QuickBooks Attached Documents: frequently asked questions

QuickBooks Attached Documents (QAD) provides a way for you to keep documents related to your customers, vendors, employees, and transactions in one place within the QuickBooks Doc Center.

You can add documents to the Doc Center and then attach those documents to transactions, customers, accounts, etc. You can also click the attach button (a paperclip) to attach a documents to a transaction.

In QuickBooks 2010 and 2011, QuickBooks Attached Documents (Document Management in 2010) was a subscription-based service (fee-based) that provided online storage and sharing of your attached documents. A fee was charged for the use of this service, whether you stored your documents online or locally.

In QuickBooks 2012, Attached Documents is an integrated feature that includes local storage only and no longer requires a subscription.

If you subscribed to Document Management in QuickBooks 2010 or QuickBooks Attached Documents in QuickBooks 2011, when you upgrade to QuickBooks 2012 you are provided with the option to continue your subscription to the online document storage or cancel your subscription and use the free local storage provided as part of QuickBooks 2012. For more information on that, please see Upgrade to QuickBooks Attached Documents 2012.

If you are new to Attached Documents with QuickBooks 2012, then you will have the free local storage only.

Document Management was released as part of QuickBooks 2010 and QuickBooks Attached Documents was released as part of QuickBooks 2011. 

In 2010 and 2011, both were subscription-based web applications that let you attach documents to QuickBooks items and records. 

With Document Management in 2010, you can only store documents online. You are charged a subscription fee for this service.

With Attached Documents in 2011, you have the option to store documents locally or online (or both). You are charged a subscription fee regardless of where you choose to store your documents.

Based on customer feedback, in QuickBooks 2012 we fully integrated the Attached Documents feature. It includes local storage only and does not require a subscription fee.

Because of this change, Intuit no longer offers new subscriptions to Document Management or Attached Documents.

If you currently use QuickBooks 2010 or 2011 and have a subscription to either Document Management or Attached Documents, you can continue to use your subscription and you should have received information regarding changes to your subscription fees. The fee for your subscription is now based only on the total storage space rather than on the number of attachments.

If you currently use QuickBooks 2010 or 2011 and do not have a subscription, you cannot purchase a new subscription. When you upgrade to QuickBooks 2012, you will get Attached Documents with local storage as part of the product upgrade.   

This depends on whether you purchased your subscription to use with QuickBooks 2011 or 2010 and, if you are using QuickBooks 2011 whether you upgraded from 2010 and were using Document Management in 2010.

• If you are currently using QuickBooks 2010, you have a subscription to Document Management. 
• If you are using QuickBooks 2011 and you did not subscribe to Document Management in 2010, then you have a subscription to QuickBooks Attached Documents.
• If you upgraded from QuickBooks 2010 to 2011 and you used Document Management in 2010, then you may have continued your subscription to Document Management or you may have converted to Attached Documents.

Important: The key difference is that there is no local storage option for users of Document Management in QuickBooks 2010.

If you use QuickBooks 2012 and do not have a prior subscription to either Document Management or QuickBooks Attached Documents, then you have fully use of Attached Documents with local storage and you do not have a subscription fee.

You can view existing attachments; however, you cannot add new attachments.

You can attach documents to anything in QuickBooks that has the paperclip icon. This includes many list items such as transactions, accounts, customer names, vendor names, employee names, other names, and inventory items.

You can also attach documents to Company Info.

You cannot attach documents to sales representatives, customer messages, payment methods, or shipping methods.

The complete list of transactions and items that allow attachments:

• customers
• employees
• vendors
• other names
• Chart of Accounts
• fixed asset
• Items
• company
• build assemblies
• item receipts
• bills
• checks
• credit card charges
• credit memos
• deposits
• estimates
• paychecks
• purchase orders
• sales orders
• transfers
• invoices
• inventory adjustments
• general journal entries
• receive payments
• sales receipts

There is no restriction on the type of file that can be attached.

There is no file size limit for attachments that you store locally, however there must be enough space on your local system to store the documents.

If you have a subscription for online storage, each individual attachment stored online cannot be larger than 100 MB. 

Yes.

There is no limit on the number of files you can attach and store locally.

If you have a subscription for online storage, you may be limited by the over size of all your files stored. This type of limitation depends on your subscription tier and only applies to online storage.

Yes, there is no limit on the number of attachments per transaction.

No. The only way to accomplish this is to make a copy of the attachment and use that copy in other company file. You will need to make a unique copy for each company file.

Your QuickBooks company file stores and maintains all your data. Learn how to back up your company file to further protect your data.
For more information about how we protect your data, visit our Online Security Center.

No, QuickBooks backup does not include Attached Documents. You should make a manual backup of the “Attach” folder which can be found in the same location as your QuickBooks company file.

Important: To ensure that your attachments are maintained, when you restore a backup, paste the "Attach" folder into the same location as your restored company file.

No, attachments do not add to your company file size and will not increase your backup time.

No.

Yes. Navigate to the Doc Center or click the paperclip item on the QuickBooks transaction or item, then right-click and select Save Copy to Desktop.

Beginning in QuickBooks 2012, R3, QuickBooks permissions are enforced in the Document Center. A user will only see the attachments for the QuickBooks items and transactions they have the permission to see. For example, if a user does not have the permission to view invoices, then they would not see any attachments associated with invoices.

No, you cannot change the attached to field. If you need to correct a transaction number, you must first detach any attachments, then reattach them after you have made the change.

No. You can change the display file name to suit your needs, however the original attachment file name cannot be changed. If you need to change the name of a file, you will need to detach it, rename the file, and then re-attach it.

The attachments are located in the Attach\ folder which is in the same location as your company file.

No, there is no way to compress the files when you attach them.

You can attach an encrypted file, but you cannot encrypt a file that is already attached and was not encrypted prior to attaching it.

No.

Yes, however you will be asked to confirm this action before the attachments are removed.

No.

No, it is not possible to share a subscription with multiple company files.

You need to associate the subscription to your company file, which is a one-time step. If you have not done this, please follow the steps in the Getting Started guide.

QuickBooks Help has several topics that you may find useful. Open QuickBooks, go to Help, then search for QuickBooks Attached Documents to see the full list of Help articles.

There are 2 ways to get help: 

• Call us at 800.450.8475 Monday through Friday between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. Pacific time. Our Customer Support team is happy to help you.
• Read discussions and post messages and questions relating to your issue on the Intuit QuickBooks Community site for free.