The hardest part of moving from QuickBooks® to ERPNext usually isn't the accounting. It's the vocabulary. Most things work the way you expect; they just have different names. Keep this list handy for the first few weeks.

People you do business with

  • Customer is still a Customer.
  • Vendor becomes Supplier. Everything on the payables side, from bills to payments, uses "supplier."

Products and services

  • Product/Service becomes Item. Both service items and inventory items are Items; a setting on each one says whether you keep stock of it.

Selling and getting paid

  • Invoice becomes Sales Invoice.
  • Receive Payment becomes a Payment Entry of type Receive, matched against the sales invoices it pays.

Buying and paying bills

  • Bill becomes Purchase Invoice.
  • Pay Bills becomes a Payment Entry of type Pay, matched against the purchase invoices it pays.

The books

  • Chart of Accounts works the same way. ERPNext arranges accounts in a tree of groups, so you can nest accounts more deeply.
  • Journal Entry is still a Journal Entry.
  • Undeposited Funds has no special built-in account. A migration usually sets up a clearing account for the same job.
  • Class tracking becomes an accounting dimension, so you can still filter reports by department, location, or project.
  • Close Books becomes period closing and accounting periods, which stop anyone posting into a month you've closed.
  • Fiscal Year is still Fiscal Year, and one has to exist for every year you post into.

Reports

Most report names carry over directly:

  • Profit & Loss is the Profit and Loss Statement.
  • Balance Sheet, General Ledger, and Trial Balance keep their names.
  • A/R Aging and A/P Aging are the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable reports.

Payroll

If you run payroll, QuickBooks payroll items become salary components, and each employee gets a salary structure that combines them. In ERPNext, payroll is part of Frappe HR, the companion HR and payroll app.

A tip for the switch

When you train your team, use the QuickBooks word first and then show the ERPNext one: "this is where you'd pay bills; in ERPNext it's a Payment Entry." People pick it up much faster when they can connect it to what they already know.

For the full move, see the QuickBooks to ERPNext migration steps.

QuickBooks is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. ERPNext is a trademark of Frappe Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Team I.T. LLC is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Intuit or Frappe.