What Is a QFX File?

The short answer

A .qfx file is a bank statement in OFX 1.0.2 with Intuit's tags attached, published by a bank for use with Quicken. It holds a transaction list, the period covered, a closing balance and an identifier naming the institution.

If that description sounds identical to a .qbo, it is. They are the same document. What differs is the extension and which product the institution identifier is registered against. See what a QBO file is for the full anatomy, which applies to both.

How a QFX differs from a QBO, an OFX and a QIF

Three of these four are the same format wearing different names. The fourth is unrelated to any of them, which is the part people most often get wrong.

So a .qfx and a .qbo sitting side by side will look near-identical opened in a text editor, while a `.qif` shares nothing with either beyond describing transactions. QIF has no tags, no balance and nothing naming the bank.

What is actually inside one

The header block, then markup. Cut down to the parts that distinguish a .qfx from plain OFX:

OFXHEADER:100
DATA:OFXSGML
VERSION:102

<OFX>
  <SONRS>
    <FI>
      <ORG>Example Bank
      <FID>1001
    </FI>
    <INTU.BID>1001
  </SONRS>
</OFX>

The <FI> block and the INTU.BID are the whole of the difference between this and an ordinary `.ofx`. Strip them and you have plain OFX; change the extension without changing them and you have a .qbo that still names the same institution.

Web Connect, Direct Connect, and which one costs money

A .qfx only exists under one of these arrangements, and knowing which your bank offers explains why you can or cannot download one.

• Web Connect. The bank publishes a statement file and you download it yourself. This is the .qfx, and it is normally free.
• Direct Connect. The software talks to the bank directly. No file changes hands, and many banks charge a monthly fee for the privilege.
• Express Web Connect. Intuit's servers collect the data and relay it. Again no file, and it is the arrangement most prone to breaking quietly when a bank changes its login.

Only the first produces something you can keep, archive or hand to an accountant. That is the practical case for the format: a Web Connect file is yours in a way a connection is not.

Renaming a file does not convert it

Because a .qfx and a .qbo are the same document, renaming one to the other is the first thing everybody tries, and it half works often enough to be genuinely confusing.

What the rename does not touch is the identifier inside. The file still names whichever institution it named before, and still declares itself registered against whichever product it was published for. Renaming changes what your operating system thinks the file is; it changes nothing a program reads once the file is open.

The same applies in reverse to a .qif. Renaming one to .qfx produces a file whose name promises OFX markup and whose contents are a flat list of codes. It is unreadable as either.

Why a file that looks right may still not be equivalent

A statement rebuilt from a CSV can hold every transaction correctly: right dates, right amounts, right descriptions, a closing balance that reconciles. It is still not the same artefact as the file a bank published.

The reason is the identifier. It is registered rather than invented, and it asserts an origin. A file naming no institution, or naming one it did not come from, differs from a bank's own download in a way no amount of correct transaction data makes up for. That is a real limit of any conversion, including ours, and it is worth knowing before you rely on one.

What a QFX cannot tell you

The same limits as any Web Connect statement. There are no categories and no account assignments. A payee string and an amount is all a transaction knows about itself, and everything else is added after the file is read.

There is one closing balance for the whole period rather than a running balance per row, so a file missing transactions from the middle is still internally consistent. Totalling every transaction and comparing the result against the stated balance is the only check the format hands you, and it is worth doing every time.

Frequently asked questions

Is a QFX the same as a QBO? Structurally, yes. Both are OFX 1.0.2 documents with Intuit tags, carrying the same transaction grammar, the same statement period and the same kind of institution identifier. What differs is the extension and which product that identifier is registered against.

Can I just rename a .qfx to .qbo? You can rename it, but the rename changes nothing inside the file. The institution identifier and the product it is registered against are written in the document itself, and they are the parts that matter. The extension only tells your operating system which program to offer.

Why can I not download a QFX from my bank? Most likely because your bank is connected by Direct Connect or Express Web Connect rather than Web Connect, and neither produces a file at all. The data moves over a connection instead. Where that is the case there is no .qfx to download and never was.

Is a QFX file readable in a text editor? Yes. It is plain text: a header block of colon-separated pairs, then markup. The inner tags are usually unclosed, because OFX 1.x is SGML rather than XML, which is why an XML tool will often call a perfectly valid file malformed.

What is the difference between QFX and QIF? Almost everything. A QFX is a tagged OFX document that states a closing balance and names the institution it came from. A QIF is a plain list of one-letter codes with no balance, no institution and no unique id per transaction. They share a vendor and nothing else.