QBO vs QFX vs OFX vs QIF: What QuickBooks Imports

The Short Answer

For QuickBooks, use a .qbo file. It is the only one of the four that both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop import. QuickBooks Online also takes a .qfx or a CSV, and now reads a PDF statement directly. QuickBooks Desktop takes a .qbo through Web Connect and nothing else on this list.

.ofx is the open standard the others grew from, and the right pick for ledgers that are not QuickBooks: Xero, GnuCash, Moneydance, Sage, and Wave. .qif is Quicken's older text format, and neither edition of QuickBooks imports it.

At a Glance

This article compares the four against QuickBooks. If you have one of these files in front of you and want to know what is inside it, what still opens it, and why an import was refused, three of them have a page of their own: QFX files, OFX files, and QIF files. QuickBooks Desktop also imports IIF files, which are not part of this family at all: tab-delimited rows written straight into the company file rather than a statement download.

QBO: The QuickBooks File

A QBO file is an OFX 1.02 file with one extra header line, INTU.BID, which identifies the download to QuickBooks as a Web Connect file. The value is a bank's ID in Intuit's directory of financial institutions, and QuickBooks Desktop refuses a file whose ID it can't find there. This is the header of a QBO from Bankflow's exporter:

OFXHEADER:100
DATA:OFXSGML
VERSION:102
SECURITY:NONE
ENCODING:USASCII
CHARSET:1252
COMPRESSION:NONE
OLDFILEUID:NONE
NEWFILEUID:NONE
INTU.BID:3000

Below the header the file is SGML, not XML: tags open and mostly never close, one field per line. Each transaction is a <STMTTRN> block:

<STMTTRN>
<TRNTYPE>CREDIT
<DTPOSTED>20260801
<TRNAMT>4820.50
<FITID>910001
<NAME>STRIPE PAYOUT 4AF2C9
<MEMO>Income
</STMTTRN>

Five fields do the work. DTPOSTED is the date and TRNAMT the signed amount: negative for money out, positive for money in. TRNTYPE says DEBIT or CREDIT and has to agree with the sign. NAME is the payee, limited to 32 characters by the format, so a long description is shortened. FITID is the one people overlook: a unique ID per transaction, which QuickBooks uses to recognise a transaction it has already imported. A file without stable FITIDs is how the same month ends up in your books twice. MEMO is optional; Bankflow fills it with the transaction's category when you ask it to.

Bankflow uses 3000, the Wells Fargo ID most converters use because Desktop always verifies it, so in QuickBooks Desktop the imported account is listed under Wells Fargo. Your books are unaffected: the transactions go into whichever account you link.

QuickBooks Online imports a QBO under Bank transactions, Upload from file, into For review. QuickBooks Desktop imports it under File, Utilities, Import, Web Connect Files, into the bank feed, and only once you are signed in to an Intuit Account inside the app.

QFX: The Quicken File

QFX is the same OFX body, packaged for Quicken, Intuit's personal-finance software. Banks that support both products often offer a QFX download for Quicken users and a QBO download for QuickBooks users from the same page. QuickBooks Online accepts a QFX in Upload from file. QuickBooks Desktop's Web Connect does not: it looks for the .qbo extension.

How close are they? In Bankflow's exports the QBO and QFX files are byte for byte identical apart from the extension. The extension, and the program reading it, decide where the file goes.

OFX: The Open Standard

OFX, Open Financial Exchange, is the published standard QBO and QFX are built on. A plain OFX file carries no Intuit header, which is what most non-Intuit software expects: Xero, GnuCash, Moneydance, Sage, and Wave all import it. For QuickBooks, pick QBO instead. Intuit's upload guide lists QBO, QFX, and CSV as the transaction files QuickBooks Online accepts, and QuickBooks Desktop's Web Connect wants a .qbo.

QIF: The Old Quicken Format

QIF, the Quicken Interchange Format, is older and simpler. It is plain text, one field per line, each line starting with a letter that says what it holds, and a caret closing each transaction:

!Type:Bank
D08/01/2026
T4820.50
PSTRIPE PAYOUT 4AF2C9
LIncome
^

D is the date, T the amount, P the payee, and L the category. What QIF lacks is a transaction ID, so an importer cannot tell a new transaction from one it has seen, and overlapping imports duplicate. Neither edition of QuickBooks imports it: QuickBooks Online's upload does not accept it, and QuickBooks Desktop's Web Connect reads only .qbo. It survives because Quicken and some older desktop tools still read it.

Can I Convert a QFX or QIF to QBO?

For QuickBooks Online there is usually nothing to convert: upload the QFX as it is. For QuickBooks Desktop, a QFX or QIF has to become a QBO (or an IIF journal) first. Desktop converters such as ProperConvert, the successor to Bank2QBO, read QFX and QIF and write QBO; see our ProperConvert comparison.

Bankflow does not read QFX or QIF. It starts from the statement itself: a PDF, or the CSV or Excel file your bank offers. If you still have the statements, converting from those also gives you a review step, a check against each statement's balances, and a chance to categorize before anything reaches QuickBooks.

Getting a PDF Statement into the Right File

QuickBooks Online now reads a PDF statement on its own: choose Upload from file, pick the PDF, and QuickBooks extracts the transactions with AI and shows them beside the statement for review. For a single statement, that is often all you need.

A converter earns its place when you need a file for QuickBooks Desktop, which has no PDF import; when you have a stack of statements to work through; or when you would rather categorize in bulk before the rows reach QuickBooks than one at a time in the bank feed. In Bankflow: upload the PDF, check the transactions against the statement's balances, categorize, then export QuickBooks (Web Connect).

Start with PDF to QBO for the converter, CSV to QBO if your bank gives you a spreadsheet instead, and bank statement to QuickBooks for the import steps in both editions.

Sample Files

The same five illustrative transactions, exported four ways by Bankflow's exporter. Open them side by side in a text editor to see how little separates them:

• bankflow-sample.qbo: QuickBooks Web Connect
• bankflow-sample.qfx: the same file, for Quicken
• bankflow-sample.ofx: plain OFX, no Intuit header
• bankflow-sample.qif: Quicken Interchange Format

To check a file of your own, the QBO file checker reads it in your browser and reports what QuickBooks would refuse. The institution and account numbers inside these samples are stand-ins, and the transactions are made up. They are for reading, not for importing into real books.

Sources

QuickBooks Online formats and limits from Intuit's Manually upload transactions into QuickBooks Online (updated August 24, 2026). QIF and QuickBooks Desktop from the QuickBooks Community thread Importing qif files. ProperConvert's formats from propersoft.net. File excerpts are from Bankflow's own exporter. Checked September 15, 2026.