Imports

Your team’s power users set up an import template for each kind of file you receive: “New Claims”, “Vendor Price List”, “Monthly Contact Update”. Your job is to give QBO the file and check that it landed.

Upload a file

1. Open the Import Files home page.
2. Choose the import template that matches your file.
3. Drag the file onto the banner at the top of the page.

QBO saves the original file, creates an import file record for this run, and starts importing. Large imports are usually handed to an app server, so you can keep working while they run.

Tip

Use the template your team set up for the file you have. A template expects a specific layout (column names, sheet, delimiter), and a file in a different layout will fail validation or import the wrong columns.

Follow its progress

Each import file shows a status as it moves through its life:

Status	Meaning
Stored / Queued	The file is saved; it is waiting to be imported (Queued means an app server will pick it up).
Awaiting Validation	QBO is checking the data before importing it.
Validated	The checks passed; the import is queued.
Validation Failed / Validation Error	The file didn’t pass the template’s checks. Nothing was imported.
Awaiting Import	Data is being read and loaded.
Pending	The file has been read, and its rows are still being processed one at a time.
Complete	The import finished.
Error	The import stopped, or too many rows failed for the template’s limits.

The import file also shows when it started and finished, and how many rows succeeded, how many hit errors, and how many raised warnings (data that imported but deserves a second look).

See what it did

Open the import file’s summary page to see:

• The original file, exactly as received, so you can check it against the source.
• The log, with a line for each problem (and, for some templates, each record it created or updated).
• Row items, for templates that process one row at a time. Each row has its own status, so you can see which rows failed and why.

If the template defines a results view, the summary also lists the records the import touched.

When rows fail

Most failures come from the data, not the system: a required column is blank, a date isn’t a date, or a reference (such as a client code) doesn’t match a record in QBO.

1. Read the failed row’s status or the log message.
2. Fix the data at the source.
3. Upload the corrected file, or ask a power user to requeue the failed rows. Requeueing retries only the rows that haven’t succeeded, so successful rows aren’t duplicated.

Note

An import can also start a workflow when it completes, for example to notify a team or review the results. If your template does this, you’ll see the workflow on the import file.

For how templates, engines, and validation are configured, switch to the Power user view. To see where imports fit with the rest of the platform, see Data.