Which characters can I use?

Every software supports a specific set of characters (numbers, letters, and punctuation). When characters that are not supported are encountered it may cause errors.

To avoid errors with synchronization to your accounting package, it is recommended that you use only the following characters in your data. This includes customer names, vendors, products, services, company names, etc. If an unexpected character is encountered, you may get a synchronization error or corrupt your saved file.

Best practices advise that you should only use the following characters which are accepted for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, FreshBooks, and Xero:

  • Basic latin alphabet, both in upper and lower case: a-z, A-Z
  • Numerals: 0-9
  • Comma: ,
  • Dot or period: .
  • Question mark: ?
  • At symbol: @
  • Ampersand: &
  • Exclamation point: !
  • Number or pound sign: #
  • Single quote: "
  • Tilde: ~
  • Asterisk: *
  • Space: ( )
  • Underscore: _
  • Hyphen or minus sign: -
  • Semicolon: ;
  • Plus sign: +