QIF File: What a QIF File Is, How to Open One, and How to Convert It
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A QIF file (Quicken Interchange Format) is a plain-text file that stores bank, credit card, and investment transactions as tagged lines rather than as spreadsheet rows. It was Intuit's standard export format through the 1990s and 2000s. You can open a QIF file in any text editor, but almost no current accounting software will import one: Quicken dropped QIF for bank and credit card accounts, and QuickBooks Online has never accepted it. In 2026, a QIF file is something you convert, not something you import.
That is the short answer. The rest of this guide covers what the tags inside a QIF actually mean, which programs still open one, why imports fail, and what to convert a QIF into depending on where the transactions need to end up. If you already know all that and just need the file converted, the tool at the top of this page takes a .qif and hands back a QuickBooks-ready .qbo along with Excel and CSV copies.
Last updated July 2026.
What is a QIF file?
QIF stands for Quicken Interchange Format. It is an ASCII text format Intuit created so that transactions could move between Quicken and other finance programs, and for a long stretch it was how banks let you download your account history. Each transaction is written as a small block of lines, each line beginning with a single-letter tag that says what the value is, and each block closed with a caret.
A single transaction inside a QIF file looks like this:
!Type:Bank
D01/15'26
T-42.19
PShell Oil 4412
MFuel, client visit
LAuto:Fuel
^That is one gas station charge for $42.19 on January 15, 2026. The header line declares the account type, D carries the date, T the amount, P the payee, M a memo, and L the category. The caret ends the record and the next one starts underneath.
What do the tags in a QIF file mean?
The tags are the whole format. There are more of them than most people need, but the handful below carry the transaction data that any converter or import has to read correctly.
| Tag | What it holds | Example |
|---|---|---|
| !Type: | Account type header for the block that follows (Bank, CCard, Cash, Invst) | !Type:Bank |
| D | Transaction date | D01/15'26 |
| T or U | Amount, negative for money leaving the account | T-42.19 |
| P | Payee | PShell Oil 4412 |
| M | Memo | MFuel, client visit |
| L | Category, or a transfer account in square brackets | LAuto:Fuel |
| N | Check or reference number | N1042 |
| C | Cleared or reconciled status | CX |
| S and $ | Split category and the amount for that split | SAuto:Fuel then $-42.19 |
| ^ | End of this transaction record | ^ |
How do I open a QIF file?
Any text editor opens a QIF file: Notepad on Windows, TextEdit on Mac, or VS Code on either. Rename nothing and change nothing, just open it, and you will see the tagged blocks above. What you cannot do is open a QIF as a spreadsheet. Excel will load the file, but because every field sits on its own line rather than in a column, you get one long column of values like D01/15'26 and T-42.19 instead of a transaction table. To see a QIF as rows and columns you have to convert it first.
What program opens a QIF file?
For reading, any text editor. For actually using the transactions, the honest answer in 2026 is a converter, because the accounting programs have moved on. Old desktop copies of Quicken and Microsoft Money imported QIF natively, and a few niche personal-finance tools still do, but the two destinations most people are aiming at, current Quicken and QuickBooks, will not take a QIF file of bank transactions. Converting it to the format the destination does accept is the path that works.
Can I import a QIF file into QuickBooks?
No, not as bank or credit card transactions. QuickBooks Online accepts CSV, QBO (Web Connect), QFX, and OFX for transaction uploads, and QIF is not on that list. QuickBooks Desktop retained QIF only for certain list-type data, not for the bank transactions most people are trying to bring in. To get QIF data into QuickBooks you convert the file to a .qbo Web Connect file first, which is what the QIF to QBO converter is for.
Why will Quicken not import my QIF file anymore?
Quicken moved bank transaction import from QIF to the OFX-based formats years ago. In current Quicken, QIF import is available only for asset, liability, and cash accounts; it is not available for checking, savings, credit card, or brokerage accounts, which are exactly the accounts most people are trying to fill. Those take QFX, Quicken's own OFX variant. So a QIF exported from an old Quicken file, from Microsoft Money, or from a bank portal has nowhere to land. Converting it to QFX puts the same transactions back into a format Quicken reads.
What should I convert a QIF file into?
It depends entirely on where the transactions are going. The table below is the short version.
| Where the data needs to go | Convert the QIF to | Why |
|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online or Desktop | QBO (Web Connect) | Lands in the banking review queue as a native bank feed, with signs and structure intact |
| Current Quicken | QFX | The OFX-based format Quicken still accepts for bank and card accounts |
| A non-Intuit finance tool | OFX | The unbranded open standard most other tools read |
| Excel, review, or cleanup work | CSV or XLSX | Real rows and columns you can sort, filter, and hand to a bookkeeper |
Why do the dates come out wrong when I convert a QIF?
Because QIF never declares its date format. The line D03/04/2026 means March 4 in a US-written file and April 3 in a European one, and nothing inside the file says which. Quicken makes it worse by writing two-digit years with an apostrophe, as in D01/15'26, which naive parsers read as a year 26 or fail on entirely. A converter that guesses per line produces a file with transactions scattered across the wrong months. The converter on this page inspects every date in the file together, works out which format is actually in use, and only then writes the output.
Does converting a QIF file lose transactions?
It can, and that is the failure mode worth watching for. Split transactions are the usual casualty: a single charge broken into three categories has an S and $ line per split, and a parser that reads only the T tag can double count them or drop them. This converter sums the splits into one signed amount, then adds up every transaction it parsed and checks that total against the source file before it lets you export. If the numbers do not agree, it tells you rather than handing over a clean-looking file that is quietly short.
Where do I get a QIF file in the first place?
Usually from an export rather than a download. Older Quicken and Microsoft Money files export to QIF, some legacy bank portals and credit unions still offer a QIF download option, and a handful of accounting packages emit QIF as their interchange format. If your bank no longer offers QIF at all, the transactions are probably only available to you as a PDF statement, in which case there is no QIF step to worry about: you can turn the PDF statement straight into a spreadsheet and take the data from there.
Is QIF the same as QFX or QBO?
No, and this is the single most common mix-up. QFX and QBO are both OFX files with an Intuit header block, QFX branded for Quicken and QBO branded for QuickBooks Web Connect. QIF predates OFX and shares nothing with it structurally: it is tagged text, not an OFX document. That is why renaming a .qif to .qbo or .qfx never works. The receiving program opens the file, looks for an OFX header, finds tagged Quicken text instead, and rejects it. The file has to be genuinely rebuilt, not relabeled.
Is QIF a dead format?
Effectively, on the import side. Nothing current is being built to read QIF, and the two programs that mattered most have both moved to OFX-based formats. On the export side it is not dead at all, because a large amount of financial history is still sitting in old Quicken files, old Money files, and legacy bank portals that only know how to emit QIF. That is the practical situation most people are in: a format nothing will import, holding data they still need. Converting it is the whole job.
Converting your QIF file
Upload the .qif to the converter at the top of this page. It reads the tags, resolves the date format across the whole file, sums any splits, reconciles the parsed total against the source, and shows you the transactions before you export anything. From there you can download a QuickBooks Web Connect .qbo file, a QFX or OFX file, or a CSV or Excel spreadsheet, all from the same conversion. If you have a stack of files rather than one, the bulk converter runs them as a batch with a separate reconciliation check on each.
Related reading: how to open a QIF file, what a QFX file is, can I import a QIF file into QuickBooks, what a QBO file is, mapping QIF fields to QuickBooks, fixing the QuickBooks QIF import date format, and importing multiple QIF files into QuickBooks. The export side is covered in how to export a QIF file from Quicken.