Will Sage 50 progress billing and retainage convert to QuickBooks?
The amounts usually convert, but the live billing schedule depends on your file and on which QuickBooks edition you move to.
Partly, and the split matters. The money, meaning open progress invoices, retainage held, and each job’s billed-to-date position, can come across so your books balance on day one. The billing schedule as a working mechanism does not translate one-to-one, because QuickBooks stages contract billing differently. How much arrives as live data and how much is rebuilt depends on your file.
Progress billing moves onto estimates
In Sage 50, staged billing hangs off the job: a schedule sits against the job, and invoices draw from it as work completes. QuickBooks reaches the same result by another route. An estimate holds the contract value, and each invoice pulls a percentage or a stage from that estimate.
During a conversion, our engineers aim for the estimate to arrive with its contract total and the job to show the correct billed-to-date. Your next invoice then picks up where Sage left off. Whether that lands cleanly, or whether the history converts and the schedule is rebuilt by hand, depends on how your file is set up. The edition you move to matters as well, since progress invoicing works differently in QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online.
Retainage lands in a dedicated account
Sage 50 holds retainage as a built-in part of job billing. QuickBooks has no matching field on the invoice. The usual setup is a retainage item that nets each invoice down, posting the held amount to a retainage receivable account. The money then stays visible on your balance sheet instead of vanishing into the invoice total.
Retainage held to date can convert as the balance in that account. Open invoices can carry their retained portion as a line on each one. The right treatment depends on how retainage was recorded in Sage and on how many jobs still hold it. That is a per-file question, and we answer it after examining the data rather than guessing.
The tie-out that matters most
Schedules can be rebuilt; balances have to be right. Every open invoice should land with its customer, its job, and its remaining amount. Retainage should sit where you can see it, either in its own account or as clear lines on open invoices. On the conversion date, total receivables in QuickBooks must equal receivables plus retainage in Sage 50. Our engineers reconcile both report sets before you go live, because a gap here distorts every job report that follows.
Have your file evaluated first
Construction files vary a great deal: retainage percentages, partly billed jobs, change orders, and credits all change the mapping. Our Sage 50 to QuickBooks conversion service starts with a free evaluation of your file. We report exactly how the schedules, held amounts, and open balances will land, and you decide from there. The same review covers the Canadian edition if that is what you run.
Send a copy of your Sage backup and our engineers will map the jobs, the retainage, and the receivables before anything moves.