Before you start fiddling with the QuickBooks software, you need to choose the conversion date. The conversion date is the date on which you want to begin using QuickBooks for your financial record keeping. This decision is hugely important because the conversion date that you choose affects both the work you have to do to get QuickBooks running smoothly and the initial usefulness of the financial information that you collect and record by using QuickBooks.

You have three basic choices from which to select:

• The right way: You can convert at the beginning of your accounting year (which is, in most cases, the same as the beginning of the calendar year). This way requires the least amount of work and it means that you have all the current year's financial information in one system.
• The slightly awkward way: You can convert at the beginning of some interim accounting period (probably the beginning of some month or quarter). This approach is slightly awkward because you have to plug your year-to-date income and expenses numbers from the old system into the new system.
• The my-way-or-the-highway way: You can convert at some time other than the right way and the slightly awkward way. Specifically, you can choose to convert whenever you jolly well feel like it. However, you create a bunch of unnecessary work for yourself if you take this approach.