QFX to OFX Converter

QFX and OFX are closely related file formats that share the same underlying transaction data structure. Understanding their relationship helps clarify why conversion between them is both straightforward and necessary.

OFX (Open Financial Exchange) is an open standard developed in 1997 by Microsoft, Intuit, and CheckFree. It defines a structured format for exchanging financial data between banks, consumers, and software applications. OFX is supported by thousands of financial institutions worldwide and is accepted by a broad range of accounting and personal finance software.

QFX (Quicken Financial Exchange) is Intuit proprietary variant of OFX. It adds Quicken-specific metadata on top of the standard OFX structure. The most important additions are the OFXHEADER preamble (a nine-line block that identifies the file format, encoding, and compression) and the INTU.BID tag (an Intuit Business Identifier that maps the file to a specific financial institution in Quicken internal directory).

When you convert QFX to OFX, you are essentially removing the Quicken-specific wrapper to produce a clean, standards-compliant OFX file. All transaction data, account information, and balance figures are preserved exactly. Only the proprietary metadata that serves no purpose outside of Quicken is stripped.

The most common scenario is when your bank provides downloads exclusively in QFX format, but your accounting software requires standard OFX. This happens frequently because many US banks have partnerships with Intuit and default to QFX as their download format.

GnuCash is a popular open-source accounting application that accepts OFX imports but cannot process QFX files with Quicken-specific headers. GnuCash users who bank with institutions like Chase, Bank of America, or Citi often need QFX to OFX conversion.

MoneyDance is another personal finance application that supports OFX but not QFX. Users migrating from Quicken to MoneyDance need to convert their historical QFX archives to OFX for import.

YNAB (You Need a Budget) supports OFX-based file imports. While YNAB can handle some QFX files, stripping the Quicken-specific headers ensures clean, error-free imports.

Microsoft Money, although discontinued, is still used by some individuals for personal finance tracking. It accepts standard OFX files for transaction import.

Cross-platform data portability is another motivation. If you are moving from a Mac running Quicken to a Linux machine running GnuCash, or from Windows Quicken to a cloud-based platform, converting QFX to OFX ensures your data is in a universally compatible format.

Archival and interoperability are also considerations. OFX is an open standard with published specifications, making it a better long-term archival format than proprietary QFX.

Step 1: Locate your QFX files. These may be in your downloads folder from recent bank transactions, or archived from previous Quicken sessions. Files have the .qfx extension.

Step 2: Open the QFX to OFX converter on FinanceConvert and drop your .qfx file into the upload zone.

Step 3: The converter processes the file by parsing the QFX structure. It identifies and strips the OFXHEADER preamble block (ENCODING, CHARSET, COMPRESSION, and other Quicken-specific metadata lines). It also removes the INTU.BID and INTU.USERID tags from the FI (Financial Institution) element.

Step 4: All transaction data is preserved exactly as it appears in the original QFX file. Every STMTTRN block with its DTPOSTED, TRNAMT, NAME, MEMO, FITID, and TRNTYPE fields passes through unchanged. Account metadata (BANKID, ACCTID, ACCTTYPE) and balance information (LEDGERBAL) are also preserved.

Step 5: Download the .ofx file. It is now a clean, standards-compliant OFX file that any OFX-compatible software can import.

Step 6: Import into your target software. In GnuCash, go to File > Import > Import OFX/QFX. In MoneyDance, go to File > Import > OFX. In YNAB, use the file import feature and select the OFX file.

Transparency about what changes during conversion is important for accountants who need to verify data integrity. Here is exactly what the QFX to OFX converter modifies and preserves.

Removed during conversion: The nine-line OFXHEADER preamble is stripped. This block contains OFXHEADER:100, DATA:OFXSGML, VERSION:102, SECURITY:NONE, ENCODING:USASCII, CHARSET:1252, COMPRESSION:NONE, OLDFILEUID:NONE, and NEWFILEUID:NONE. These values are Quicken-specific and have no meaning in standard OFX. The INTU.BID tag inside the FI element is also removed, as is the INTU.USERID tag if present. These Intuit-specific identifiers are used only by Quicken for institution matching.

Preserved during conversion: Every STMTTRN transaction block is preserved with all fields intact: TRNTYPE, DTPOSTED, TRNAMT, FITID, NAME, MEMO, and any optional fields like CHECKNUM or REFNUM. The BANKACCTFROM block with BANKID, ACCTID, and ACCTTYPE is preserved for account identification. The BANKTRANLIST date range (DTSTART and DTEND) is preserved. The LEDGERBAL block with BALAMT and DTASOF is preserved. The SIGNONMSGSRSV1 block is preserved with Quicken-specific tags removed. Currency information from CURDEF is preserved.

The result is a file that contains identical financial data in a format that adheres to the open OFX standard, compatible with any software that supports OFX import.