Import your vendor list from QuickBooks or Xero

• Export your vendors from QuickBooks Online or Xero.
• Clean the sheet: keep the vendor names, delete the vendors' own contact details, and add an amount and a next renewal date for each vendor.
• In Renew Reminder, open your company workspace and choose Import, then Import from a spreadsheet (CSV).
• After the import, set notice periods and owners.

Accounting exports have names and contact details. They don't have renewal dates, notice periods or owners. You add those once, by hand, and that is the part that makes the reminders work.

The import reads these columns. Only three are required.

You don't need these exact headers. The import recognizes common ones: “Vendor”, “Supplier”, “Company” and “Payee” count as Name; “Cost” and “Price” as Amount; “Renewal date”, “Renews” and “Due date” as Next renewal date. You can still pick the right column for each field by hand before anything is imported.

The easiest start is a template. Download ours from the vendor tracker template page (CSV), or choose Download the template inside the import.

What it accepts

• Files: .csv, .tsv or .txt, up to 2 MB. Commas, semicolons and tabs all work; the import works out which one you used.
• Paste: you can also copy the cells in Google Sheets or Excel, header row included, and paste them in.
• Dates: 2026-11-30, 11/30/2026, 30/11/2026, Nov 30, 2026 or 30 Nov 2026. For a date like 03/04/2026, the import looks at the whole column to decide whether the month or the day comes first. To be safe, use YYYY-MM-DD.
• Past dates: if a renewal date has already passed, the import moves it forward by whole billing cycles to the next one, and tells you.
• Cycles: words like “annual”, “per year” and “12 months” are read as yearly, and “fortnightly” as every 2 weeks.
• Duplicates: a row with the same name and amount as a vendor you already track, or as an earlier row in the same sheet, is skipped, and the summary says so.
• One currency: each account tracks every amount in one currency, and nothing is converted. If a row is in another currency, the import asks what you pay in your own, and keeps the original figure beside it.

Option A: the Vendor Contact List report

This gives one row per vendor, with the columns you choose.

• Go to Reports, then Standard reports.
• Use Find report by name to open the Vendor Contact List.
• Optional: select Columns (in some layouts, Customize, then Columns) to choose what the report shows. The vendor name is the one that matters. Then select Refresh report.
• Select Export/Print (in some layouts, the Export icon), then Export to Excel.

Intuit's help shows reports in two layouts, the classic view and a newer one, so the button names can differ slightly. Intuit lists these columns for a vendor contact list: Vendor, Company Name, Email, Phone, Website, Street, City, State, Zip and Country. Yours may differ with the columns you chose.

QuickBooks gives you an Excel file. Open it in Excel or Google Sheets, then either save it as CSV, or copy the cells and paste them into the import.

Option B: export all your data

Use this if you also want a copy of your other lists and reports.

• Go to Settings (the gear icon). In the TOOLS column, select Export data.
• Select the reason for exporting, then Continue.
• On the Reports and Lists tabs, turn the switches on or off for what you want. Keep the vendor list on.
• Select Export to Excel, then OK.

QuickBooks exports your reports and lists as Excel files in one .zip file. Open the zip and use the vendor list.

Tip: amounts

A vendor list has no amounts. The amount the import needs is what you pay each billing cycle, so take it from the vendor's last invoice or the contract. A year's total is not the same as a monthly price.

• In the Contacts menu, select the group you want: Suppliers, or All contacts to export everyone.
• At the top right of the screen, click the menu icon (three dots), then select Export.
• Xero downloads a CSV file. Rename it, for example to suppliers.csv, so it doesn't get mixed up with other exports.

Xero puts a contact in Suppliers automatically once you have entered a bill or credit note for them. A supplier you have never entered a bill for appears only under All contacts.

The file has the same columns as Xero's contact import template: the name is in a column called ContactName, followed by columns such as EmailAddress, FirstName, LastName, the postal and street address fields, PhoneNumber, Website and TaxNumber.

This is the step that matters. Do it in Excel or Google Sheets.

• Keep only vendors you still pay. Delete one-off vendors you won't pay again.
• Make the first row the column names. If the export has a title or company name above them, delete those rows.
• Keep the vendor name. QuickBooks' “Vendor” column is recognized as Name. Xero's “ContactName” is not: rename it to Name, or pick it by hand during the import.
• Delete the vendors' own email, phone and address columns. The import reads a column called “Email” as the email of the vendor's owner, someone on your team, not the vendor's address. A column with “billing” in its name, such as Billing Address, can be read as the billing cycle. Removing these columns avoids both mistakes.
• Add the columns the export doesn't have, with these names: Amount and Next renewal date (both required), Billing cycle (yearly contracts are often the ones that surprise people), Owner and Owner email (the person on your team who decides about the vendor), and Category. Find renewal dates in the contract, the last invoice or the vendor's billing page.

Column map

• Sign in to the web app and switch to your company workspace. Check that the switcher shows the company's name, not Personal.
• On the Vendors list, choose Import, then Import from a spreadsheet (CSV). You can also press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) and type “Import from a spreadsheet”.
• Upload the file, or paste the cells.
• In Check the import, make sure each field points to the right column, read the rows with problems (each one says what to fix), and answer any currency questions.
• Import. Import finished shows how many vendors were added, skipped as duplicates, or not imported.

Anyone in the workspace who can add vendors can import a sheet. A workspace whose trial or plan has ended is read-only, so it can't import until a plan is chosen. Business Starter allows 100 vendors: if an import would go over, it adds what fits and lists the rest. Business has no vendor limit, subject to fair use.

The import doesn't set these. Do them once per vendor, starting with the biggest contracts.

• Notice period. Open the vendor, edit it, and fill in Notice period in days. Reminders then arrive that many days earlier, the alert says “cancel by <date> to avoid renewal”, and the vendor shows its last day to cancel. You can also set Renews by itself and Contract ends. More on notice periods.
• Owners who sign in. The Owner column creates an owner tag: a name and an email, with no login. To make a team member the owner instead, an Admin edits the vendor's Owner, or on a computer selects several vendors in the list and uses Owner in the bar that appears.
• Reminders for owner tags. A tag created from a spreadsheet never gets emails on its own. Turn on Also remind them on the vendor for each person who should hear about it. That way nobody starts getting emails just because a spreadsheet named them.
• Who sees what. In the workspace settings, Admins choose Everyone sees every vendor or Members see their own.

You can export the list again at any time: on a computer, select vendors in the list and choose Export CSV.