Moving your data

Every transaction, account, and payee, brought across.

Last updated: April 16, 2026

This is the data-movement step of the migration. If you haven’t run the pre-switch checklist yet, start there: Before you switch .

flowchart LR
  Q[Quicken] -->|File → Export → QIF| F[.qif file]
  F -->|Drag into PennyBolt| P[Import preview]
  P -->|Map categories| M[Review accounts]
  M -->|Commit| C[PennyBolt file]
  C -->|Compare balances| V[Verify]

The path from Quicken to a verified PennyBolt file.

1. Export from Quicken

In Quicken, go to File → Export → QIF. Use these settings:

Accounts to export: All accounts.
Date range: Earliest date to today. Don’t limit the range.
Include: transactions, accounts list, category list, memorized payees.

Save the file somewhere you can find it. A name like quicken-export-2026-04-16.qif makes it easy to track.

2. Create a new PennyBolt file

Open PennyBolt and choose File → New. Pick a name and location for your PennyBolt file. You’ll import everything into this file.

If you’ve already been using PennyBolt with manually entered data, you can import into an existing file — but starting fresh is cleaner and avoids any confusion between existing accounts and imported ones.

3. Import the QIF file

Drag the .qif file onto the PennyBolt window, or use File → Import. PennyBolt opens an import preview with four tabs: Accounts, Transactions, Categories, and Payees.

The full walkthrough for each tab is in Import your Quicken history (QIF) . Follow that guide for the preview step — it covers category mapping, transfer detection, and how to handle accounts that didn’t come across cleanly.

4. Verify against your Quicken account list

After committing the import, check the balances against the list you made in Before you switch :

Open each account in PennyBolt and compare the current balance to the balance you recorded in Quicken.
If a balance is off, the most common cause is a missing opening balance or a transfer that imported as an expense. See the QIF import guide for how to fix both.

A small discrepancy (under $1.00) is usually a rounding difference in how Quicken and PennyBolt handle splits. Anything larger warrants investigation.

5. Check a few transactions by hand

Pick two or three accounts and spot-check ten transactions each against your Quicken register. Confirm dates, amounts, and payees match. This catches systematic import problems — a date offset, a sign inversion — before they affect your reports.

Next step

Move on to Your first week for the day-by-day verification checklist.