Migrate Platforms Without Losing Your History
Between Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks, or off an old desktop file. Done in the right order, at the right time of year, with your payroll year-to-date figures intact and your accountant in the loop before anything moves.
We migrate in any direction between these three, and off legacy desktop files.
Four Out of Five Businesses Do Not Need This
Most people who ask us about migrating have a setup problem rather than a platform problem: a chart of accounts nobody designed, no bank rules, an integration switched on and never reconciled, GST coded wrongly on recurring items.
Migrating with those problems unaddressed carries them across faithfully. You pay for a project, absorb the disruption, retrain your team and arrive at the same experience on different software, which is how migrations get their reputation.
So we look before we quote, and we say which situation you are in. Fixing a setup is typically a fortnight and a fraction of the cost.
Get the Honest Answer First- You are on a desktop file with no cloud access or bank feeds
- A tool your industry depends on only connects to the other platform
- Your award complexity is defeating the payroll and a bolt-on has not fixed it
- You are paying for a tier of capability you will never use
- Your reports are useless, which is the chart of accounts rather than the platform
- Coding takes forever, which is missing bank rules
- Nothing reconciles, which is an unreconciled integration
- A new bookkeeper only knows one platform, which is their problem
Four Steps, Nothing Improvised
The old file stays live and read-only throughout, so there is never a point where your history is unavailable.
Scope and Timing
How much history, which balances, which integrations, and when. We talk to your accountant before we agree a date, because they have a view worth having.
Reconcile the Old File
You cannot migrate from an unreconciled position. The source is brought to a clean, reconciled closing balance first, and this is most of the real work.
Build the New File Properly
Not a copy of the old structure. Chart of accounts designed, rules built, tracking configured. A migration is the one free chance to fix the setup.
Move and Prove
History and balances brought across, then reconciled back to the old file line by line. Trial balance, debtors, creditors and payroll year-to-date all agreed before you rely on it.
Then there is training. The most common cause of an unhappy migration is not the data. It is the person who raises the invoices being handed different software on a Monday with no preparation. We train whoever touches the file before go-live, not after the complaints start.
Before You Ask
Two years plus opening balances covers almost every real need: comparative reporting, your accountant’s working papers and any finance application. More is possible and costs more. Before paying for year four, ask yourself when you last looked at a transaction from four years ago. The old file is retained read-only, so nothing is actually lost either way.
Typically two to four weeks end to end, with the disruptive window being a day or two. Most of the elapsed time is us reconciling the old file and building the new one, which happens in the background while you keep working normally. There is one cut-over point where you stop entering in one system and start in the other, and we schedule that around your invoicing and pay cycles.
Keep it for a period, usually until the first year-end after the move is signed off, then downgrade or export a full backup and cancel. Do not cancel immediately, because the small ongoing cost buys you the ability to check something against the source, which is occasionally worth a great deal. We will tell you when it is safe to let it go.
They will be if they are consulted first, which is why we contact them before agreeing a date. They may have a view on timing, on which platform suits your entity structure, or on how they want the opening balances presented. Migrating without telling them is a reliable way to create friction and extra fees at year end.
Get a Migration Quote
A fixed price for the whole move, quoted in writing, with your history and payroll year-to-date intact. If you do not actually need to migrate we will say so and tell you what to fix instead.