Backfilling your fiscal year
The backfill is the final step of setting up QuickBooks Online: it pushes your customers, vendors, an opening trial balance, and your current fiscal year's transactions into QuickBooks so both...
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The backfill is the final step of setting up QuickBooks Online: it pushes your customers, vendors, an opening trial balance, and your current fiscal year's transactions into QuickBooks so both systems start from the same numbers. This article covers the preview, launching the backfill, watching its progress, what completion (or a pause) looks like, and the email you'll get when it's done.
Who can do this: A property manager or board member with manager-level access to the property. Account mapping must be complete first (see Mapping your accounts to QuickBooks).
What it is
The backfill is a one-time bulk push that runs automatically once, right after account mapping, inside the post-connect wizard. It does four things, in order:
- Pushes your customers (billing accounts) and vendors to QuickBooks.
- Pushes an opening trial balance: one balanced journal entry summarizing everything posted before your fiscal year started, so QuickBooks starts the year with the correct account balances rather than at zero.
- Pushes any invoices and bills from before your fiscal year that are still open (not yet paid, voided, or in draft), at their original dates.
- Pushes every invoice, bill, and posted journal entry from the start of your fiscal year forward, oldest first.
After the backfill finishes successfully, URBI keeps syncing new activity automatically going forward; you never need to run a manual backfill again unless you disconnect and reconnect.
The preview: what will push
Before anything is sent, the wizard's Preview step shows you exactly what the backfill is about to do, with nothing sent yet.
- Backfill starts from [date]. This date comes directly from your property's fiscal year start month, set in accounting settings. If it looks wrong, use the "correct it here" link to fix your fiscal year start month before continuing, then come back to re-check the preview.
- Counts table, one row per category:
| Category | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Customers (billing accounts) | Every billing account on the property |
| Vendors | Every vendor on the property |
| Still-open invoices before the fiscal year | Invoices dated before your fiscal year start that aren't paid, voided, or draft |
| Still-open bills before the fiscal year | Expenses/bills dated before your fiscal year start that are approved but not yet settled |
| Invoices since sync-start | Non-draft invoices dated on or after your fiscal year start |
| Bills since sync-start | Approved, paid, or voided bills dated on or after your fiscal year start |
| Posted journal entries since sync-start | Posted journal entries dated on or after your fiscal year start |
There's no dollar figure shown for the opening trial balance itself on this screen, it's calculated and applied when you launch, not previewed as a number here.
If every count comes back at zero, that's shown as a normal, valid state, not an error. It just means there's nothing yet to push besides your customer and vendor lists and (if applicable) the opening balance.
Click Continue to Launch when the preview looks right.
Step by step: launching the backfill
On the Launch step, click Launch backfill. The button changes to "Launching..." briefly.
The step switches to a running view: "Running in the background." You can safely close the drawer or navigate anywhere else in URBI; the backfill keeps running server-side. You'll see roughly how many items are left in the sync queue while it works.
Reopening the QuickBooks drawer at any point during the run shows you the current progress automatically.
When it finishes, the step updates to either a completion summary or a "paused" notice, described below.
You'll also get an email and an in-app notification once it completes successfully (not on a pause), so you don't need to keep the drawer open and watch it.
What completes vs. what halts
Completed successfully. The Launch step shows a "Backfill complete" summary with the counts of everything pushed (customers, vendors, invoices, bills, transactions, and opening balance entries). If the opening trial balance didn't perfectly balance for some reason, a warning line tells you to review the General Ledger before relying on QuickBooks totals; everything else about the backfill still completed. Once this happens, the wizard closes for good, and the QuickBooks drawer returns to its normal Connection and Sync History tabs.
Paused (not an error). The backfill can stop itself cleanly, without failing, in two situations:
- QuickBooks was disconnected while the backfill was running. The Launch step shows: "QuickBooks was disconnected mid-run, so the backfill stopped cleanly. Reconnecting and relaunching will resume it."
- The property's plan was downgraded below PREMIUM while the backfill was running. The Launch step shows: "The property is no longer on a PREMIUM plan, so the backfill stopped cleanly. Re-upgrading and relaunching will resume it."
In both cases, nothing is lost. Once the underlying issue is fixed (reconnect, or re-upgrade to PREMIUM), relaunching picks up exactly where the backfill left off rather than starting over.
Failed. If the backfill run itself fails outright (rather than pausing cleanly), the Launch step shows an error banner with a Retry launch button. Retrying resumes from where it left off, it doesn't restart the whole backfill from scratch.
The "backfill complete" email
Once the backfill finishes successfully, the staff member who launched it (not a broader distribution list) receives:
- An email titled "QuickBooks backfill complete for [property name]," with a summary table of how many customers, vendors, invoices, bills, transactions, and opening balance entries were pushed, and a button linking straight back to the property's Accounting settings.
- A push notification and an in-app notification with the same summary.
If you don't see the email, check that the account you used to launch the backfill has a valid email address on file; the notification and in-app alert still arrive independently either way.
Behind the scenes
- The backfill runs as a background job, not a request that waits on your browser, which is why it's safe to navigate away or close the drawer while it's running.
- It tracks its own progress with a resumable checkpoint. Whether you relaunch after a pause, a failure, or just reopen the drawer mid-run, URBI knows exactly which phase it's in and continues from there rather than redoing work.
- If you relaunch a backfill that already fully finished (for example, after a disconnect and reconnect), URBI starts a fresh run rather than reusing the old one, so the second backfill reflects your current QuickBooks connection correctly.
Edge cases and troubleshooting
- The preview shows all zeros. This is valid if the property genuinely has no activity yet since the fiscal year started (a brand-new property, for example). The backfill will still push your customer and vendor lists and any pre-existing opening balance.
- Launch is blocked with a mapping error even though I thought I finished mapping. URBI double-checks mapping completeness at launch time, independent of the wizard. Go back to the Map Accounts step (or the standalone Account mapping section) and confirm every account, including the Opening Balance Equity account if applicable, is mapped.
- I closed my laptop while the backfill was running. Did it stop? No, it continues running on URBI's servers regardless of whether your browser or device is open. Reopen the drawer later to check progress or wait for the completion email.
- The backfill paused and says "disconnected," but I never disconnected it. A connection can go from Active to "Reconnect needed" on its own if QuickBooks-side tokens expire or are revoked. Check the connection's health badge; reconnect, then relaunch the backfill to resume.
- The completion summary shows a warning that the opening trial balance didn't tie out. Everything else in the backfill still completed. Review your General Ledger for the pre-fiscal-year period to identify the discrepancy before relying on QuickBooks' opening balances for reporting.
- I never got the completion email. Confirm the account that launched the backfill has a valid email on file. The in-app and push notifications are sent independently and should still have arrived.
FAQs
Can I run the backfill more than once? You shouldn't need to under normal use, it's designed as a one-time setup step. If you disconnect and later reconnect, URBI automatically re-runs it as part of the wizard again so QuickBooks stays in sync with anything that changed while disconnected.
Does the backfill affect anything in URBI itself? No. It only reads your existing URBI data and pushes copies of it to QuickBooks. It doesn't change any invoices, expenses, journal entries, or balances inside URBI.
How long does the backfill take? It depends on how much activity the property has since its fiscal year started. Small or new properties finish quickly; properties with a lot of transaction history can take longer, which is exactly why it runs in the background rather than requiring you to wait on the page.
What if my fiscal year start month was wrong when I ran the preview? Fix it in accounting settings, then revisit the Preview step, the "backfill starts from" date and counts recalculate from the corrected month before you launch.
Will future transactions need a backfill too? No. Once the initial backfill completes, new invoices, expenses, payments, and journal entries sync automatically as they happen, no further backfill is needed.