CopyMyBooks
Step by step, no coding
Create a free QuickBooks Online sandbox
A sandbox is a full QuickBooks Online test company that Intuit gives anyone with a free Intuit Developer account. "Developer" is just the name of the account: you don't write any code. It takes about ten minutes, once.
- Free from Intuit. No QuickBooks subscription.
- Your first sandbox is created with the account.
- Up to 10 sandboxes, each valid for two years.
- Separate from your real books: nothing in it touches a real business.
The steps
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Create an Intuit Developer account
Go to developer.intuit.com and select Sign up. Fill in the "Create your account" form, select Create Account, complete the short profile, and confirm your email address. Already have one? Select Sign in instead.
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Find your sandbox
Intuit creates a US sandbox company with your account. To see it, select My Hub, then Sandboxes, in the upper-right corner.
To add another: on that page select Add, choose QuickBooks Online Plus or QuickBooks Online Advanced, choose United States for the country (it can't be changed later), and select Create. Pick the same edition as the real company you'll copy.
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Open it once
Select the sandbox's name to open it in QuickBooks. It starts with Intuit's sample data, which CopyMyBooks clears before it copies. QuickBooks opens one company per browser at a time, so keep a sandbox and a real company in separate browsers or a private window.
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Connect it to CopyMyBooks
Sign in at app.copymybooks.com with Google, GitHub or Intuit. On the home page select Connect sandbox. Intuit's screen opens: sign in with the same Intuit account you used for the developer account, choose the sandbox company, and select Connect.
That's it. Next: copy your real company into it.
Good to know
- Sandboxes expire after two years and can't be renewed. If an expired one asks for payment details, don't enter any: create a new sandbox instead.
- No payroll and no live bank connections. Intuit doesn't support them in sandboxes.
- Sandboxes really send email, up to 40 a day. Copy with undeliverable email addresses so a test never reaches a real customer.
- You can't upload files into a sandbox: Intuit doesn't support importing or exporting company data there. That's why CopyMyBooks writes the records through the QuickBooks Online API instead.
Intuit's own pages: managing sandboxes and the sandbox FAQ.
Questions
Is a QuickBooks sandbox really free?
Yes. Intuit doesn't charge for a developer account or its sandbox companies, and you don't need a QuickBooks subscription to have one.
Plus or Advanced?
Choose the same edition as the real company you'll copy. If you're not sure, it says which in the real company's QuickBooks, under Settings, then Subscriptions and billing.
Can I reset a sandbox?
You don't need to: every CopyMyBooks copy clears the sandbox first. Intuit also offers "Clear data and reset" and "Delete entire sandbox" on the Sandboxes page, but Intuit's original sample data can't be brought back.
Can I have more than one?
Yes, up to 10 per developer account: one for each client or each project, for example.