Our walkthrough of exporting QIF from Quicken covers the account by account detail and the transfer duplicates to watch for.

Four come up repeatedly and all cost more per year than Big Red Consulting. Zed Axis runs $155 to $350 a year on Windows. Transaction Pro is $199 once for the desktop importer or $13 to $61 a month online. SaasAnt is $25 to $100 a month. ProperConvert is $19.99 a month or $179.99 a year. None of the online editions read QIF at all.

A QBO file carries a date, a description and an amount per transaction, plus an account type, an opening and closing balance and a financial institution ID that QuickBooks checks. Categories do not survive the trip in either tool, because QBO has no category field: QuickBooks applies its own rules after import. Anyone promising you that categories carry across in a QBO file is describing something else.

If you want to know in two minutes whether a converter handles your file, run your real QIF through one before you pay either of us. Big Red Consulting gives you 100 transactions on the trial; we give you three conversions with no account at all. Whichever way you go, test the file you actually have, not a sample, because QIF files written by banks and by ten year old Quicken builds differ more than anyone expects.