Export your payroll to QuickBooks Desktop

Unlike online accounting integrations (QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, and Xero), QuickBooks Desktop doesn't receive data through an automatic sync because it's an offline product. Data is instead exported to an Intuit Interchange Format (IIF) file, which you will download from Gusto and upload to your QuickBooks Desktop account.

To export your payroll to QuickBooks Desktop, you'll need to first set up QuickBooks Desktop in Gusto. 

1. After you've run payroll, go to the Payroll section and select Payroll history. 
2. Hover over the payroll you've run and click View details. 
3. Next to "QuickBooks Desktop," click Export. 
   • If you don't see Export, you may need to first connect your QuickBooks Desktop account from your App directory.
4. The IIF file will be downloaded onto your computer. 
5. Sign in to your QuickBooks Desktop account and upload the IIF file.

Troubleshoot IIF uploading issues

If you use Quickbooks Desktop 2019 or 2020, you may experience IIF upload issues when using the default import option. Learn more about the default import process below, or scroll to the next headline to proceed with a manual import. 

• The QBD default import option for these versions performs additional verification checks when importing the IIF file, and there's a wide variety of reasons why the import may fail.
  • For example: If you have an employee in Gusto that doesn't exist in your QBD company yet, the IIF upload may fail. To resolve, you'd need to create the employee in QBD before being able to import the IIF correctly.
  • While QBD performs a wide variety of additional checks, you can use the workaround described below to skip them if you feel they aren't needed or are not helpful.

Import the IIF file without review

If you import your IIF file without review, you may experience some discrepancies in the information that pushes from Gusto to QBD. To ensure all information has synced as expected:

• Check that your journal entries, accounts, and entities are all accurate.
• Check that you can reconcile everything successfully.
  • There's  a risk of importing unbalanced entries using this method

To import the IIF file without review:

1. Follow steps 1-6 listed at the top of this article.
2. In QuickBooks Desktop, when the prompt to import appears, rather that clicking the main Import IIF button, instead click Import it for me. I'll fix it later.
3. Confirm you want to import the IIF using this method.