Hi,

Both options you’re considering are viable, and the best choice depends on how often you need to access your legacy QuickBooks data and how closely you want it integrated with your new Odoo setup. Setting up a multi-company environment keeps everything in one place, allowing you to easily switch between the new and old businesses, maintain consistent reporting, and even create consolidated financials. This option is cleaner for long-term access and compatibility with future Odoo upgrades, though it comes at a slightly higher subscription cost and may clutter your main database if the legacy company isn’t actively used.

Creating a separate accounting-only database is cheaper and isolates the historical data completely, keeping your production instance light. However, it relies on Odoo’s free one-app offer, which could change, and it requires more maintenance if you ever need to upgrade or access older data frequently.

A third compromise is to export your QuickBooks records and import only essential summaries,such as balances, journals, or monthly reports,into Odoo. This keeps key information accessible without maintaining a full second database. In short, use multi-company for integrated, ongoing access; a separate instance for occasional lookups; or import summaries if you just need reference data.

Hope it helps

You have several options:

1 - IDEAL / NO WORK AT ALL

It may be possible to keep a single read only license to your old system

Pros - easy to look things up, nothing new to learn

Cons - it is another system, so now things are in two places

2 - QUICKEST / EASIEST

Import Excel sheets of the relevant information into Odoo Spreadsheets via the Documents App

Pros - get access to what you need without much work to import

Cons - harder to search for things, not integrated well

3 - MORE WORK

Create a Studio App and import tables of CSV data

Pros - can use Odoo filtering and search, form and list and kanban views, can link to Customers via Smart buttons

Cons - takes more time

4 - EVEN MORE WORK

Import Monthly Trial Balances

Pros - you can run year on year comparisons

Cons - takes even more time

5 - THE MOST WORK

Import Transactions

Pros - works as if you were using Odoo the whole time

Cons - VERY VERY VERY time consuming, needs scripts, very advanced knowledge required, may not have a good return on investment 

Both options have merit, but from our experience at Ledger Labs, setting up a multi-company structure in Odoo is usually the more reliable long-term solution.

It keeps your historical QuickBooks data accessible within the same environment, allows smoother cross-company reporting, and reduces the risk of future compatibility or access issues if Odoo changes its free plan policies.

The slightly higher subscription cost is justified by stability, data integrity, and easier management down the line.

If needed, we can help you set up a clean multi-company configuration and migrate the old data efficiently — without cluttering your current books.