Moving From Sage Intacct Construction to QuickBooks: What to Expect
Transitioning from Sage Intacct Construction to QuickBooks? Learn what converts, what to plan for, and how to keep your project data intact.
If your construction company is scaling back or moving away from Sage Intacct Construction, converting to QuickBooks involves careful planning. Sage Intacct is a powerful, dimension-driven cloud platform, while QuickBooks handles accounting differently. Here is what we recommend keeping in mind when migrating your data.
Understand the Platform Differences
Sage Intacct relies heavily on dimensions (such as project, location, department, and customer) to categorize financial data. QuickBooks, whether Desktop Enterprise or QuickBooks Online, uses a more traditional structure of classes, customer:jobs, and locations. Before moving a single transaction, you need to map your Sage Intacct dimensions to their QuickBooks equivalents so your historical reporting still makes sense.
Decide What History to Bring Over
Converting every historical transaction from a complex construction ledger is rarely straightforward. A common approach is to bring over your current open projects, outstanding Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable, and a single opening trial balance for closed periods. If you need comprehensive historical transaction-level data moved over, specialized data conversion services can help translate those records accurately.
Handling Construction-Specific Data
Construction management requires precise tracking. When migrating, ensure your open estimates, purchase orders, and subcontract commitments are accounted for. QuickBooks Enterprise offers job-costing and estimate features, but they do not always mirror Sage Intacct’s specific construction workflows exactly. Plan to review your open job budgets immediately after the conversion to ensure they align with your active contracts.
Rebuilding Your Chart of Accounts
Because Sage Intacct’s dimensional accounting allows for a relatively flat chart of accounts, your QuickBooks chart of accounts will likely need to be expanded. You will need to decide whether to track project profitability purely through QuickBooks classes and sub-customers, or if you need separate accounts for distinct construction phases.
Your Next Step
Start by exporting your current Trial Balance, open AR, open AP, and active Project Profitability reports from Sage Intacct. Use these documents to build a data mapping spreadsheet, listing exactly where every dimension and account will land in your new QuickBooks file.