I first became aware of QXL late last year, when I was doing some research on the QODBC website. QXL is a relatively new product from our friends at Flexquarters, the makers of QODBC.
QXL provides a super easy way to export QuickBooks Data, most likely into Excel. It comes in two versions – one that works with QuickBooks Desktop and another that works with QuickBooks Online.
I demonstrated QXL for QuickBooks Online in my Data Utilities for QuickBooks Online course at “Scaling New Heights" this past June. I also demonstrated QXL for QuickBooks Desktop during a recent webinar sponsored by Qbox.
In this article we’ll be looking at the version for QB Desktop, because I easily adapted my PowerPoint slides into graphics for this article.
With the exception of the “connection routine” and a few ‘behind the scenes’ techno-things, the two versions of the product work almost identically.
QXL uses the Flexquarters QODBC driver for reading QuickBooks which means that it works with every year of QuickBooks since 2002.
The product makes use of standard SQL commands that have been automated into QXL. In other words, you don’t have to learn structured query language with QXL like you needed to when using QODBC directly.

QXL_01If you purchased the product, you’ll want to enter your registration credentials (sent via email), so that you can fully activate the product. You probably have internet access, so you’ll use the standard activation process.
Select the Activate/Deactivate tab, and then click the Activate button to enter your CD key (code)

QXL_02A pop-up will appear for you to enter your code. Click the Activate button on the right for on-line automatic activation. If you don’t have internet, click the Manual button on the right (below the Activate button).

qxlThe manual process requires you to enter additional information associated with your order documentation.
Once your activation is completed, QXL displays the Activation successful message. Just click OK to proceed with using the software.
This Activate/Deactivate tab also is where you “Deactivate” your currently registered version of QXL for the transfer of the product to another machine. This process will take 24 to 48 hours before your CD Key account is credited with the deactivated license.
You can reactivate the license on a different machine. If internet access is not available from the registered machine, you can use the manual option to generate a deactivation code from a machine that has internet access.
So, now that you have registered our product, you can set up QXL to run the way you want, starting with the General tab.QXL_04The general tab displays the Output folder where QXL will create the files you export from QuickBooks. You also can change this location simply by clicking the “Browse” button and navigating to your desired location.There are multiple formats that can be used when formatting your exported data, including XLSX, XLS, CSV or SQL Server. You can set a connection string when exporting data into SQL Server or ODBC Data Sources. (By the way, you’ll need the Pro Edition of QXL in order to export to SQL/ODBC.You also can select how you want you data structured in terms of export, as a single file, or as separate files. This is one of the most important configuration options you set, in my way of thinking. The default is separate files, which means each QuickBooks table will be set up as a unique file.

qxl_05If you select the Single File option, you’ll only have one Excel Spreadsheet, and each QuickBooks table will appear as a separate “tab” within that spreadsheet.Another critical selection is the Output File Read-only option. By default, QXL sets your files to prevent unwanted overwrite. But if you intend to simply update the output files each time you use QXL, you’ll want to set the Read-only status to No.By default, QXL sets the QuickBooks source to the Company file you have open in QuickBooks using the “Currently Opened Company File.” Most of the time, I think this is the option that fits the use of this tool the best. But if you will only be using the tool for a single file, this option allows you to browse to the specific QuickBooks (*.QBW) file you want to export from on a regular basis.Additional options for this tab are explained in the In-product Help, which is accessed from the Question Mark in the upper right corner of the tab.
The Advanced Tab is used to change the Optimizer and Message settings. You might guess from the “big red box” that the Optimizer is another key setting or feature of QXL.

QXL_06When you select the option to Use Optimizer, then QXL will “cache some of your QuickBooks data” to increase the retrieval performance of future queries. When you access any table, QXL will gather and store data from QuickBooks in Optimizer file.
The next time you query the same table, QXL will request differential records, which have been added, modified and deleted from QuickBooks and will sync it to Optimizer file. This way, QXL will have to only get the differential records, instead of entire data set from QuickBooks.
You also can configure the optimizer file location how you want QXL to display messages and a few other file export options, including the color of table headers.
Because you may want to limit the data you export from QuickBooks, using QXL to a specific table or set of tables, the Table Settings tab gives you options related to this functionality.