You do not start over in kBooks. The importer brings your full QuickBooks history: every company, the whole chart of accounts, your classes, your customer and vendor lists, your item list, and years of transactions.
What to export from QuickBooks
The import works from QuickBooks' own report exports. The wizard names the exact reports it wants and walks you through producing each one; you drop the files in and it takes it from there.
Your items come too. Add the Item Listing report (Reports, then List) and every product and service arrives with its description, price, cost, sales tax code and accounts, so invoice and bill lines can be picked instead of typed from day one. Inventory items bring their quantity on hand as of the cutover; the money for that stock is already in your history, so the quantity simply starts where QuickBooks left it. Sub-items become "Parent - Child". Subtotals, discounts, groups, payment items and sales tax items have no item here and are listed as skipped. An item whose account the chart does not carry is still created, without that account, and the result names it so you can finish it in Items.
What the import promises
The importer's rule is simple: it refuses rather than guesses. Every imported period is checked to the penny against your QuickBooks trial balance. If something cannot be placed with certainty (two accounts carrying the same name is the classic), the wizard shows you exactly what it needs you to decide, and only your answer moves it forward. You will never discover a silently misplaced amount later.
Two accounts with the same short name. QuickBooks prints only an account's short name in the Journal, so "Property" under Insurance and "Property" under Taxes look identical on export. The check tells them apart by their full path, by which one the Trial Balance says had activity, and by the class on each line. Whatever is left, the check shows you as a list: each set of lines, with a choice of the accounts it could be. Pick, then Check again with my answers. Your answer is held to the same penny test as everything else, so a wrong pick shows up as a named mismatch on that account instead of landing. When two placements would both reproduce the Trial Balance exactly, the check says so in an amber note and keeps its own placement unless you change it; renaming one of the accounts in QuickBooks and re-exporting is the way the numbers can settle it without your word.
Re-running is safe
Import again whenever you like (say, month end in your old system). A re-run replaces what the previous run brought and nothing else.
Work you have done in kBooks that hangs on the imported entries does come loose, though, so the check counts it first and asks: payments recorded in kBooks and applied to imported invoices or bills (they become unapplied), a credit memo applied to an imported invoice (the credit goes back to the customer), reconciliation ticks on imported lines, bank lines matched to imported entries (they go back to For Review), and documents attached to them (they stay in Documents). Tick Replace anyway to go ahead.
If these books already hold entries dated inside the history you are importing (typed in, added from the bank feed, invoices, or your opening balance entry), the check lists them and stops: importing would count that money twice. Void or delete them, or move the cutover back to before them. If you are sure they are not in the file, tick Keep them and import anyway. Before replacing an earlier import, the confirmation names it (which import, when it ran, how far its history went) and warns in red when it came from a different system.
Starting only from a point in time
If you would rather not bring history at all, you can begin fresh instead: choose the essentials chart at setup, then enter each account's balance as of your start date on the opening balances screen. Your old system remains the archive for the years before.
After the import
- Open Reports and run a Profit and Loss and a Balance Sheet for a period you know well, and compare against the same reports in QuickBooks. They should read the same.
- A customer payment QuickBooks settled with a check instead of applying it to an invoice (a refund, or money paid out and repaid) arrives settled by that check, so the A/R Aging matches the Balance Sheet instead of listing the payment and the check against each other.
- Then connect your bank under Banking so new activity flows in from today forward. See Bank feeds and statements.
kBooks can also export back: your books can produce QuickBooks files at any time, so trying kBooks never locks you in. See Your data, backups and security.