QBO vs QFX vs OFX: Which Bank File Should You Use?

Banks often offer three download formats with confusingly similar names: QBO, QFX and OFX. They carry the same information in nearly the same way. What differs is which program expects which file, and one small piece of data that QuickBooks and Quicken look for.

One standard, three names

OFX (Open Financial Exchange) is a standard for exchanging bank data, created in the late 1990s and still used by banks today. It exists in two main generations:

• OFX 1.x, written in SGML: tags like <TRNAMT>-63.48 without closing tags. Version 1.02 is the most widely supported.
• OFX 2.x, written in XML, with closing tags and an XML header.

QBO and QFX are both OFX 1.02 files with one addition from Intuit: an INTU.BID tag, a number that identifies the bank. A QBO file is labeled for QuickBooks, a QFX file for Quicken.

Which program reads which file

Program	Use	Notes
QuickBooks Online	QBO	Also accepts CSV with column mapping
QuickBooks Desktop	QBO	Imported as Web Connect; IIF for direct postings
Quicken (Windows)	QFX	Imported as Web Connect
Quicken (Mac)	QFX or OFX	Bank or Brokerage File import
Xero	OFX	Also accepts QIF and CSV
Wave	OFX or CSV
GnuCash, Moneydance, Banktivity	OFX	Most also read QFX

When in doubt: QBO for QuickBooks, QFX for Quicken, OFX for everything else.

What’s inside a file

All three formats contain the same blocks:

• Sign-on: the bank’s name and ID (and, for QBO and QFX, the INTU.BID).
• Account: the account type (checking, savings, credit card) and account number.
• Statement period: start and end dates.
• Transactions: for each one, a type (debit, credit, check…), the date, the signed amount, a unique ID (FITID), a name and an optional memo and check number.
• Balance: the ledger balance at the end of the period.

Two details matter in practice:

• The transaction ID. Software uses the FITID to recognize transactions it already imported. That’s why importing the same period twice from a QBO file doesn’t create duplicates, while doing it twice from a CSV does.
• The 32-character name. In OFX 1.x, the payee name is limited to 32 characters. Longer descriptions are cut, so good files put the full text in the memo.

Converting between them

Because QBO, QFX and OFX 1.02 are so close, renaming a file’s extension sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t:

• An OFX → QBO rename fails in QuickBooks if the file has no INTU.BID, or if it’s OFX 2.x (XML), which QuickBooks Web Connect doesn’t accept.
• A QBO → QFX rename may be refused by Quicken, which checks the bank ID against banks it recognizes.

The reliable way is to rewrite the file in the target format: the CSV to QBO, CSV to QFX and CSV to OFX converters do this from a spreadsheet export, and the PDF converters do it straight from a statement. To see what’s inside a file you already have, and why a program might reject it, open it in the QBO file viewer.

When to use CSV instead

CSV is less precise (no transaction IDs, ambiguous dates and signs), but it’s the right choice when:

• you want to look at or edit the transactions in a spreadsheet;
• the target program has its own CSV template, as Xero and Wave do;
• you need extra columns, such as a category or account for each line, which OFX can’t carry.

For QuickBooks, even when you start from a CSV, converting it to QBO before importing saves the mapping step and protects you against duplicates.