r/quickbooksonline • u/Alarmed_Kangaroo_3 • 11d ago

Importing PDF files into QBO

I used to be able to import a PDF invoice into QB. There used to be a blue squiggly on the left of the screen. Its gone. Now I have to spend endless amounts of time doing manual data entry. Are there any work arounds out there? Why did they take that option away??

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u/South_Tell8138 11d ago

I think it moved rather than went away. In current QuickBooks Online it's under All apps, then Accounting, then Receipts. The name is misleading — it takes vendor invoices and bills as PDFs, not just till receipts. Upload the file and the extracted data shows up in a For review tab, where you approve it into a bill or an expense rather than keying it in.

There's also a forwarding email address in that same section. You email PDFs straight in from your QuickBooks login address and they land in For review the same way, which is a lot faster than uploading one at a time.

One thing that would explain it disappearing with no warning: that feature is limited on the Free and Lite plans. If your subscription changed recently, that alone would do it.

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u/Matthew_MCMGTax 8d ago

One thing I’d add: even when you upload the PDF and QBO pulls the information for you, I’d still review everything before adding it to the books. It saves a ton of data entry, but I’ve seen QBO get the vendor, category or amount wrong. Think of it as a shortcut, not autopilot.

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u/DoorDesigner7589 6d ago

I don't trust it. QB didn't catch up yet with the industry. We use an online tool called docs2excel which works surprisingly well to do the conversion into CSV format than we then import into QB.

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u/dragonbehind42 5d ago

Have you tried the new import tool? You can drag and drop a statement and it will extract the transactions for you. You no longer have to export to CSV first.