Eight formats, because your software only takes one of them

The formats, and who needs each

The canonical transaction is the same for all of them; the formats differ in what they can carry and what they demand.

• CSV — four presets: generic with reconciliation columns, Xero, QuickBooks three-column, and a plain one. The universal fallback.
• Excel — with a reconciliation sheet alongside the transactions.
• QBO — QuickBooks Web Connect. Requires an Intuit bank ID, which we ask you for rather than guess.
• QFX — Quicken. Same bank ID requirement, and a different ID from the QBO one at the same bank.
• OFX — the open format underneath both, accepted by Xero, Sage, MYOB and most of the rest, and needing no bank ID.
• QIF — the oldest, least specified, and the fallback that imports almost anywhere.
• IIF — QuickBooks Desktop only. Double-entry, and QuickBooks accepts an unbalanced file without complaint, so the balancing is done here.
• Tally XML — vouchers for TallyPrime, where the sign convention is inverted from everything else and the ledger is matched by name.

The requirements each format hides

A format is not just a file extension. QBO and QFX carry an Intuit bank ID that QuickBooks checks against its own list, and a guessed one produces an error naming a connection problem rather than the tag that caused it. IIF is double-entry and QuickBooks will import an unbalanced file and leave your books unbalanced. Tally rejects a voucher whose two ledger entries do not sum to zero, and writes a debit as a negative — the opposite of every other format here.

Getting those wrong produces files that import cleanly and are wrong, which is the failure mode worth engineering against. Each is handled in the serializer and asserted in the tests.

One conversion, any format

Converting once and exporting several times costs one conversion against your allowance, not several. So trying QBO, finding your bank is not enrolled for Web Connect, and falling back to CSV does not cost you twice.