How to Switch from Quicken to Kemback, Step by Step

If you’ve kept your finances in Quicken for years, the history is the valuable part. Years of transactions, categories you’ve refined, and balances you’ve reconciled month after month. Moving to something new only makes sense if all of that comes with you, and if you can trust that it arrived intact.

Kemback’s Switch from Quicken wizard is built for exactly that. You export one QIF file from Quicken, drop it into the wizard, and Kemback creates every account, category and transaction, then checks each account’s balance against the balance Quicken recorded. This guide walks through it step by step.

Before you start

A few things worth knowing first:

Quicken keeps your data. Exporting doesn’t change or remove anything in Quicken. You can keep it installed until you’re confident in the switch.
The file stays between you and your household. Kemback reads the file in your browser and sends it only to your household.
You need to be an owner or editor of the Kemback household you’re importing into. A viewer sees a note asking an owner or editor to do it.
Investment accounts don’t come across as holdings. Kemback doesn’t track holdings, lots or cost basis yet. The wizard lists any investment accounts it skipped and tells you how to add each one as a single balance instead.

If you haven’t created a Kemback account yet, do that first at kemback.com. A new household starts with no accounts, which is the cleanest starting point for a full switch.

Step 1: Export from Quicken

The wizard shows these instructions on screen too. For more detail on each version, see how to export your data from Quicken.

Quicken for Windows

Choose File → Export → QIF File.
Under “Quicken Account to Export From”, choose <All Accounts>.
Leave the dates as they are, so the whole history comes across.
Tick every box under “Include in Export”, then choose OK.

Quicken for Mac

Choose File → Export → QIF File.
Choose all accounts and include transactions and categories.
Save the file somewhere you’ll find it.

Before you export, it’s worth noting each account’s current balance in Quicken, or taking a screenshot of the account list. Kemback checks balances for you, but having your own record makes the comparison easy to confirm.

Step 2: Open the wizard and choose the file

In Kemback, open Accounts from the sidebar. On an empty household you’ll see a box headed “Switching from Quicken?” with a Start the switch link. If you already have accounts, open Import a file from the Accounts page and follow the Switch from Quicken link in the note under the file picker.

The wizard is titled Switch from Quicken, with the promise “Bring every account, category and transaction across, and check each balance to the cent.” Under Choose the file, select the QIF file you exported. Kemback reads it straight away. Nothing is saved yet.

If the file has no bank, card or cash accounts in it, you’ll see No accounts found. That usually means the export was made from a single account; export again with <All Accounts> chosen.

Step 3: Check what’s coming across

The next card is headed Check what’s coming across, with the number of accounts it found. It’s a table with four columns:

In Quicken: the account’s name in Quicken.
Transactions: how many transactions the file holds for it.
Quicken’s balance: the balance Quicken recorded, which Kemback will check against after the import.
In Kemback: where the account will go.

For each account, the Import into menu has three kinds of choice:

A new account (the default for a new household). You can change its Name and its Kind, for example Checking, Credit card or Loan.
An existing Kemback account, if you’ve already created one you want to fill.
Leave it out, for an old account you don’t want to bring.

This is a good moment to tidy up. If Quicken still has a checking account you closed in 2015, you can bring it across for the history or leave it out. Renaming “CHK-4471” to “Joint checking” now saves doing it later.

If an account already holds some of these transactions, a red badge shows how many are already here. Those are recognized and left out, so running the wizard twice is safe.

What won’t come across

Below the table, a card headed What won’t come across lists anything in the file that Kemback won’t import, each with what to do about it:

Investment accounts: add each as an Investment account with today’s value from your Quicken portfolio view.
Classes: class names are dropped from categories, but the categories themselves come across. Tags in Kemback do the same job.
Memorized payees: not needed. Rules do the same job, and Kemback offers to make one whenever you recategorize a transaction.
Securities and price history: these belong to investment tracking, which Kemback doesn’t offer yet.

Step 4: Bring it across

The last card, Import, explains two things: everything arrives already reviewed, so years of history won’t fill your review inbox, and you can undo the whole import from the Import page.

Choose Bring it across. For a large file it may take a moment while the button reads “Bringing it across…”.

Step 5: Check the balances

When it’s done, the page changes to You’ve switched, with a line like “18,402 transactions in 9 accounts came across from QDATA.QIF.”

The card below is the part to read carefully. Its heading tells you how the balance check went, for example Every balance matches Quicken’s (9 of 9). Each account is listed with its transaction count and one of two badges:

✓ Matches Quicken: the account’s balance in Kemback equals the balance Quicken recorded, to the cent.
Differs from Quicken: reconcile it: the balances don’t agree.

The card also says how many transfers were linked between accounts and how many categories were added. Transfers are linked as transfers, so moving $500 from checking to savings doesn’t show up as $500 of spending.

If a balance differs

A difference usually has an ordinary cause: a transaction dated in the future in Quicken, an account whose opening balance was edited by hand years ago, or an investment-related transfer that pointed at a skipped account. Open the account, compare it with Quicken, and use Reconcile in its register against your latest bank statement. Once it’s reconciled, Kemback’s balance agrees with the bank, which is what matters going forward.

If the import went wrong in a bigger way, open Accounts → Import a file, find the file under Past imports, and choose Undo. Its transactions, and any empty accounts it created, are removed, and you can try again.

Step 6: What to do next

The Next card suggests where to go from here. The most useful first step is Build a budget from this history: Kemback suggests an amount per category from what you actually spent over the last three full months, and you choose which to keep.

Then:

Add your bills. The Bills page finds regular payments in your history under Looks recurring, so adding them takes a few clicks.
Set up rules. Every time you recategorize a transaction, Kemback offers a rule so the same payee is handled automatically next time.
Keep new transactions coming. On the free plan, download OFX, QFX, QIF or CSV files from your bank and use Import a file. Duplicates are recognized and left out. Automatic bank sync is coming with the Plus plan.

Should you keep Quicken running for a while?

Many people run both for a month or two, which is reasonable. It lets you compare a statement period side by side and get used to the new screens without pressure. Once your Kemback balances reconcile with your bank and your bills and budget are set up, you can stop entering transactions in Quicken. Keep the QIF file and a Quicken backup somewhere safe as an archive.

And because Kemback lets you download everything from Your data at any time, as CSV or JSON, you’re never locked in the other direction either.

#switching from quicken #kemback guides

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. For decisions about your situation, talk to a qualified professional.